The Bitter End

things to remember outdoors

I had backed my bonefish skiff down the boat ramp into the water, when a rival of mine for the attentions of the lady who was with me that morning, showed up driving his new pickup.  While I busied myself loading the boat, the lady went to say hello.  

I saw him smile and hand her something crumpled in his hand.  She had told me that he was much too young for her, full of himself.  I could see he had that cute, curly-headed bad-boy way about him.  He hollered over to me, “Hey, Dude, nice boat.”  He gestured towards the boat.  I looked at the boat at the dock and realized that from where he was, in his truck at the top of the boat ramp, he was watching my boat filling with water.  I had LEFT THE PLUG OUT!

As I rushed to get the boat back on the trailer and pull it up the ramp to drain, he drove away howling with laughter, banging on his steering wheel.

I saw the crumpled object a while later in her open purse.  It was a pair of left-behind panties.

If you camp in a tent, you're sure to find surprises if you don't clean it thoroughly after every use.  Aside from the usual sand, sticks and grits, there are sure to be food items left from the previous trips.  Chocolate, oh, yeah!  Miles from home on a cold rainy night is not the time to discover these treasures.  Lay it out for inspection before you leave home...always.  Rust, rot and mildew like tents.  I had an expensive one rot to shreds.

I don’t know the scientific reasons why dogs like to chew cork on fly rod grips, but it is a known fact that they prefer older, experienced grips saturated with fish oils and sweat.  High quality cork, like on a Winston rod in nine-weight is the after-dinner-Cuban-cigar of grips to a Chessie.  Dachshund puppies are less discerning, but enthusiastic chewers.  I know, I know…ALWAYS PUT YOUR FLY RODS BACK IN THEIR CASES.  I find that a simple reminder list of things to take along helps if I DON’T FORGET THE LIST.  

Last summer my wife, Marica,  and I drove an hour to a remote Colorado mountain lake with our kayaks strapped on top of our SUV.  She’d made a wonderful picnic and I’d brought a four-weight for small trout.  

We had everything you could possibly want... except the paddles!  They were safe back in the garage.  Duh!  Bless Marcia’s heart, she pretended to understand and we had a fine lunch in the woods.  The trees near the picnic site are probably still a little curse-withered.

Other items I’ve left behind include standards like wallet, camera, keys, bug and sun lotion, boat fuel tank, rain jacket, bullets for various guns, and….oh, the hell with it!  Lots of things, ok?  Make a list early and review 'til the instant of departure.     

Need I say anything about NOT TRUSTING THE LITTLE LCD LIGHT that tells of your near-empty fuel tank?  Another twenty miles, my ass!  Don’t get me started!  I have a small extra tank of gas for my 20hp outboard that fits nicely in the back of my SUV.

My best fishing buddy in high school used a casting rod he named his “runt rod,” which had nothing to do with the size of the hundreds of bass he caught with it, but everything to do with car doors.  I slammed a door on it one time myself, shortening it by four inches.  With a match and glue, the rod’s tip was reset and crushed to fit with pliars and John went on happily to catch more fish, walking along the banks of south Florida tomato farm ditches casting top-water plugs.  I was present another time when the tailgate power window of a station wagon snapped it like a twig.  It was about three feet long, but the shortening was accepted as the challenge it was, and still John fished it.  Car doors have accounted for lots of damage.  I busted a fly rod in a hotel room paddle fan in Key West. (Who hasn’t lost a rod to a fan?)  Three or four rods were shattered in the hatch lids on bonefish skiffs I owned.  Once I was standing on the dock and handed a brand new, expensive casting rod to a friend already in the boat.  He set it aside carefully, opened a hatch to store a few items, then shut the hatch on the rod, all in less than ten seconds.  I sat on a friend’s fly rod he’d left lying across the boat’s seats one day as I pulled myself aboard after wading for bass in waist-deep water, casting top-water poppers.  We didn’t know it until later, when he noticed that it was broken and my clumsy reentry was remembered. (We had a few spare rods with us, as usual, so the day wasn’t lost.)  

Another time I was clearing a knot in a friend’s fly line when a loose loop got caught in the boat’s propeller.  At Sandy Key in the Bahamas on a bonefish trip I poked my rod at a three-foot bull shark that came too close, and it ate four inches of my new Winston 6-wt. in a flash and swirl of water.  Another time I “high-sticked” a 40 pound tarpon—held too much of a bend in the rod at boatside, and popped a Scott 9-wt. right in the middle.  Fortunately, the best rod companies offer replacements at very reasonable prices...if you consider $50 reasonable.  I always take at least one spare rod in a case.

I had a date one summer evening years ago in Fort Pierce, Florida, where I grew up, where I know the Indian River very well, having fished it since childhood.  I picked up the pretty lady, dressed in a blouse and slacks, at my brother’s dock in my Maverick 17’ Master Angler, and we headed across the river to the city marina Tiki-Bar for drinks and dinner.  We were new to each other, and she thought the boat idea was fun, so I was telling her about the river, pointing out spots—my childhood home, for example.  I was bullshitting at a good pace, running the boat at about twenty-five miles an hour in the warm summer air.  Without warning we ran full aground, right onto the middle of a hard white sandbar.  The lady had been sitting beside me on the boat’s rear deck with her legs out in front of her.  She was thrown forward so fast her ass hit the deck before her legs, which knocked the breath right out of her.  I hadn’t heard anything like it since high school football.

