2 rod & reel set ups about 13 years apart. Set of keys from shirt pocket while leaning over to get fish. 1 cell phone, bought a nice pair of ss finger nail clippers $20 said no more rusting crap they were gone first trip out with them#@*&and some bait.

See I'm not the only idiot............I mean typical of what happens on the water.

Writing of RETREIVING things, I'd like to dive the Shrewsbury Rocks, NJ, fill sacks with all the lost sinkers and have a boat pull the sacks back up.
Must be thousands of sinkers down there............to re sell to all the bait shops !

mawshj
 

A few years back ,my wife and I were fishing under the Chesapeake bay bridge and she hooked a BIG fish, she did not want me to help her. She tugged for 20 minutes to get it up, when it reached the surface, I saw it was a brand new Penn rod and reel, I ran over and pulled it aboard. My wife was so angry that she did not have a fish, she grabbed it and tossed it back. My brand new Penn lost !!!!

Lost a few hats but have always been lucky enough to circle around and retrieve them.
One time we were cod fishing 10 miles east of stellwagen and a back pack came floating by. We pulled it in and it had a wallet and a few other things in it. I got hold of the owner and they collected it from my house,i guess it fell overboard on a whale watch out of Boston,they were pretty surprised they got it back.

2 pairs of prescription glasses over the years. Lots of catfish grabbers and chum bags, rods and reels, pieces off reels, keeper fish.
Winter time in FL often means layering up.. So you start out in the morning with jeans and a jacket on over your shorts and you peel off when it warms up a bit. Left my wallet in the jeans and the jeans blew out of the boat on the way in.. I was 16 so the most I lost was my drivers license and a few bucks but the wallet was a hand made calfhide one of a kind.
Another good tale of a near miss-
We were in a NO WATER ZONE in Ruskin running inside from Bishops Harbor back to Cockroach. Apparently my tackle box blew off the rear deck of the flats boat. Lucky (or not) we ran one tank out of gas about the same time. I tried to switch fuel lines over before we came off plane but no luck, we had run aground. I got out of the boat and looked back to see this relatively large box floating half submerged on the flat behind us. 100 yards back. WTHeck is that? Oh that is the tackle box, wallet, truck keys, etc. We picked up the pace but going back to where the box sank involved a lot of pulling and pushing the boat that day, the tide was ripping out. Then disabling an aftermarket alarm system on the GMC that could only be disarmed with the now wet keychain fob, convincing the man that yes we are the owners of the truck not trying to steal it.. just because the boat was filthy and we were wet we didn't actually sink the boat or get into an accident, per se..
AND we were sotally tober, HUH?

Many years ago when I had a tin boat, my brother and I were going winter flounder fishing. Stopped at the bait store for sandworms and of course the guy tells us "oh, you gotta use chum if you want to catch more than a couple". We didn't have a chum pot. So he sold us a chum pot and a frozen log of ground clam chum and we laughed about what chumps we were for falling for his pitch.

We got out by the Mantoloking bridge and set up. put the chum in the pot, and clipped the the line onto the cotter pin that holds the lid closed, dropped it down and started fishing. No bites...1/2 hour goes by and we decide to move to Dales Point.

So were running wide open with the Tohatsu 40 and my brother says "whats that?" The chum pot is skipping along behind us. $#i+!!! We stop and pull the line in. As my brother lifts the pot to the surface, the cotter pin straightens out and that brand new chum pot and chum log disappear into the Metedeconk River!:nut:

We laughed our asses off....

A pair of Costa Del Mars
A Pair of Oakleys
A pair of Serengittis
probably 2 dozen hats
a chum bucket
a cast net
2 anchors
a boat ladder
an okuma reel and a carbon fiber rod, the reel smoked fighting a Bonita and locked up, Pulled back hard on the rod with no drag and the rod exploded in my hand, threw the damn thing in the ocean
the left curtain on my enclosure
life jackets
2 landing nets
2 gaffs
286 cups of coffee
my lunch
the blues
any though of a bad day























almost landed a square grouper many, many years ago, couldn't get it in the boat so we cut it loose

hey franco, that's weird, i lost some square grouper many many years ago...

Was it in the Gulf stream about halfway between Freeport and Riviera Beach?

Only one thing I've ever lost overboard: My bro-in-law and I went out on a charter boat. He realized that he had forgotten his rod & reel, and since I had an extra one with me he borrowed it. Brand new, never been fished before. (Masters rod with a Diawa 50H reel on it)
So we're standing on the stern with several other people drifting chunks for Blues.. and a guy on the opposite side of the stern gets a bite and the fish goes crazy...running back and forth, fouling everyone's line. Stupid Mate grabs the line, and instead of cutting it he gives it a hell of a yank... and of course he pulled my brand new rod and reel out of my bro-in-laws arms just as he was lighting a cigar and not really holding onto the rod. We watched it float out back of the boat and go down to Davy Jones as a gift.