Do anchors count? Lost a few mushrooms, never a lead filled pipe.

1 combo, too long ago to remember what or how much, and 1 set of pliers. None of which I consider tackle.

When I was probably 12 I had all my tackle and rods and reels stolen (probably $200 worth). Then later that year someone stole my 2 man boat off the dock.

Had a Tatula Sv on an older Zillion rod go over the side of the boat one time. That hurt for a while.

8 hours ago, Tackleholic said:

Pulled up to a launch area to use the outhouse, about a five minute round trip; a recently purchased Loomis rod and Calcutta reel were stolen from my boat.

Pulled up to a liquor store once to get a small bottle of joy for our crappie trip, came out and some homeless guy (a common group that hung out next to the store) was standing next to the boat.

Got to the lake, launched the boat then reached for my brand new custom made 10’ crappie rod and,,,,,,,,,gone!

I was po’ed!

9 hours ago, king fisher said:

This may be a new technique that even the Japanese have not thought of.

9 hours ago, king fisher said:

9 hours ago, king fisher said:

You'd be wrong.

It's a legit technique to cast over a tree limb and then dip the lure in and out of the water (or just above)...like a tea bag.

I think the translation is "lantern technique"

Also, I have no idea why I have multiple quote windows nor does it seem possible to remove them.

1 hour ago, RRocket said:

You'd be wrong.

It's a legit technique to cast over a tree limb and then dip the lure in and out of the water (or just above)...like a tea bag.

I think the translation is "lantern technique"

Also, I have no idea why I have multiple quote windows nor does it seem possible to remove them.

We used to do that when floating a river. Around here it is called doodle sockin.

40 minutes ago, Jig Man said:

Around here it is called doodle sockin.

Brilliant! Truly.

The words in and of themselves mean zero. But upon my fisherman brain seeing the technique, doodle sockin' absolutely makes sense.

Tell me I'm wrong. LOL 😆

Most was close to 25 finesse jigs in rocks. Bite was really on so in 5 casts I would catch 3 fish and lose one jig.

Brand new rod combo I used for less than 2 hours. Fish grabbed the bait hanging over the boat and pulled it in.

Terminal tackle box flew out of the boat after I hit a wave. Normally didn't have this problem but we jumped that wave like the Duke boys. Box was 90% tungsten sinkers and my partner said we can try and snag it. Looked at the graph and we were in 75+ FOW.

Allen

I had one painful loss, and that was KGB Chad Shad, with which I catch/hunt couple of good bass with it. I had two of them, and after I lost that color, I bought two more same color, so now I have three in my arsenal. I can never get over that single lure

2 hours ago, ATA said:

I had one painful loss, and that was KGB Chad Shad, with which I catch/hunt couple of good bass with it. I had two of them, and after I lost that color, I bought two more same color, so now I have three in my arsenal. I can never get over that single lure

Tackle warehouse exclusive color, good thing you stocked up because they're on backorder

On 2/28/2026 at 5:11 PM, Bluebasser86 said:

When I was probably 12 I had all my tackle and rods and reels stolen (probably $200 worth). Then later that year someone stole my 2 man boat off the dock.

This is the saddest one.

@Harold H I have a few OGs in 8" and 10" as well. These are my 10"s picture. We here in SoCal knew about this bait when it was hand poure garage made.

The ole' "rod and reel overboard" have been my biggest/fastest bonehead losses. I'm too embarrassed to say brands.

Man the worst ones I've read here are the one's where stuff was stolen, that really burns my ***

Bluebasser, did that incident have any impact on your decision to enter law enforcement ?

I was trying to tally everything I've lost while fishing, man I must be a major league klutz.

Brought a handheld VHF radio , it arrived a day before we were doing a group Striper trip at Sandy Hook so I just put it in a pocket on my life vest. I did a quick radio check when I launched, then paddle out to where I saw some fish, went to check my radio and it was gone, fell out of my pocket and of course it wasn't in the kayak.

Got another one, this time I was smart and tethered it to my life vest, only issue was I made the leash too long and wound up trolling it for about an hr in saltwater , another one bit the dust (salt). Subesquint ones have a short leash now.

Surf launch at Montauk to catch false albacore which was a bucket list fish, managed to catch a couple but somehow dropped a St Croix premier spinner with probably Penn battler overboard. It was pretty nasty and managed to wipe out on the surf landing, broke a St Croix muskie rod. Gather all my stuff that was from the surf and went back to my car to change out of my dry top and brand new dry pants, sat on a striper plug and put a hole in them.

