We have had threads recently about best fighting fish and strange ways to lose a fish. How about your hardest hit?

For me, I think of bass that have exploded on top of surface lures, Atlantics at Hosmer Lake that have almost ripped my 4 wt out of my hands, steelhead that have hit my spinner going upstream while I was retrieving downstream. My hardest hits, though were from Bluefish. My aunt used to have a 36 footer on Long Island sound. Every summer, before school resumed, we'd go out for a week of boating, swimming and fishing for bluefish. One year, the blues were schooling heavily off Norwalk and were eating sand eels. A 3 oz Diamond jig worked off the bottom would fool these fish. I discovered, however, that by reeling as fast as I could once the jig hit bottom, that the fish would strike more frequently and violently! There was not an individual fish that stood out, it was all of them. You'd let the jig hit bottom, pause a few seconds, then reel as fast as you could..........WHAM!!!, Fish On! After a few jumps and a lot of bulldogging, you'd cast again, let it drop, pause, reel fast......Wham! Fish on! We did this 3 afternoons in a row and caught over 100 between the 3 of us. If you ever get a chance to fish for them back east, They rock!

How about some other hard hitters?!

Back in my meatlining teen years I fished from a 14' Kalamath. A not so known spot for Kings at the time was the sand spit on Fox Island. We would intercept the Minter Kings trolling back and forth from the spit to Green Pt. One day I was fishing the shelf right off the shipwreck there when the fish hit. She hit so hard that the boat shook hard and the bow shifted about 20 degrees to starboard... Scared the [Bleeeeep!] out of me! Then I realized... fish on! My biggest South Sound fish todate- 36#.

Another memorable hit was... There is a spot between two South Sound islands where a huge shoal pertrudes from the beach followed a severe drop off. Anyways, on a good ebb, there is a tremendous rip (about 4 to 6 knots of current) followed by a huge eddy. The way to fish this spot to shoot above the shoal, drift down and cast flies over the shoal into the rip. Long story short... casted a tube fly about 10 feet from the beach and a huge Silver smacked it, cleared the water, and beached herself all in one shot. Meantime, we're drifting down current quickly and I can't get the fish off the beach.
Eventually, she came off the beach...and fly.

Downriggin'

Driftfishing eggs on the Lewis at the end of a drift, an 8 pound steely hit my bait as it surfaced in about 1 foot of water! The rod jerked so hard, I actually crapped my pants! That was one hell of a suicidal fish.

Nothing better than a Hoh river HOG springer on a plug

KB thats pretty gross dude!!!!!!

Tyler

Well I'll have to agree with RiverRat on this one.We were pulling magnum wiggle warts down by Cottenwood when my rod doubled over damn near to the water,then nothing!I checked my shorts to see if I was going to have to go commando the rest of the day when the guide looked up to see the plug floating downstream.Wanting that plug back he quickly rows toward the plug,reaches into the water to grab it only to find out that the springer had hit so hard it ripped both sets of hooks out and bit through the line all in the blink of an eye!We did get our fish that day but none hit with the fury of that first one.

18 lb october chromer chum, caught it on a bobber and herring set up on a local fishing pier, thoght my 8-6 med casting rod was to the max in the rod holder when I seen it. those bright sea caught chums have some serious boom boom to them. Ben

Here is one more pluging a tadpolly on the Nasty back when you could fish steelhead rod drops and pops back up rell in and all you have left is the bill.

About 10 years ago, my dad was first showing me how to mooch for blackmouth. He told me how the bite is pretty subtle and you have to have patience and feed some line and wait for it and feed a little more line and when it feels solid, set the hook. I caught two blackmouth that day (early March) a 17 pounder and a 10 pounder and both of them almost ripped the rod out of my hands on the initial impact.

My most rememberable hit would be when I was fishing up in BC out of a canoe fishing for Pike. We were rowing the down the bank of this lake and just casting into different structure, when the pike came along side the boat within arms length and just looked at me. It was on of the crazist things. well I was about to cast with my spinning reel. and had the bale open. but decided to put the lure in front of the fish anyways. It barely hit the water and SLAM. fish on. Unfortenatly it also fillade my finger right open also. Still got that fish though. Final thought. those fish are mean. Mike

Best hit I ever had was fishing the hog line right at the deadline down from Willamette Falls. We were the end boat in an open sled. It was about 6:30am and the transition from being excited to be out fishing to being damned tired for getting up at 2am was in full effect. I was leaning on the side of the boat without another boat next to it when a Springer porpoised out of the water and CLANG! pegged the side of the boat. It took me awhile to get my skin back onto my body, and the boats shook three boats down it hit the boat so hard. Don't know if he ever hit our LURES, but that was hit enough for me.

The other big hit I witnessed was in the Gorge down from The Dalles dam several years ago. Dad and I were out for the big gators in the open sled with 135 Merc outboard when his rod tip starts to wiggle a little bit. He gives some line and the fish looks to be taking it pretty well, so he grabs on and buries the hookset. When he brought the rod down to do a second set the fish took that moment to go screaming downstream. The only thing that stopped Dad from his seemingly inevitable swim with the fish was when he caught the outboard right in the chest. Luckily the line snapped before the rod launched out of his hands. That was by far the most amazing hookset I'd seen.

It was only the dry sh*ts.

Last spring on a SW WA river, RT, Big Dave and I had just landed a springer and then rowed back into the hole and let the bait divers out again. A few minutes later we heard "zzzzzzzzzz.....zzzzzzz.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" and looked up to see the rod fully buried and a 10# native summer run clearing water and heading back for the salt. This happened while we were on anchor and I've hit a lot of steelies over 20# on plugs and this was a harder takedown than any of them. By far harder and faster than any Kwikfish take I've ever seen too! Remember that one, RT?

My favorites are the large flatties (100 lb +) that hit when your jigging. You don't know how big of a fish it is and slam back on the rod to set the hook. Before you know it the whole thing is nearly ripped out of your hands and your rod tip is burried under water as 100 yards of line go screaming off the reel.

Hard to beat the hit of a 10 hp merc. I had 10-15 guys a season get there line caught in my kicker, the looks on their faces were priceless, most were sure it was "Walter", always made for a good laugh afterwards unless it was on 1 of my bottom rods with #80 Tuff line/Power pro,

Hey Ak-
Have fun pulling the prop and cleaning that mess up???

Hell no. I was usually able to cut the mono while on the water, but I did what ever it took to get the Tuff line back.

The hardest hit I ever had was fishing off Cape Lookout, N.C. about 38 years ago. It was a hot, hot, hot early September day. We had been trolling for hours and hours. I was just a kid. I was holding on to my rod and was almost asleep in the gentle swell and heat. All of a sudden, my rod just about gets ripped right out of my hands. Literally, it pulls me straight toward the back of the boat. My arms go fully extended and it pulls me to my feet and two steps to the transom. I look way out in back of the boat and see this skyrocketing king mackerel. It seems to me that it was 10 feet in the air.

The drag must have been set to pay out only in case of nuclear blast. Just as I was thinking that I would have to let go of the rod or be pulled out of the boat, the line went completely slack and I was on by little hind end in the back of the boat. I reeled the line in and the really stout hook on this big bucktail jig-like thing was completely straightened out. That was one heck of a hit!