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lost a big one , adventures of a paylaker

went down to my favorite fishing hole saturday to get some rest and relaxation , we had about 10 to 12 people fishing , fish were biting pretty regular , but no big ones just bunch of 5 to 8 pound channel cats. i had braught my favorite bait ,live shad, fished one end the lake for awhile then went down to the bait house at the far end of the lake and threw out the biggest bait i had which was a 9 inch shad, i had set my slip bobber so that my bait was about a foot off the bottom , which made it 15 feet from the surface.well old mister shad is out there making my bobber do the happy dance for about an hour with no action , then the bobber goesstill with out no movement for about 45 minutes , so i think the shad is dead.
i tell my buddy im gonna give him about 10 minutes and if my bobber doesnt move im gonna reel him in and cut his head off and throw his head back out .a few minutes later my bobber comes back to life and this time he has renewed energy , my bobber goes nuts goign in circles and back and forth from side to side so i think he is giving one last effort before he dies to try and get off my hook ,all of a sudden my bobber stops dead in the water and all you see is a still bobber and the ripples it made from the previous commotion, then all of a sudden like from the movie jaws when the attach the bouy's to the shark and it swims away and the bouys dissapear , my bobber did the same thing , so i think my shad got a second wind and is heading for deeper water, then my bobber slowly goes under water but my cheater is still above water so i make my way to my pole and pick it up and start to reel in my line.
i reel in all my slack line and my line goes taught and whats this , there is a fish pulling out drag , so i give him a little slack line and turn to set my hook , boy did i get a surprise , my pole didnt budge when i set the hook and now instead of a little drag being pulled out my drag is screaming and i swear i can see smoke coming from my reel , not really but it makes the story more interesting, i am using a ten and a half foot pole and this fish has my rod doubled and is peeling line from my drag , i feel like i got a mad bull attached to the end of my line , so i start cranking and pumping and cranking , im not gaining an inch on this fish and my drag is almost set as tight as i can get it whith out breaking my 30 pound line , by this time i have a crowd gathering around me and one of the people in the crowd is also a ten year old who holds the lake record of 50 pounds and 14 ounces , he has my net and is ready to help me land this fish .
i faught him for a minute or two with no signs of me gaining line by this time he has almost 80 yards of line ripped from my reel and i make the one mistake that i always yell at everyone not to do , i dropped the tip of my rod and didnt reel , thats all he neeeded was that little slack he spit my bait out , my bobber surfaces and sits deadly still in the water and every ones gasps and says awwwwww almost in unison , he didnt even come to the surface to give us a fn slap or a screw you , well i almost wanted to cry , but did the next best thing , grabbed my pole by the butt and threw that son of a gun as hard as i could over my shoulders , i was mad ,i mean wanting to throw dynomite in the water mad.
after talking with the lake owner for awhile we come to the cunclusion that he had to be one of the top 3 fish in the lake one of the two 60 pounders in there or the big 70 plus pounder that is in there either way he would have put me as the only one to catch more then one fish over 40 pounds in that lake last year i caught a 42 pound flathead that i had named scareface
so as i sit here and pout and plot against this fish , i fugre i would give you guys some insight into a day at the pay lake is like and how once you fish a paylake you are addicted for life
 

Jackalope

Dignitary Member
Staff member
38,841
260
Cool Story man. Too bad you lost him. But you know he's still there. Maybe you have found your white whale.. :)
 
last year i made the goal to catch a fish over forty pounds , i achieved that goal late last summer with a 42.3 pound flathead , this year my goal is to break the fifty pound mark and be the first person at the lake to catch more then one fish over forty pounds , i hold alot of records at this lake , biggest bluegill caught , most blue cats caught in one year , farthest cast , my goal this year is to break the lake record , the things i have learned from fishing paylakes has made my catch rate on public waters sky rocket
 

Redvette

Junior Member
44
0
NW Ohio
Great story..really enjoyed the blow by blow. Never saw let along landed a cat that big. I have hooked into some stuff walleye fishing the Maumee that went till it broke off with the current and never did find out what it was but it felt like I snagged a boat but none were in sight and for a while it ran upstream before turning and breakingme off. Cool story as it reminded me ..thanks!!