I snagged a seagull fishing for mackerel in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago. Mackerel rigs have a heavy treble-hooked jigging spoon at the end and 3 more hooks tied so they stick out like a drop shot hook, one above the other about 4" apart. It flew right into the path of my rig and all you could hear was this loud, hollow thump! It wasn't able to put up much of a fight because the rig had wrapped almost completely around it. We were fishing from a pier about 15' above the water and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to haul the bird up on my medium power Berkley Lightning (the older style, not the orange one). Amazingly it held up and I was able to get the bird out of the water and up onto the pier. I'm sure the 20# braid helped there too. Luckily I wasn't fishing alone and my father in law held the bird while I got the hooks out of it.

ive caught more then my fair share! i live on the ocean hard to get away from em!  

i was fishing off my dock the other day and the d**n seagulls wouldnt leave me alone, they kept chasing every lure i used! so i decided to take the hooks off of an old lure, heddon zara spook. i had fun playin with the seagulls! 

I'd almost forgotten about this guy. I think it was a grebe of some sort? It dove under as soon as my bait landed by it and was hooked before I even realized it was chasing my bait. Thankfully he was cooperative and easily unhooked. 

I bounced a spinnerbait off of a goose once. So far that has been my only encounter with a bird.

I remember once a long time ago with my dad a blue heron picked up his devils horse in its beak. It snatched it sideways, and he waited until it tried to turn and swallow it to yank it out. He always said if my stepmom wasn't with us he might have seen how it would have ended up with 50lb spiderwire on the reel though...

Caught a seagull on my whopper plopper 90 at lunchtime today.  I had a hard time keeping it away fro the trees but was abke to get the hook out of its beak.

I honestly never thought I would have a reason to post on this topic.

Quite a few years ago I was casting and retrieving a deep diving minnow bait when a seagull mistook it for a baitfish. I got really lucky as I was the only one in the boat. I reeled up the line using the trolling motor to get to it. It was going nuts, and then the weirdest thing happened. Since I had nothing to lose at this point and I was the only one around, I talked to the bird and it calmed right down and I was able to pop the hook out with very little damage to his beak. Since then I have tried this on technique with psycho pike and it seems to help, maybe it just calms me down and they pick up on it, who knows. 

My Blue Heron story thankfully did not end up with a hooked bird. I was River fishing for smallies in very thick fog. As the sun started to come up, the fog started to break and I saw what at first I thought was a person wading, but turned out to be a Blue Heron right where I had thrown a bunch casts food smallies. Scared the bejeezers out of me. They are pretty cool birds, but this year they have been very skittish around me, so sadly I am guessing people are scaring them off.