ooops, a lesson learnt or twice shy???

[b8nburlee]

hi all, was going for small sharks in raby bay canals mon night. beeeeutiful night,tho no sharks and bugger all else actually. i did manage to hook two pike eels. id never caught them before. the other eels were always pretty defenceless animals, not these ones!...as i found out. as i pulled the first on in i was thinking shark bait. my other half was happy for me to let it go. there begins my mistake.
id seen the teeth on this lil monster and seen it snapping, i wanted no part of it. thinking the best thing would be to grab its head with a rag and remove my hooks and release it......happyly skipping merrily towards my mistake, i moved in for the grab from behind. i probably only got 30cms from its head when quick as lightning it spun around and to my surprise?????, bit me hard on the base of my thumb with its canines. after a few quick "sh*t!" and "mother this and mother that" shook it of and proceeded to bleed like a stuck pig.now it wasnt the worst id seen, but.....
i got the usual roll of eyes from my other half(a nurse), and once she checked out the damage, the usual scorn that i guess was appropriate aswell. why do i always do this sort of thing?? anyway, i cut the trace, they're not worth as much as my fingers and using my ugly stick butt, jaws snapping away, with a defiant shake of my fist, flicked this hell bent creature back from whence it came. so, just a warning to those who havent experienced "bitey" things, or those that are to stubborn, complacent or ignorant, (me!) when fishing please be careful of the business end of the toothy varieties. and i know most of you are experienced, i thought i was.........pffft lets just say now im "twice shy"
the "clean" pics are the next day. the puncture holes come up quite nicely.
please feel free to share your "mistake" pics as well, surely i cant be the only one???

[Chimo]

Glad no major damage done other than the sympathy (Not) from your other half!

May I suggest you have a read of this, http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/showthread.php?t=54112 , as instead of your pics getting bigger they got smaller when I triedto share your pain.

Cheers
Chimo

[b8nburlee]

thanks for the link Chimo, ill give that a go. this was my first thread. hope i didnt paint too bad a picture of my other half? she was sypathetic, just gets frustrated at some of the silly things i get messed up in and the subsequent trips to emergency! cheers.

[Chimo]

No worries, its just that I've had a bit do with nurses over the years and probably because of the D Hs they have to deal with during their shifts there often isn't much sympthy etc left if you stuff up at home! What do you reckon?

C
C

[onerabbit]

Yep, gotta watch them,
had a 5 ft model grab the side of my Blundstones one arvo, struggled to get it off with the knife between it's jaws.
Muzz

[snasman]

I was fishing with a mate and a newby last week he was chasing them as they are a great shark bait and he landed 1 ,we subdude it a bit with a lump of 4b2 before applying a good set of jawed grippers around its head to remove the hooks, turfed it behind us and continued to fish,newby had never seen 1 and couldnt be told enough times to stay away from it so about twenty minutes later he walk overto it with a short stick and proclaims its dead ,just as me and my mate yell at him to move as he was poking it with the stick it went him didnt get him but said newby has learnt his lesson,,how it missed him is beyond me ,newby didnt go anywhere near it for the rest of the night, and we had a bit of a giggle,the first 1 I ever caught was with an old bloke in the Cabolture river about 20 years ago and he told me if that gets in the boat Im getting out ,I have always been very carefull of then since I heard that.

[Axl]

Mate bad luck for you but good luck for us some top info there that I will not forget.

[Luc]

Ouch!!

Me, I just cut the line.

Just too agro for me.

Luc

[b8nburlee]

chimo, yeah that could be true, she;s put up with only a few........that ive heard about!. i can understand it and dont get bothered by it.

onerabbit, sounds like youve got a couple scars on those boots of yours, ferocious lil buggers, makes for a good yarn eh?

snasman, good story there, its all a learning curve i guess, some get taught the easy way....others, well.....

axl, i wont forget either. im still excited by the speed in which it turned and struck. i dont have the quickest reflexes, but im not too slow either, and this thing gave me no time to react at all.

luc, the second one i caught (2x bigger than the first) didnt even get landed before i "released" it. i got in as much line as i could then adios.agro is what they are.

[HeadBanger]

Luckily I haven't had an 'ordeal' with one of these.

Damnit, I don't even like handling flathead because of their spines, I'd be freaking out if I caught one of these!

Hope that hand heals up nicely,
Kaidon:freak:

[shayned]

Funnily enough newspaper slows them down, but then again so does a priest.

[swabio]

that is awesome! I have never seen one of those badboys in the flesh or in someone else's flesh ;) I will be wary if I manage to land one of those buggers!

[Beggsy]

Yeah

Nasty buggers.

