Pulled the Plug on This One

The water level generally has sucked all week, thanks to those persistently strong northeast winds, and, too, some of the guys wanted to go fish the Wounded Warrior Benefit Tourney out of Bob's Fishing Hole tomorrow, so I decided to call off our May 4 tourney at West Neck Marina. For those interested, it's now rescheduled for next Saturday, May 11. Fishing hours will be 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The photo of this 21-footer that launched at West Neck about 3 o'clock today perhaps makes some people wonder why I cancelled this Saturday's tourney, but if you look closely astern of the boat, you'll see a stretch of muddy bank showing, and that's just a small portion of what you saw everywhere you looked today at West Neck. The water level stood at 2.3 feet, exactly one-tenth of a foot higher than it was Thursday when I fished out there all day. And when I recovered my 17-foot bass boat, my trailer wheels were only 2 or 3 inches from the end of the ramp.

The four young guys and one girl--and their "abundant" supply of beer and ice--that I watched launch this boat today did it without a hitch, but with the rear wheels of their tandem-axle trailer hanging off in no-man's land. I wasn't around when they returned, so I don't know how the recovery operation went. But this much, I do know, from watching about a 19-footer make its way up the channel to the marina store for supplies a bit later. Most, if not all, the way from just aft of the ramp, up to the store, that boat's outboard was kicking a generous supply of mud, and that was with the motor trimmed up. That scene was all it took for one angler to tell me that I wouldn't see him for any tourney tomorrow.

Why am I telling you this? you may be asking. Simply because some of you may not be familiar with what it's like trying to maneuver a boat in water this low and with all the submerged stumps, logs and other obstructions that line many stretches. And it's not enough just to know where those obstructions are today, because they often move around during storms that blow through our area.

And most assuredly, if you decide to take your boat out when conditions are like they've been all this past week at West Neck, I would suggest that you leave the booze at home in your refrigerator. Besides, the last time I checked the rules, they told me that people who drive boats also get tickets for being under the influence.

Boating safety is just as important as driving safety--and, yes, I know a little bit about which I speak. I spent the period from November 1988 to January 2010 as a magazine editor for the Naval Safety Center, where I read many mishap reports and wrote many stories about people who learned their lessons the hard way when it came to both boating and driving safety.

If you'll take a look at the water-level-report photo on the right-hand side of this blog's homepage, you'll see that it's standing at not quite 1.5 feet as of 1:13 p.m. today (Saturday, May 4), compared to 2.3 feet when the boat in the photo above launched yesterday. Nevertheless, as I've been informed by two different eyewitnesses, there's a tandem-wheel trailer in the West Neck Marina parking lot for a Gambler bass boat. How this angler even was able to launch is a mystery to me, but how he'll ever recover that boat today is a bigger mystery. For me, it gives new meaning to that old saying: "Where there's a will, there's a way."