I had the steering wheel to hold onto, and wasn’t hurt.  I shut off the racing 90 horsepower Yamaha outboard and went to help her.  It took a few minutes, but she finally got her wind back and was able to sit up on her own and sip a Coke.  I explained what had happened, that a sandbar had developed in a place where there hadn’t been one for years, and we’d run aground.  I said I’d get overboard and pull us off the bar, which I set about doing, or attempting to do.  I’d rolled up my pants and jumped out. The tide was falling fast, along with the summer sun.  I couldn’t move the boat.  No choice, so I told the lady, still having a bit of a hard time—her tail bone had borne the brunt of the fall—that she was going to have to get overboard and help me or we might spend the night out there.  Spending the night with me in the boat on the sandbar got her motivated, and soon she got over with me and we got the boat off by pushing and pulling desperately, and started towards the Tiki-Bar again.

It was a warm night.  I was sweating.  We were both soaked to our thighs when we docked and walked into the Tiki-bar.  She was limping, complaining about her tailbone.  A lifetime friend of mine was sitting at the bar.  One look at us and he laughed and asked, “Where’d you run aground?” 

He knew that I’d made a bush-league mistake.  Littoral, TIDAL AREAS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING. 

Fishing inside the inlet at Sebastian, Florida, one afternoon in a fast-falling tide, I set my new aluminum Danforth-style anchor from my 17’ bonefish skiff when the outboard engine crapped out.  The wind at about twenty knots was from the southeast, which put up a nasty choppy sea at the mouth of the inlet, one of the most dangerous on the Florida coast for small boats in those conditions.  It had taken a few minutes to get the anchor with its six feet of chain out of the locker, and we were drifting dangerously towards the big seas at a pretty fast clip.  I was relieved when I got the anchor overboard, knowing that I had 75 feet of line, certainly enough in the shallow water of the inlet, about fifteen feet deep where the boat was drifting.  I paid out the line through my hands carefully, making sure the anchor line wasn’t fouled coming out of it’s locker.  

To my complete surprise I saw the anchor, with the chain hanging alongside it, appearing to float in the current--not sinking-- six feet under the bow, with the rest of the line I’d put out heading back under the boat, down tide.  The anchor wouldn’t sink.  It was planing in the current!

It was a brand new, very expensive Danforth-type anchor made of high-grade aluminum, which was far lighter than the anchor I’d used for years, made of galvanized steel. The idea when I bought it was to have a lighter, stronger anchor.  I’m a nut about anchoring correctly and thought it was worth the extra money.  The galvanized ones bend out of shape, a worrisome attribute, though I’d never had one completely fail.  Unfortunately,the new one was so light that the current moved it easily, keeping it up off the bottom.

I quickly retrieved the anchor and tossed it as far ahead of the boat down-tide as I could.  Tossing an anchor and chain isn’t a good idea because it can get tangled, but it worked that time.  After one more toss the anchor, dragged by the chain, made it to the bottom and did its anchoring thing.  Once it landed it held fast.

I had already checked to make sure the line was attached to the boat before I put the anchor over the first time, so I didn’t experience that, “Oh, shit!” moment some boaters have when they see all their anchor and line go overboard, never to be seen again.  The end not fastened is the “bitter end.”  I got the engine started in a few minutes, pulled up the anchor and headed for home only mildly spooked by the experience.  

I could easily have lost my boat in a few more minutes drifting seaward.  Few items on a boat are more important than the right anchor for the expected bottom conditions, but millions of boaters go without any of the basics; plenty of anchor line, chain, proper attaching hardware and the best anchor they can afford.  A SPARE ANCHOR IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA.

I fished last week with a pal who used an anchoring pole in three feet of water where we waded with our fly rods.  He stuck it in the mud, tied off the line and walked away.  Everything worked out fine, and the pole held, but those things are not anchors, and if it pulls out of the ground the boat can go where the wild goose goes, leaving you waving for a ride when the boat drifts away.  Use a pole if you're going to stay in the boat.  Getting out?  Carefully set a proper anchor.  

I read a grim story in a yachting magazine about a group of vacationers aboard a large sailboat in the Caribbean who all jumped over for a swim one evening as the boat drifted along.  How do we know they all jumped over?  Only some dried out canapes and drink glasses were found in the boat's cockpit days later.  There was no boarding ladder.  The people were never seen again.

Too many times over the years I’ve lost fish due to poor knots, and it always surprises me.  I get careless and don’t finish a knot properly, don’t draw it down correctly so it won’t slip. That little tell-tale, curlicue on the very end of the line tells the sad but true story if the knot slips.  Believe me, after all the time, money and expense you put into fishing efforts, it will nag you for years when you lose a big fish when the knot fails.  PRACTICE TYING YOUR KNOTS!

We had sat quietly for an hour since sunup in cold in windy conditions in a North Carolina duck blind, when finally a flock of ten mallards turned to our calls and headed straight for the three of us.  Bam, Bam, Bam!  Ducks on the water!  Yes!  The usual chatter…nice shooting, etc.  Silence from the new guy on my right.  He had FORGOTTEN TO PUT SHELLS IN HIS GUN.  It happens.  

Here’s another one that will happen if you don’t make a list:  Because you forget to put a wad of toilet paper in a dry pocket, you WILL CUT THE TAIL OFF YOUR FAVORITE HUNTING OR FISHING SHIRT….if you remembered your pocket knife.