(08-31-2023, 07:10 AM)Ninurta Wrote: I used to occasionally go into the water when I lived on the coast of Virginia. Sometimes into the Chesapeake Bay, sometimes into the ocean down at Virginia Beach. That was when I was in my 20's, and fit. Not fit any more, don't live on the coast, so I don't go into the ocean any more.
There was a pier in Hampton where we used to go fishing for sharks. That's my philosophy on them - eat them before they can eat you.
Even if I lived out there still, though, I wouldn't go in the water any more. Not because of the sharks, but because of the jellyfish. I hate those bastards, but love to watch them swim - so long as I'm not in amongst them. They look like transparent ghosts floating through the water... LOTS of transparent ghosts.
Freshwater critters, I eat them before they can eat me, too. We've a lot of snapping turtles around here, and they're good eatin'. You just have to bite them before they bite you. If I see one ambling along, I usually step on the middle of his back to immobilize him and to keep from getting bit - they can't bite anything on their back shell. Then I'll get a stick and pop that sucker right in the yap with it. You don't have to do that too many times before they get irritated and bite the stick, and when they bite, they won't turn loose of the stick. Then I pull the stick to stretch their neck out, and lop their head off. After that, it's all over but the eating.
They gather in ponds and deep-water holes. We used to have a new one every so often that would take up residence in a pool of water in a creek across the road from my house, where the ducks went to swim, and the snappers would pester the ducks. One bit the entire ass off of a duckling one year (we doctored the duckling up, and it survived, believe it or not), and another that broke a couple toes on some adult ducks trying to catch them by the feet to drown them. I spend many an hour sitting on the bank of that water hole waiting on the snappers to poke their noses out of the water to catch a breath of air. When one did, I'd shoot it right in the mouth. That tends to take a lot of the fight out of them, and they sink to the bottom like a rock. I made a special garden hoe with a 10 foot handle to rake them out of the water with after I'd shoot one.
I caught one once when I didn't have anything to lop it's head off with, and had to carry it all the way home by the tail, holding it out to the side at arm's length to keep it from getting me. They get pretty heavy after a mile or so of carrying them like that.
Folks that live on or near the Ohio should be pretty familiar wit catfish and "hellbenders", what we can "grampus" around here. The hellbenders are just giant salamanders. The biggest one I ever saw was only about 3 feet long, but Dear Old Dad swore that they used to get 5 and 6 feet long. Most of them around here top out at a foot and a half or 2 feet these days. Got thousands of bitty little teeth like sandpaper, the same sort of teeth that a catfish has,
I've heard of 5 and 6 foot catfish being caught out of the Ohio regularly, But I've never seen one that big. I've never understood folks that go "grappling" or "graveling" them. That's where you wade along the river bank and stick your arm into holes in the bank you find trying to catch catfish by hand. You're about as likely to catch a turtle or a snake as you are a catfish. That's just ain't my cup of tea - whatever you catch may just catch you first if you ain't doing it right. My grandpa caught a catfish like that once, but didn't stick his fingers into it's gills quick enough. If you don't, they roll like an alligator, and that one got to rolling and wore all the hide off grandpa's thumb with those bitty little sandpaper teeth.
I've had catfish gore me with those pointy-ass bones they have in their pectoral and dorsal fins. That ain't much fun, either, but it make eating that bastard a little more satisfying - an "I WIN!" sort of moment.
We used to go lay on the river bank for days at a time and set trot lines across the river, weight them down to sink them to the bottom to catch catfish. Caught a lot of catfish that way, and a lot of other stuff, too. We ate a grampus we caught on one one night. Not much different from eating a frog, once you got the skin off to get past the slime. We checked the trot line every 3 hours or so through the night, and to do that you had to wade out into the river to pick the line up and check it, so we took turns checking it. One night, a friend got half way across the river and started screaming that we'd "caught an alligator!". So I jumped into the river to help him and to see what it really was - there ain't no alligators around here, but I figured it must have been a big mean something. I think that time it was a gar fish. nasty bastards, with great big needle-like saber teeth. We ate it, too You usually have to use steel leaders to catch one, since they will whip their heads and cut regular line with their teeth, then escape.
So you don't actually have to go into the ocean to find stuff that thinks you might be a good meal. Pro tip: check your trot lines buck nekkid. You don't want one of those curious fish swimming into your cutoff jeans and then getting trapped there! It's damned hard to do the dance when you're chest deep in water!
.
Waiting to snipe a turtle surfacing for air sounds like a better version of whack-a-mole
Those snappers are nasty. I drove by a shitty little pond once and tucked that information away for later. Those little ponds sometimes have the biggest bass, so I went back, caught nothing for awhile, and thought I hit a snag as I was reeling my line in to switch up my bait.
I was about to cut the line and my losses because I was hooked on something heavy, but it was coming in, SLOWLY. I finally got it to the edge of the pond, and up rears it's ugly head and gaping beak. Big ass snapping turtle. I rolled my eyes and cut the line anyway, I've seen those bastards snap their heads out practically behind their bodies. No thanks.
I'm with you on those people noodling. You couldn't pay me to stick my hand in some submerged hole. Thankfully I don't have cottonmouths up here, but nor do I feel like getting a good chunk of hand bitten off by a snapper, or even barbed by a catfish. That happened to me once, too. I was younger and fishing, reeled in my water-filled-boot-feeling catfish, and got barbed in the palm of my hand. That was an interesting pain. Deep, throbbing, and long-lasting.
Those alligator gar look like dinosaurs, and probably are. They look like a good time, removing the hook. They're like our version of Africa's tigerfish, which are also nasty, and apparently will go after you.
You're right, there's plenty of shit in freshwater that will ruin your day. I'm north, so I don't have to worry about water moccasins, alligators, crocodiles, or gar. You get the occasional bull shark out of the Delaware River, not that I've caught any, but undoubtedly it was a bull responsible for the New Jersey shark attacks in a goddamned creek that killed a few people and inspired the movie Jaws.
All those other animals with ruin your day, but those bull sharks will remove a leg in one second.