Dropped a camera overboard in Salem taking a picture of the smallest striper I ever hooked, this was because earlier I had caught and got pics of the 3 biggest stripers I had caught at that time.

Dropped a freshwater outfit overboard putting it back in the rod holder on my crate, completely missed the holder.

Dropped my flip phone overboard, my kids were actually overjoyed about that as now I had to get a "real" phone.

Lost my favorite rod, a 5 1/2 ' glass Fenwick when I flipped my kayak the only time reaching around to clear a rod that was stuck on a tree, that one really hurt as I brought that for myself when I graduated high school, no idea how many fish I had caught on that.

Don't know how many pliers and other stuff, these are the main ones.

I loose more tackle in one outing from shore than I do all year fishing from my boat. I even lost a rod and reel fishing from shore as I was carrying two. As I walked down the shoreline, I leaned one against a tree and continued down the shore only to return to where I thought I'd left it. It wasn't there, or anywhere and that was before my memory started to go on me.

'Reel' Men of Genius:

On 2/28/2026 at 7:23 AM, king fisher said:

Next time I go fishing, I'm going to dangle a bait in the water while appearing to leave my rod unattended. I will have a safety line tied to the rod, well hidden by a jacket and other items laid over the top of the line. When the bass grabs the bait and tries to pull the rod overboard, I will fake like I'm leaping to grab the rod but instead will let it get yanked into the water. The bass will then think he has won the battle set the hook and probably jump. Then I will grab the safety line and retrieve the rod, reel, lure and bass.

Sometimes you have to think outside the box to catch the smart ones. This may be my best skunk beater technique ever. It may even be bigger and more controversial than FFS. Remember you first read about it here at Bass Resource, where no bass is to wiley, and every angler is willing to go to any extreme to out fox them.

"True Story Time"

Fish can be a little nutty when it comes time to eat. I don't know if @king fisher 's plan is going to be a killer pattern, but I think it just might work. . . . at least once.

I was at a well known Southern California put-n-take private trout enterprise that actually had three small lakes. There was an earthen bridge over some culverts that linked one lake to another and a steel guardrail over the length of the bridge on both sides. It was popular for anglers to clamp rod holders on the railing and for several rods to be sticking out like as the trout came by, often to use the culverts to swim from one lake to the other.

I was sitting nearby staring at the rods fixed to the railing and apparently paying more attention than the owners of the rods. One of the rods suddenly shot forth out of the holder and landed in the lake before disappearing. I notified the folks nearby that I had seen the rod take off like a bottle rocket. He was a little confused at first, but soon accepted the fact that his rod was gone and that a fish likely took it.

Half an hour later one of the other rods doubled over and this time the owner was able to grab it and began fighting what was determined to be a good sized fish. All of sudden, the rod next to him also doubled over and as he took up the slack it was easy to tell that the same fish had eaten both baits so they were working together to land the fish. Then the fish ate a third bait, then a fourth bait, and eventually a fifth. All five anglers were battling the fish at the same time.

They were discussing how to determine who would get to keep the fish and they all agreed that whoever's hook was deepest in the fish would get to keep the fish. They finally landed a frisky five pound plus rainbow trout and set about determining who would keep the fish, only to discover that there were six lines coming out of the fish's mouth.

Sure enough, the sixth line was coming from the water and they were able to pull on it and sure enough retrieved the rod and reel that had launched from it's holder half an hour earlier. All concerned parties then agreed that he should be able to keep the fish.

If you fish wooden docks, take a drill when no one is looking and drill holes in your spots and put spiral rod holders in them and set your rod in those. I devised this after losing a couple rods while catfishing a pond, one was a rod my buddy gave me, so I said this isnt happening again. I had a rod go in that a kid next to me hooked my line and was able to pull in my rod and reel in the fish. I let him take the pic with it. This is more for live bait fishing, any time youre fishing with live fish, a huge bass could hit it, or anything else. I was crappie fishing one of my spots at the lake with a slip float and live minnows, not big minnows, just the mediums. I see my float go down and next thing I know a 6-7 largemouth comes wallowing out of the water. I wrestle him to the bank on my light spinning setup, and instead of going down to lip it, I pulled the line towards my hand, and the #6 aberdeen eagle claw hook straightened, and the fish laid there a second, long enough for me to touch it, then shot back in the water. I caught another little one after that but was obviously deflated

Just last week I lost an A-rig and a Damiki Vault.

I flipped a canoe in the river once and lost two St. Croix spinning rods with nice reels along with the box of tackle I'd brought. That was a reel (intentional misspelling) heart breaker.