Strangest catch

[Patrick]

What's everyone's strangest catch?
I have two that jump out at me. One time, I was shad fishing and I got hit as soon as the lure hit the water. I figured it was either a shad or an agressive bass. As it turns out, it was a sanddial, or sanddab or windowpane. whatever you call them. Hit it right on the surface.

The second weird story was I was bumping a sassy-shad along the bottom and I get a hit. This thing was fighting, even took some line. Reeled in a spider crab. Absolutely humongous. He bit the thing in half! Was pretty funny.

[STEVE IN MASS]

In Hatteras, got a ribbonfish and a houndfish, both on a Stingsilver, running with the Spanish. Ribbonfish was really pretty, houndfish was pretty scary with that long needle beak. Heard of one this past summer in Florida that jumped outta the water thru the neck of a girl swimming, but that's an old story by now.

The one strange fish that I remember catching was about 30 miles off bermuda. We anchored up in about 180 ft over a bank called argus banks. After a long day of catching blue marlin , wahoo and yellow fin tuna and organizing our catch for that day, we ate dinner and then got the baits ready to do the same thing for the next morning. I decided to start bottom fishing for grouper and snappers and things like that, after about an hour or so I felt pull on my line nothing like the bottom fish I was catching. The fish didn't really put up a great fight but never the less I knew it was a fairly heavy fish. I brought the thing aboard and I was unable to identify the fish. I ended up waking up my friend who has been fishing those waters his entire life and he was also unable to identify it. The fish was about 70 lbs with a deep maroon color. It had no scales on it and it was kind of fatty not solid like a tuna. It turned out to be a fish called an escolar. I haven't caught or seen another since and haven't heard of one being caught there either. to tell you the truth I really don't know to much about that type of fish at all. I did hear that they are usually found in much deeper water like 600 ft .

[chris L]

I caught a 26 lb cod on a peanut butter sandwich on the firery super squirrel . Won the pool on the boat and was one of the few fish caught that day . Everyone wanted my lunch had to fight them off .

[Swimmer]

Not so strange, but funny. My brother Mike was fishing the beach in Eastham by my praents cottage. He was ten at the time. Baited the hook and through out the line. Like a lot of ten years olds he wandered off to look at other things. He came back and rod and reel were gone. He saw a line in the water like something had pulled the rod and reel into the water. Dad was really bull...t when he came home. It was late and tide was high, so Dad to him to get his butt down to the beach after church and walk out onto the flats until he found the rod. Next day after church Mikey went and found the line in the sand at low tide and followed it until he came upon his rod and reel. The reel had been stripped of its line. Just a ten year old boys idea of a good know kept the line attached to the reel. Mikey started reeling the line in. Yes at the end of the line was his first striper. That brought a smile to our faces and still does.

[Mike P]

Pat--I've got quite a few sundials on surface plugs. They are extremely agressive predators, even more aggressive than fluke, which I've also taken from time to time on swimmers.

I also occasionally dredge up a spider crab when jigging backwater areas. Pain in the butt to unhook--that pincer, as you saw, is sharp enough to cut a FinS in half. I also had one murder an eel one night that got too deep. In the spring, around the new moon, you'll also occasionally snag two mating horseshoe crabs, you'd swear you hooked an open beach umbrella.

Strangest catch this year was a goosefish (aka anglerfish or monkfish), in shallow water, in May. Second year in a row I've seen one in this particular spot. It ate a jig, it wansn't foul hooked.

[Patrick]

The strangest thing I saw this year was this. I was wading in the water, no waders or anything. Just shorts. Well in comes a sea robin and sits on my foot! I didn't want a thorn in my foot so I jigged in front of him and he swam off.