Have y'all ever gotten a surprise while fishing?

Thanks for turning around. I owe you one.

Dad caught an owl on a top water plug one day. It was calm while he reeled it in and unhooked it.

I've had birds eat my fish in saltwater. Once in the surf on Perdido Key on a little whiting, one of those tall white birds, and another on Shem Creek by a pelican, not sure what fish species I was reeling in. I never got to find out.

Wade fishing at Breton Island. A little more than waist deep and on the first cast I hooked a really nice trout, probably the biggest of my life. Put that sucker on a stringer. My buddy proceeds to catch another nice one. While he's about to land it I get violently jerked hard to the right. Huge fricking turmoil all around me. Saw the culprit, about a five foot bull shark. I ran on top of the water to shore. Only thing on the stringer was about half of the trout head. My friend lost his shite and threw his rod in the water with his fish attached. We fished out of a boat the rest of the trip.

Me and my dad pulled into a canal off lake verret area when I was 8 and we saw two dudes shocking the water with a car battery and scooping the fish out with a net. My dad quickly got the frick out of there

One time reeling in 15in trout and all of a sudden the line went slack and and trout was coming towards me. All at once a boil and a porpoise proceeds to smash the trout and then dumps about 50yds of line in a matter of seconds and then lets the trout go.
When I got the trout in it looked like a wire wheel had got ahold of it!!

Caught some seagulls while fishing the birds.

I caught an owl on a jitterbug as a kid. It was anything but calm while I reeled it in. It flew and fell back in the water a few times. It then bit a finger off of my uncles welding glove. Thank goodness his finger wasn’t in it. The owl was pissed. Great memory of fishing with Uncle Don though.

I had a surprise thunderstorm while trying to go from the north end of Lake Verrett to the south end in a 15’ flat bottom boat. Got hairy.

Also went fish the tank pond at Catouatchie a week after Van Dam broke the Classic record there. Bounced a crank bait off a stump and hooked into a 12lb bass. By the time I got it to the boat it was a bigass catfish. I was quite disappointed.

My dad and I went deep sea fishing in the Gulf out of Pensacola a lot for quite a few years when I was a young boy and teenager.

One trip when I was about 15 years old, we were about 100 miles offshore. We had caught a bunch of red snapper, amberjack, grouper and trigger fish on a charter boat with guys my dad worked with. The sun was setting and the deck hands cleaned and cooked some of the fish we caught. I was the first one served and the first one who finished. We were going to sleep on the boat and fish again the next day.

It was starting to get dark and the captain had turned on powerful flood lights into the water all around the boat. The ocean was very calm and clear. About 10 minutes later, I walked over to the back of the boat and looked over into the water. I saw an enormous bait ball of cigar minnows streaking around, probably 100s of thousands of them for as far as I could see. Then there were probably thousands of maybe foot long squid streaking around eating the cigar minnows. It was simply an incredible sight to see. Even better there were hundreds of long silver streaks probably 2' to 3' long on average that were eating the squid and cigar minnows. It was an amazing situation to experience right on top of in clear water.

I reached over and grabbed a rod and put a cigar minnow on the hook, and just lowered the bait about 10' into the water. No one else on the boat even knew what was going on. They were all still eating. Once the bait dropped down within a second or two, I saw maybe 20 of the larger fish race to the bait from different directions, a quick pause and then BAM, my rod tip jerked and the line was zipping out of my reel. I set the hook and was reeling the fish in. Everyone in the boat came running over to see what was going on. About that time I am pulling the fish in and as it is coming into the boat, two other fish were chasing it in a frenzy and came flying into the boat biting at the fish I was reeling in. It was actually somewhat dangerous as multiple fish were flopping around in the boat with razor sharp teeth snapping away.

The feeding frenzy escalated and the water was boiling all around the boat. About six of us were catching fish like crazy. Turns out it was a large school of Bluefish. I've never caught so many fish so fast. We had to stop after catching about 50 or more of them as the enormous cooler in the back of the boat was going to get too full and we still had another day to bottom fish for snapper and grouper. I'll never forget that experience. It was my best fishing trip ever among many great fishing trips.