Probably the dumbest big bite I got happend 6-7 years ago. I was fishing out of the back of a friends boat and as we were cruising down the shoreline we went right over a big fish that immediately kicked off into deep water. It was late May at the time, so it may have been on a bed, though we didn't see one.

We kept on moving down the bank, but I picked up a brush hog and made a long cast behind the boat where I thought the fish was, hand-pulling line off my reel as my bait sunk and the boat was moving away.

Soon as I tightened up my line the fish was on... 13.7lbs.

It's much easier to think of big bites I deserved to get, but didn't deserve to land. Like the time I broke my rod in half setting the hook on a 10lber with 100 feet of line out. Or the time I hooked a 10lber in the back of the throat. My stinger rig broke, the bait flew out of the fish's mouth, and the 2nd treble hook snagged it on the outside of its head. Or even just a couple months ago when I had a 10lber swim through a hole in my landing net while fighting it on spinning gear.

Don't even get me started on the birds. I've never caught two bass on one cast with a swimbait, but I have snared a double-header of canadian geese, for a while anyway :)