You never know what you will bring up!

You never know what you might catch when you go fishing!   Sometimes you bring it a great fish, sometimes you bring in something completely different!   Such has been the case a few times now in the past month out at our local hotspot - sturgeon alley.

Trong with a great shortnose sturgeon caught and released Dec 5th

A couple kayak fishing friends of mine were out a few weeks ago.   Chris and Trong each use sit inside kayaks and have landed a ton of sturgeon in them this year.    But as with the case for any of us, Chris got a big tangle and Trong came over to help him out.     While they were both preoccupied, a sturgeon came along and bit into Trong's bait, and swam off with his rod!  

Well, just a week later, both Chris and Trong were out again and Chris hooked into a sturgeon.   After landing it, he noticed another hook in the sturgeon's mouth.    Pulling in the line, Chris found Trong's rod at the other end!    Now what are the chances he'd hook into the exact same fish that a week earlier took the rod out of Trong's boat!

Chris with another nice catch!

Not to be outdone, this past weekend Trong brought up another surprise.   Back in mid-October I had been out with a group of 5 friends fishing Sturgeon.     I had made the mistake of improperly fastening the anchor to one of the kayaks, and as such, the Grappler Anchor pulled all the line plus my Yak Attack sidewinder off into the water!     Well this past weekend Trong hooked into my anchor line and returned back this gear which had been under water for nearly 2 months!    Even in the brackish water of Sturgeon Alley, the Grappler Anchor still looks brand new!   Now that is quality!

I still have an expensive rod/reel at the bottom of Sturgeon Alley somewhere.  While I suspect the reel is toast at this point, I'd love to get that rod back!

The best catch of course was my friend IPop back a few year ago who fought a 'huge fish' for a good 45 minutes.    When he eventually hand lined in his big catch it proved to be a bag of rocks!     To this day, IPop hasn't lived that one down!