Now I've heard two stories of guys picking up VERY nice rods & reels & not being able to locate the owner despite going way out of the way to do so.


My best score was hiking out of Slide Lake up past Darrington, found a canvas creel loaded w/ pretty good stash of trout gear & a nice heavyweight Buck folding knife.


Yours ?


c/22

Good one. I'll play.

Nothing terribly extravagant comes to mind. My best is probably a pouch of pretty decent spey flies from the Hoh that I found after we pulled over to land a king.

Now if you had asked what is the best thing you have LOST on the river, I could come up with a pretty long list!

I was wading down a small stream and came across a nice shiny fly reel on the bottom in a couple feet of water. A while later I found a box of flies floating behing a rock. I started double timing it to show my buddy all the cool stuff I had found and as I came around the bend i noticed his 4 year old sitting on his shoulders reaching around into the back of his vest for the next interesting item.

WB - That's funny! Can see it now. But probably because I've raised two boys.....and if there is another thread on funny things your kids have done in the field I have more than a few.

....that's a good one!!

I found 5 knives in 6 days on the Dungeness some years back. Most were crap, but a couple were nice.
The BEST thing I found (back in my drinking days) was a 4-pack of beer that came floating downriver and slowed in the eddy of a very large hot rock that I was standing on. Fishin didn't get any better, but I didn't care, either.

I spaced on this one, was doing a summer float w/ a Forks guide we had the Puma anchored in about 4' & were pitching into some deeper water. He looks straight down & says "that chunk of wood looks like a gunstock..."

I look down thru the current & see it.. "Yeah it does & it has a recoil pad on it !"

Long story short he fished it out w/ a spare oar thou the water was right @ the top of the chest waders.

Add river gravel fitted into every nook & cranny and it looked a lot like this.



You can guess what the bluing looked like by end of the drift.


c/22

I suppose the best find, although there have been other flies and lures, was a simple red marabou fly I picked up off Sauk Bar on the Skagit River one spring. I put it in my box and later sharpened the hook. Next season I was fishing that fly when I hooked and landed a 26 pound steelhead, my largest ever. So it was either that fly, or the yellow Eagle Claw salmon trolling rod I fished out of the Deschutes River one day while canoeing it. I cleaned it up with a new handle, reel seat, and guides, and hooked 3 and landed 2 spring chinook on it the first time I fished for springers on the Columbia.

I have valid reasons for not being overly impressed by the most expensive gear.

Sg

I found a pretty nice well sharpened pocket knife on the Snohomish at the highway side of the 522 bridge about five years ago and posted it here, but never heard from anybody.

Another time I found a $20 bill blowing in a parking lot. But didn't think going around asking if someone had dropped it would necessarily put it in the real owners hands.

I still have the knife and will return if someone can give me the proper description.

As far as the $20 goes, can you say Pizza for dinner that night.

Friends, met about 5 good friends over the last 9 years, still fish on a regular basis

My buddy and I found a 10 wt fly outfit on the Hoh. I took it to the ranger station and tried to give it to the ranger. He says to me, "what do you want me to do with it, just keep it"
I said no, someone will want it back and will likely call or come back looking for it. He still won't take it but another gal working there did.
The ranger was a being a total ass about it.
This was well before internet fishing boards became popular.
If I had found it today, I would have just taken it home and posted it up on multiple fishing boards to help get it back to the owner.

floating the Yakima a couple years ago I spotted some green fly line that I was floating down and past. Decided to beach the boat, walk upstream, and see what it might be attached to. A Sage 490 SP and Lamson LP 2 were upstream and wedged into a root wad. Line, rod, and reel all cleaned up as good as new. Posted it on a couple forums with no responses.

Pulling plugs on the Sky, years ago and My plug started acting funny, reeled it in and found a wiggle wart tangled with my plug. Started pulling the line out of the river and felt a pretty good weight on it. Pulled up a Diawa noodle rod with an Ambassadeur 5000 on it, Score! Still have the reel.

Fishing out of a sled last season my buddy spotted a nice Fenwick HMX spinning combo on the bottom. It was a good score.

I've found a decent tackle bag full of saltwater gear, a few knives, booze, and best of all pornography!

My best personal find was a spare oar on Oregon's Deschutes River. I think it had been caught in an eddy for a few days, because downstream I found a wrecked driftboat that hadn't made it thru Whitehorse rapids in very good shape.

When I was a Fishcop patrolling the pre-eruption Toutle and Kalama I "found" lots of things: lots of salmon hidden in bushes, snagging gear behind logs were some of the most prevalent; extra plunking rods on the Columbia ("He went to town for beer"), a personal record of 6 rods hidden in the woods, but all plunking, in front of a cabin on the Cowlitz (they were all pretty junkie) with no one at home, and one time a portable color TV which my patrol partner took home with him, cleaned up, and watched for several years.

Many moons ago, we were motoring back to our campsite on the CQ river my daughter called my attention to something in the rips off Kydaka Pt. As we got closer it appeared to be a good sized fish floundering on the surface. As we approached, I reached over with my net and scooped up an exhausted 25# Chinook with a rope still looped through it's operculum. Apparently, someone decided to string it like a trout but did not secure it very well. No idea how long it was struggling out there as we hadn't seen a boat in the area for some time, but family and friends sure ate well that night.

I find a bunch of cool stuff in peoples cars when i go fishing.

Rod and reel combo w/ plug attached found in shallows of the Wynoochee some years ago while summer run fishing. It had been there awhile...probably fell out the back of someones boat during the previous winter season. Tore down the reel but it was toast. Rod and plug were salvageable. Even used the rod as a spare for a few years until it finally broke.

Also found a crisp $100 bill at a takeout one time .....paid for a nice dinner and re-stocking of some fishing gear as I remember. Also a long time ago.

14 foot brand new aluminum boat floating down the Chehalis river on incoming tide some 10+ years ago. Went up to find a cop at the boat launch store in Cosi and had him come down before I tried to hook the boat. He came down and I made one sweet cast over the boat, pulled the in the weight and hook right into the nose and dragged it in.

I wasn't about to go and try and snag the boat without someone down there. My luck there would have been a dead body in it.

I didn't get to keep the boat because it was claimed fairly quickly by the dredgers in the river at the time. It has been knocked off and went un noticed. Would have been nice to have but couldn't just keep it after I found a cosi Cop to watch me hook it and bring it in. The only thing that sucked was I didn't even get a thank you from the company after saving their brand new boat.

my best find was the wallet of a solider getting ready to ship out. had his shot records that he would have had to retake. he was very Happy offered me 20. turned it down. this was during Vietnam.

Not much good stuff while fishing but have found two nice Leathermen while running.