Mr. Bigshot

One fall evening a couple of years ago, I was at the launch dropping my boat in when another boat pulled up to the dock from the river.  I noticed that the guy was someone that I had known from church when I was a kid.  He and my dad knew each other quite well.  I did the "remember me?" thing and asked him if he fished the river much.  He said that he didn't, but was just giving it a try.  He hadn't caught much.  I took this opportunity to brag about how I had it mastered.  I went into all of the fish that I've caught, made sure to tell him of the several 20+ pound flatties I've hauled in, talked like an expert about tackle, bait, and tactics, and generally probably wore the guy's ear out.  I followed up my droning with a slip, an awkward arm flapping attempt to get my balance, and then a  plunge into the cold river.  After he made sure that I was okay, I could see him fighting pretty hard to keep from laughing at me.  I'm guessing that as soon as he pulled away he got a full eyes watering, belly shaking guffaw out of it.  I can hear him telling his wife when he got home, "Hey, you remember that Matt Elyea kid?  Yeah, he didn't turn out too well . . ."  I'm pretty awesome.