Beaver Lake bad bat attack

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

I'll bet you can't hook a bat

I've done it.   #12 Mohair leech, right in the face.   They fight harder than you'd think, but it couldn't break 5x tippet.  

I tried to kindly release it, but he wouldn't settle down.....so he got heel stomped 😔

[Dutch]

There are all kinds of bugs at Stockton.  So many that we could only use red lights.  Bats swarmed around us all the time hitting the line and once in a while we would get a wing in the face.

[Gavin]

I have hooked a bat on a large dry fly. It was during a hex spinner fall late in the evening in Ontario. You will win. No big deal. The Owl I hooked on a  Jitterbug was complete chaos.

[fishinwrench]

4 hours ago, Gavin said:

The Owl I hooked on a  Jitterbug was complete chaos.

As was the gull that took my Pop-R 

Spastic screaming bastard !   Stomped him into a pile of bloody feathers on the deck of a Champion bass boat, and permanently stained the carpet. 

[dblades]

14 hours ago, Gavin said:

I have hooked a bat on a large dry fly. It was during a hex spinner fall late in the evening in Ontario. You will win. No big deal. The Owl I hooked on a  Jitterbug was complete chaos.

I thought I was the only one who had done that. Happened back in the 80s.

[Quillback]

I can't remember if I told this story here or not, but if you have heard it before, my apologies.

Went on a guided salmon trip of the coast of Vancouver Island, this was probably 25 years or so ago.  We were trolling anchovies behind flashers off of downriggers.  The guide rigged those anchovies with the line through the head connected to a treble hook where he'd pin the treble hook to the back of the chovie.  So he set one up, let it out behind the boat about 50 feet where it was on top and was getting ready to hook it to the downrigger ball when out of nowhere a seagull came down, grabbed the chovie and got hooked.

The guide went ahead and hooked the line to the downrigger, dropped the cannon ball, which then took that gull on a diving mission.  Kept it down a minute or so, brought in the gull, which was about 3/4 dead, got the hook out, and released the gull.  We went back to trolling, slowly leaving the gull behind.

The gull was kind of flapping around on the surface, a bunch of other gulls came in and were flying around squawking at the one on the surface, when they all bolted and out of nowhere an eagle swooped down and got that poor half dead gull.

Just for the record, I have not caught a bat.

[rps]

 If we are telling about hooking odd things, I will add my story. About 40 years ago, I was fishing the Illinois River below Tenkiller for stripers with a large sliver spoon. I threw toward an island riffle and just as the spoon landed, a beaver surfaced right in the path of the spoon. The beaver took off. I could not budge him. I was fishing 20# line. I finally cut the line. I figured the spoon was much cheaper than the rod and reel.