Me and a couple guys from work decided to try out a new spot on the Potomac River on the Maryland side of Great Falls Park. After hiking for a while over some really tough rocks we found a spot below a little waterfall that emptied into a small pool near the side of the river. We fished this pool for a little while and I got a bite on my shaky head worm. The line just started zipping out so I set the hook and pulled a fish up from the bottom of the pool. When I saw it, it looked like a decent sized fish (we were fishing for smallies) but as it got closer I discovered it was a walleye! I had never caught a walleye before so I was pretty excited. Anyway, I was about to throw it back but one of the guys with me said he would take it home to eat it. The other guy said he had a stringer so we hooked the fish up to the stringer, left him in the little pool under the waterfall and left. We had tied the stringer around a stick and jammed it between two rocks to keep him there. So we hike upstream and fish for about 2 more hours and then decide to go home. So we start hiking back to the walleye to get it and head home. When we come over the hill by the waterfall we look down at the pool and see a big blue heron with my walleye in it's mouth! This was about a 4lb fish so it was a funny site. The heron with the fish in its mouth, the fish with a string coming from its mouth running down to a stick on the bank. Well the guy who's stringer it is starts yelling "HEY, HEY, HEY!" as loud as he can and the the guy who wants to eat it starts running down to the heron to try to scare it away and grab the stringer. The heron gets spooked and tries to take off but the stick holds in the rocks and he gets jerked back down. Then he tries to take off again and the stick comes loose and he gets away. So my buddies are yelling "MY STRINGER!!!" and "MY DINNER!!!" because they were each angry about losing their gear and food. They are pretty upset but I am laughing hysterically.

At this point, the stick tied to the stringer swings around and wraps around the heron in mid-air. The heron falls into the water and starts to squirm to free himself and his one wing is obviously tangled up. We start saying stuff like "*#$%, that bird's gonna die!" and we get pretty solemn pretty quick. Fortunately, though, the heron quickly freed himself and flew away and left the walleye and the stringer and the stick to float down the falls.

So the bird was ok, the fish most likely died but he was gonna get eaten anyway and the whole thing was hilarious.

Oh yeah, we each caught a few smallmouth as well but as you can see, that wasn't the most fun part of the trip.

Great story!

Indeed a very funny circumstance...  I can just picture the Heron flying away with your friends screaming...

I'm hoping to catch my first Walleye soon on my next trip to N.C. I understand they have them up there? That's what I was told last time by a local.