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The best thing you’ve seen whilst fishing

Here’s my paltry efforts
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I’ll go first.

About three years ago I was fishing a stretch of the W.Avon super early in the morning.

I arrived at 5am and put some hemp out over a beautiful fog-covered rover.

I was sat there tucking into a coffee and heard this almighty crash to the right of me. My immediate thought was “cormorant”, but upon closer inspection saw these huge antlers crossing the river.

They were attached to a stag’s head, which then crossed the entire width of the river, legged it up the steep bank, turned around, looked at me and then hoped over the wire fence and headed towards a nearby woods.

I literally sat there with my mouth open for about 5-minutes. It was a surreal sight and one that I don’t think I’ll ever top.

Actually, saying that. My first visit to Manor Farm I encountered a guy snorkelling on the near side of the bank looking for Roman artefacts. I only spotted him as he had these stupid horns on his dry suit / head covering. My mate advised him of 4oz leads crashing on his head but he wasn’t bothered !!!
The nearest I got too a deer was 4 years ago returning home from a session on the Trent. The picture will speak for itself
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i was doing a weekend session on the middle severn finished fishing for the evening and put my float rod against my bivvy in the straps and went for a chat with my fishing buddies. After a few minutes of chatting we heard a crashing noise where my bivvy was pitched in the woods, an owl had managed to get itself tangled good and proper in my float rod. It had massive claws and a big sharp beak and i thought im getting ripped to shreds here so rapped it in a towel . After a few careful minutes snipping away with scissors we managed to free it , it never struggled once the whole time so took the towel of to release it and it just sat there in the palm of my hand preening itself and giving a good shake. A short while it flew off it was almost a full moon and it done a circle of the field and landed on a fence post not to far away and sat there looking at us for ages as if to say thanks.
 
There has been a lot of talk (and great photos) of Kingfishers. My story is of a PAIR that perched just in front of me on two carp rods resting on alarms many years ago. The Kingfishers were about 6 inches apart and looked at each other with their beaks nearly touching before flying off. No photo except one I have in my memory and retrieve to look at now and again.
 
This isn’t one from me but in August my fishing mate was doing an overnighter at MF it was a full moon so not super dark.

He was fishing about 1am (Oak tree peg) and saw something on the opposite bank moving above the river bank which caught his eye.

The guy from the next few pegs wandered down as he’d seen something too. The both watched a large black cat casually walking across the edge of the field which then disappeared out of sight.

I’ve seen big prints before but never anything in the flesh.
 
You probably won't believe this, but a couple of years ago I was fishing on the Hampshire Avon. My rod tip went around and 10 minutes later there lay on my unhooking mat was a mythical bronze golden coloured creature known as a barbel.

See I knew you wouldn't believe it.
 
My mistake 🙄 Just tried loading a video unsuccessfully from my FB feed ,.. probably need to alter my fb consents.🤔
Ps,.. probably me being daft but couldn’t find a delete post icon.
 
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Apols for the image quality but this was close enough . . . Wolf Hybrid (Alsatian cross) that 'roams' the land on my river syndy. It usually scopes your presence from distance and leaves you alone (its presumably well fed lol) - on this occasion I was setting up and simply turned around to get something and it had appeared from nowhere to stare me out! Must have stalked me in silence . . . .thankfully the Alsatian in it meant I lived to tell the tale lol . . . its a massive beast of a canine and at least 2x the size of an adult Alsatian!
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