Been There, Done That, Have the T-Shirt, Too

My first full read in the new January/February 2015 Bassmaster magazine that arrived in my mailbox yesterday was editor James Hall's article titled "Dumb and Dumber." It was refreshing to find out that it isn't just old duffers like myself who make the kind of shortsighted mistakes he admitted to in his article.

Like James, I've had my share of unhappy experiences with light line. Most of 'em came the year when I dedicated the whole season to fishing a custom-made slider rod with a whole bunch of Charlie Brewer soft plastics, along with a 5-and-a-half-foot ultralight spinning rod, on which I was tossing hardly anything but a wide assortment of beetlespins.

I had hold of some monster fish (not always sure what kind) that year, but the best I ever got to the boat was a 6-pound bass that nearly put me into cardiac arrest with all the leaps he made before I managed to bring him alongside the boat. Let's face it--you usually aren't afforded too many mistakes with 4- and 6-lb.-test mono and still be able to claim victory. Most of the time, I'd only get to feel the fish for a brief spell after hookup, maybe survive a couple of hard runs and a leap or two, then kiss the prize goodbye as he either spit the hook or broke my line.

As for launching a boat without the plug being in, I've done that trick more times than I care to count--none recently, though (knock on wood). The most vivid account in my memory bank is of a trip I made one winter to Lake Anna with a Navy buddy. I just had parked the car and gotten out when my buddy hollered to tell me that tackle boxes were floating in the boat. So I hurriedly drove back down to the ramp and saved my sinking boat, but not before we both were wet and freezing. Even though we neither one had a change of clothing, we still went fishing but didn't stay long, because a cold wind made the situation unbearable.

And while throwing a few lures over the side after clipping the wrong part of my line during a retie, I've been lucky in that, as best I can remember, the lures involved always have been topwaters or floater-divers, so I never lost any.

Then, of course, there was the incident this past year when my partner, Rob, was scoring one fish after the other with a Pop R, while I simply kept thrashing the water. When I finally wised up, changed to a Pop R, and started catching fish, Rob's comment was, "I wondered how long it was going to take you to get the message."

I've also been guilty of beginning a run without first tying down my rods, but to date, I've managed to stop in time to prevent losing any over the side in that scenario. Instead, I've had to watch a few drop into the drink as I was trying to sort out a tangled cluster of them, and I also have "gracefully" kicked some over the side.

On more than one occasion, too, I have been known to be digging through a two-sided tackle box quickly and flip one side over without remembering to latch it first... well, you know the rest.

The one thing James talked about that I hope I never duplicate was the time he was running across the lake when he saw bass breaking the surface and decided to shut down immediately. He then ran up front and threw the trolling motor over without checking the speed. The still hefty forward movement of his boat, coupled with the trolling motor's speed when he hit the power button, sent him flying into the lake--under the watchful eyes of a host of onlookers.

I feel pretty certain that the natural first reaction of any angler who just has had such a moment is to look around and find out if anybody was watching. That's definitely true of me. If no one is looking, I more times than not will burst out laughing at myself.

There's just something different, though, when someone else is doing the laughing. That's why, whenever I've been a witness to someone else's misfortune, on the water or otherwise, I always try to avoid even smiling... when they can see me, at least.

James is safe in saying he hopes "I'm not the only fisherman to make these types of mistakes." It seems a relatively safe bet to me, based on my own experiences, that all of us who spend time on the water have had our share of moments when dumb things happened to us. If you've never had such a moment, you're truly blessed.