Thought i had a wallhanger, but.......

[cache22]

was only this. Chockerblock full of eggs and ready to spawn. Was longlining a Roadrunner for crappie in about 15 ft. of water.

[creekslick]

Nice shellcracker.

[jiggshooter]

well if its not a wallhanger you can still mount it in the walls of your stomach lol

[blairarnold]

I had a high school chemistry teacher who fished at Lock 1 at Batesville a lot. He got to telling me that you could catch plenty of walleye or jack salmon as we called them back then at night off the lock with a 1/4 ounce doll fly when the river got down to 4 or 6 feet. One night conditions were right, and I went down there with my bass rod which had 20 lb. line. There were several people fishing off the lock as was usually the case. I fished for a while when something pounded my jig, and the fight was on. It would take out a bunch of line, and then I would slowly pump it back only to have the process start over again. After a few minutes all the other folks on the lock quit fishing and came over to me to watch and see what I had. One guy offered to climb down the built in ladder on the lock and go down to the water to grab my fish and bring it up as I obviously wasn't going to be able to wind it up to the top of the lock.

We were all aquiver just knowing that I had a jack salmon that was going to beat the state record which was 20 lbs. at the time and had been caught below the lock. Just about then the moon came out, and we could suddenly see my line. I was hooked to a big log. I would get it close to the dam, and then it would hit the current and get swept downstream. After it went 60 yards or so, it would hit an eddy by the lower end of the lock and would hit a back current that would slowly bring it back upstream along the lock till it got close to the dam and hit the current again.

I had been fighting this log for about 20 minutes at that time with a large group of spectators. Man, was I embarrassed. I broke loose, loaded up my gear and walked away with as much dignity as I could muster, which wasn't much.

That's the only wallhanger I nearly had.

[creekslick]

That's funny Blair.

[NIMROD]

That's funny Blair.

What he said!RoflHands ClappingRofl

Oh yea, nice Redear Cache.Thumbs Up

[blairarnold]

That's funny Blair.

It wasn't when it happened to me, but over time I began to see the humor in it.

[Pastor]

Very nice shellcracker, cache22.

And thanks for the fishing, I mean logging, story, blairarnold. I needed a laugh today. Thank you!

[redearhoosier]

Beautiful Redear, I'd rather have that fish right there any day of the week than a 15 inch crappie. You should mount that fish, I'm sure it's close to two pounds and a TRUE stud of a fish. Those boogers are much harder to find and locate than crappie, very aggresive and smart fish.

[Strip]

I have searched every lake in my area for shellcrackers of the quality and have never found one! Good catch. Feel free to pm me the lake info if you have a mind too.

My embarrassing fish story comes from a summer night when I was in high school. me and a few friends loaded up and headed down to the river bottoms for some late night catfishing on the bank of the arkansas river. we got there late and didn't think to bring a lantern so we just built us a fire and and comminced to fishing and drinking. we didn't catch nothing the whole night, not even a nibble. when the sun rose the next morning we could see that about 30 yds in front of the bank we were fishing from was a sandbar. Our baits had been on dry ground the whole night and were only getting wet when we reeled them across the small pool between us and the water.