Sideshow

If you do anything as much as I fish, you're bound to build a cache of stories about how things went different than planned.  I've found that the results can sometimes be scary, like in the case of sudden storms or running the river in the black of night.  They can also be kind of funny like when my dad absent mindedly released a hammer handle pike with the mouth spreader still holding his maw agape or when some old guy on the wooded bank caught me trying to sneak a pee in the middle of the river.  Here's a little mix of the scary and the funny.

I try to keep some kind of watch on the weather before I set out for a long night on the river.  I've noticed that my dad does too.  He's pretty quick to give me a call if something is coming at us.  He let's me know when it's out over Lake Michigan so that I have plenty of time to at least get anchored under the bridge.  He's saved my hide, or at least kept it dry, a number of times.  The irony about storms is that when they're pushing into your area, the fishing generally gets pretty hot.  I don't mind rain.  I've got pretty good rain gear and the channels especially seem to turn on when the surface of the water starts getting pelted with big drops.  Wind and lightning are what I watch out for, but sometimes I'm stubborn about even letting these two dangers push me off of the water.

Two summers ago I was out on what started as a normal trip.  I had fished all day in the hot sun, chasing after smallies and getting a nice supply of bait.  I anchored up at The Elbow just before dark.  With lines out, I was enjoying the coolness of the evening when I heard a freight train coming through the woods immediately adjacent to my boat.  I was trying to get some kind of fix on the source of that thunderous noise when the trees on the edge of the water went into a sudden frenzy.  Without warning, I was blown off anchor and at the mercy of gale force winds.  Wondering how a storm of this magnitude could have fallen off of my own and my dad's radar, I scrambled to get my lines in and everything that wasn't tied down thrown into the bottom of the boat.  With the rain and the lightning starting up, I pointed the bow down river and drove that little boat as fast as it would go.  I could see huge gusts of wind sweeping across the water in front of me.  I found myself in a wrestling match, trying to keep the boat in the middle of the river and headed in my intended direction.  Out of nowhere I got smacked in the side of the face with a huge leaf.  It stuck there for a few seconds and I thought that it was a bat.  I'm glad I was alone because I screamed like a little girl and flailed at it with both hands.  I wasn't going to let that little demon get its fangs into my neck.  I finally made it to the shelter of the bridge.  Knowing that my parents would be worried sick, I called to let them know that I was safe.  Just a few miles away at their home, there was no sign of a storm and they didn't have a worry in the world.

Later that same summer, I was fishing the shallow snag halfway up to The Elbow when a good old fashioned thunder storm rolled in on top of me.  The rain was amazing.  Anyone in their right mind would have fled for safety immediately.  Both of my rods started jumping with channel cat bites, so I couldn't tear myself away.  The panic growing from within me was screaming at me to get off of the river, especially as lightning flashed around me and the thunder seemed to get louder and follow the flashes more closely.  I fought the panic for 10 or 15 minutes before I remembered that I have a wife and 3 kids who were planning on me coming home in one piece that night.  When I got back to the launch there was actually a sheriff deputy waiting for me.  He must have noticed the empty trailer in the parking lot.  He didn't bother to speak to me or even get out of his cruiser.  When he saw that this fool was safe, he showed me the tail lights.  Despite my rain gear, I was soaked to the bone.  So much so that I walked right in the river to get the boat on the trailer.  That poor little bilge pump was working with all it had to empty the swamped boat.  I helped it out by pulling the plug.  Hint, put those things back in right away.  I foolishly decided to leave it out until my next trip.  Of course, I forgot all about it and the next time out I was met by a half sunk boat after I launched and parked my Jeep and trailer.

Speeding back down the river at 2 AM after each trip is probably the most dangerous thing that I do.  I thought that it finally caught up with me late this past summer.  I dropped off of The Elbow and opened it up in what is probably the darkest section of the river.  Before I could react I was right on top of something.  For a split second I thought that I was slamming into another boat T-bone style when all around me was the explosion of wings and the wild honks of a flock of Canada Geese.  I didn't go back to see if there were any casualties, but I'm pretty sure that I tagged at least a couple of them.  I didn't sleep much that night because my adrenaline soaked heart was shaking the bed.

I fish alone a lot mainly because I'm selfish.  I absolutely love the freedom of fishing exactly where and how I want.  A few people close to me have broken through my guarded insistence on solitude and ventured out with me.  A friend of mine lives on a small private lake with a million 13-14" bass and just as many hammer handle pike.  A little 12-foot john boat came with his house when he bought it and I spent a lot of time in my early 20's fishing in this dingy.  My brother-in-law, Evan, came out with me one morning in early fall.  I remember it being cold enough that we wore jeans and jackets.  I think that Evan was used to larger boats, because he stepped off of the dock and into that boat like it was a 45-foot Bayliner.  The corner that he stepped in immediately went under, bringing in water by the gallon.  All I could do was yell, "Evan!"  To his credit, he made the split second decision to save me, the trolling motor, and the deep cycle battery, and without hesitation dove head first into the chilly water.  Talk about tough, he dragged himself out, shook the water off like a dog, helped me bail the boat, and got in to fish like nothing ever happened.

Back in our early river days my dad had a rather small boat with an oversized motor that was as loud as a jackhammer.  My brother came out with us one morning.  After still fishing for awhile, we decided to try our luck at trolling.  Mike was in the front of the boat and I was right behind him.  Noticing that his line was stretching right past me, I became giddy at the thought of giving it a good pull to see his reaction.  Mike went from half asleep to standing at attention and reeling with everything he had.  When nothing was there, he simply said, "That was a good one." and sat back down with a shrug.  I waited a few more minutes and gave it a good triple yank.   He jumped like a hornet had stung him and started in again with the speed reeling.  This time he was shaking his head and muttering to himself like a schizophrenic homeless fellow.  It's a good thing that the motor was loud because I was convulsing with laughter just a few feet behind him and he had no idea.  I got him a couple more times before mercy prevailed.  To this day, Mike doesn't know that his encounter with a river monster was really just his immature brother acting on an impulse.  If the fishing ever gets slow and you find yourself with the opportunity to pull this little prank, I highly recommend it.  I found it to be extremely entertaining.

I'm feeling a little guilty about telling stories on family, so I better end with a little story about myself.  In the first few months after I started having some success with catfish, I brought my dad out to give him a taste.  We were fishing in the basin just up from the bridge when I tied into the biggest flathead in the river.  My fishing pole bent and strained with the weight of this behemuth.  Feeling my oats, I stepped right up on the bench to increase my profile as I went into battle.  The guys in the boats around us stopped fishing and turned to watch the show.  Traffic on the bridge came to a stand still as people got out of their cars and lined the railing to see what wonder I could have sunk a hook into.  After a long, muscle straining fight, a huge dark shadow began to emerge from the depths.  What finally broke the surface was not a flathead at all, but a hissing, sputtering leatherback turtle.  Luckily it was only in my "Ralphy" (A Christmas Story) like imagination that all of those people were watching me.  My embarrassment was really only met by my dad's chuckle as he reached for the needle nose pliers.

I'm sure that if I thought about it a little longer, I could come up with a few more.  Instead, I'll save them and maybe come back to this topic again sometime.  By then I'll probably have a few new ones to add.  I just hope none of them are about that time I hit a log and sunk the boat in the middle of nowhere at 1:30 in the morning.  I might be writing that one from Heaven.