1st time I got one, I was fishing in the Birkdale Canals at night by myself - thought I was onto something good, but when I brought it in and shined the torch on it, nearly crapped my pants..... ugly big set of teeth and it looked pretty annoyed.
Smacked it over the head with a stick - no good - dropped a bloody big rock on its head and went in to recover my hook - bloody thing reared up and had a go at me.... damn thing kept chasing me all around the joint.

Ended up cutting off about 10 feet away from its head :-)

Had nightmares for weeks after that.

[pommy]

Pulled one up in North creek Ballina one night. It had its teeth caught up in what was left of my crab dilly neting.

The thing went mad as I got it up to the surface and twisted round the dilly hoop. It bent the hoop into a spiral shape before the netting gave way.

This is on a heavy duty dilly, not one of the thin guage ones!

Tried to bend one myself but couldn't.

Cut them off every time I catch one now.

Rob.

[cuzzamundi]

Mate, make sure you get some antibiotics IMMEDIATELY. Not just every day variety, but the ones that attack staph AND marine bugs. I got done a while back and nearly lost my lower arm, not because of the cuts from the teeth (similar to yours), but because of infection. I got put on a course of antibiotics, and three days later was irrational with pain, went back, and got told to go straight to hospital with septicemia! THIRD time this has happened, other with flathead and stingray barb (Also infections). I had to have IV drip and was told it was touch and go for my hand for a time. NEVER mess around with bites from any toothie from the briney...they are RIDDLED with bacteria. No matter how minor the puncture is, always get some good antibiotics. Pike eels are awesome creatures, I love em for so many reasons, and they're NEVER happy to see you!

Cuzza

[garman1]

I work in retail and hear stories from customers and this one stuck in my mind.

This chap and a mate of his were out fishing and caught a bull shark, hauled it on board, subdued it with an implement and all is well....................one mate went to the back of the boat "prodded" the "dead" beast and announced it's dead. Well the shark must have heard this and decided to play it's last card and started to thrash about the boat, it ate everything from eskies, seats, life jackets, tackle boxes............. they both watched it all happen and were discussing the possiblility of jumping overboard when the shark must have had it's fill and stopped munching on things.

They were both scared stiff but made for a great story and a laugh later on ............

[oldboot]

If you want a laugh... cheek out Ernie Grant's account under Pike Eel in his guide to fishes.

Aparantly they are agro enough to climb the leader and have a go at the rod.


Seems they are possibly the most agro thing with fins...good thing they don't get too big.

Never caught one......But I've been warned;D


cheers

[BrandonH]

Very nasty buggers.. they live longer than cod outa the water and will always be watching for something to latch onto... Did you notice that the barstards have one row of teeth on the top jaw and 2 on the bottom? they intersect... Seen a small one snap a nico pen in half with one snap! I reckon your VERY lucky that he didn't get you worse mate!!!

how big is too big? I have seen them every bit of 5 feet long and as thick as my forearm. one that a mate caught comes to mind. we were fishing Cabbage tree creek one night for the red bities everyone goes on about this time of year, we didn't manage to see any red but hooked the biggest pike eel I have seen to date. It was at least 5 foot long, we were in a 10 foot boat and it would have been longer than half the boats length easy. Somehow this thing pulled us into the bank about 2 foot of water. We knowing what these bad boys are cut the leader as soon as we saw him. but, He just sat there in the shallow water looking at us! he didn't want to swim away!! for a full minute we watched him eying us off before he got bored and swam away.

cheers
Brandon...

[the gecko]

They say there isnt a boat big enough to hold a man and a pike eel at the same time.

Thankfully i heard this saying before I caught my first pike eel.

Andrew

[fishel]

Here is my nasty little fellow - 1200mm. My husband is never impressed when I insist on getting my hook out of critters like these. He'd rather jump out of the boat! It viciously bit the gunwale of the boat.

[Aunty Jack]

Fishel youve gotta be bloody mad mad mad .
$2 rig or that in the boat.
Id walk on water to.

[jerson]

I've had 2 encounters with this things.
First time was at Colmslie boat ramp, hit this thing with a donger, it looked as dead as a door nail, a young bloke fishing beside me was interested in it's teeth, I put my knife in its mouth to give him a look. This bloody thing grabed my index finger, i pulled my hand away with the bastard still attached, he landed in the water, my finger looked like mince.
Second time I lifted a wire crab pot onto a private jetty, bugger was in the pot, i knew what it was, told my mate the colmslie story & showed him the scars,we both laughed until the bugger came through the pot entrance & chased us of the jetty.
No good as crab bait, muddies are scared of them!!!!!!!!!

[Rainbowrunner]

they grow huge, have seen them well in excess of 8 ft long. a head like a huge german shepherd, you want to see them go ballistic on the sorting tray of a trawler, and chase deckies around.