If one thing rings true about most fishing trips, it's that you never know what's going to happen from one time to the next. The short stories that follow are a testament to that fact.
I've purposely deleted all names. However, I assure you that none of these tales are mine. Accordingly, be equally assured that I cannot vouch for the authenticity of any statements made herein. I leave it to each of you to decide for yourself what you want to believe and/or dismiss as just a figment of someone's imagination.
At the very least, though, these tales/stories/whatever should serve as a distraction from the winter blues that may be affecting a few of you. I hope you enjoy.
One night when I was 15, my dad and I were night fishing at a local lake when a pickup showed up and started circling the lake. It made 20 or 30 trips around the 3-mile perimeter. My dad was a cop, so this kind of behavior immediately peaked his interest. There were no cellphones back then, so we just waited and watched. Suddenly, we saw the driver stop, pull a rolled-up carpet from the back of the truck, and toss it into the lake.
My dad didn't even reel up our lines; he and I just high-tailed it over there. The truck took off but not before Dad got the license-tag number. We dragged the carpet out of the lake, thinking a body surely would be inside it. However, Dad started laughing, then said, "Son, we hit the mother lode." Inside the carpet were nine rifles and shotguns.
We packed up all of them and headed into town to call the sheriff's office. Turned out the weapons weren't stolen as we suspected. Instead, a mad, jealous wife had decided to exact a little revenge on her two-timing hubby.
We never went night fishing again after that episode.
A friend and I were scouting out a golf course for some night fishing. As we approached the water's edge this particular night, we saw a weird shape in the water about 20 feet away from where we were standing. We "assumed" (and I urge you to remember what usually happens to people who make this mistake) it was just a goose or something. We decided to get a little closer, and then, for grins and giggles, asked, "What's up?" Imagine our fright when a voice answered.
Of all things, a dude was snorkeling for golf balls at 2 o'clock in the morning.
While night fishing from a canoe, with no moonlight, I heard a loud splash and saw something large in the water about 30 feet or so in front of me. It scared the crap out of me, so I started back-paddling as fast as I could go. Curiosity overcame me, though, and I just had to stop paddling long enough to switch on a light. The large object turned out to be a horse that had gotten out of its stable up the road.
I was fishing below a bridge when I heard a car screeching its tires moments before leaving the roadway and going airborne into the river just below me. I ran downstream and got there just as the occupants were getting out of the upside-down vehicle. I spent the next couple of hours helping a local ranger recover their belongings from the river. Would you believe, though, that the ranger then asked to see my creel and my license?
It was mid-morning on a Thursday, and I had this whole section of a river all to myself... or so I thought. I was engrossed in what I was doing until something caught my eye to the left. I looked up in time to see a half-dozen Indians in full authentic dress. These guys were quietly stalking through the woods with weapons in hand and wearing full war paint. Suddenly I felt like I had traveled back a few hundred years in history.
Just as I'm thinking to myself, "This can't be good," I hear someone back in the woods yell, "Cut!" The warriors stopped in their tracks, and I was asked to leave the area. It seems I quietly had become involved in a documentary that was being filmed about the Cherokee Indians.
Though the fishing was good, I was outnumbered, so I left.
I used to fish an old estate lake, which was rumored to be haunted. That all ended one very dark night, though, when I saw a shining white light coming through the trees toward me and what sounded like the thundering of horses hooves on the old road that led down to a long-demolished country house. I nearly had a heart attack.
As I would learn, the noise was coming--not from horses hooves--but from a caterpillar tracking through the trees to make an early start on some construction work the next morning.
One autumn night about 15 years ago, a friend and I were fishing a lake in London, England, under a bright, full moon. We had decided to pack it in when, in the midst of the misty night, I started spooking my friend with talk about the American Werewolf in London and how these conditions were similar to the opening scene.
As we loaded ourselves up and started walking in silence (due to the old-school rod bags around our necks), there was this sudden THUMP just in front of us and a crashing noise in the bushes. Then, from the marsh behind us, came this crashing sound and heavy snorting noises, which prompted me to shout, "Werewolf!"
That's all it took. Absolute hysteria ensued and survival instinct took over, as we started running in random directions. All of a sudden, I was jerked back by something around my neck, causing me to gag violently and fall on my back. I hollered for my friend, who was screaming and running blindly to get away.
After a few seconds, I got up, with heart in my mouth, about the same time as my friend finally found me. We stood in silence for a second or two before my friend turned on his headlamp. That light revealed that, while running around in blind panic, I had encountered a branch, which had caught the strap on my rod bag, jerking me backward and nearly strangling me. My friend, meanwhile, had mud all over him.
We later discovered that the noises which spooked both of us had been deer... so the joke was on me.
I was camping at a little state lake with my buddy and his girlfriend. My friend and I were on a rock pier night fishing because the game warden had stopped by earlier and told us they had shocked up a big bass from the very spot where we were camping. I was really pumped about that news and was flinging my big, black musky jitterbug with great enthusiasm.
After nearly a half-hour of listening to that hypnotic plop, plop, plop, though, I was about to nod off when, suddenly, I heard a splash that sounded like someone had thrown a brick in the water and felt a huge tug on the line. The fight was on!
The adrenaline dumped immediately, and I was standing in the water, with my rod buried, trying to keep her from jumping. There was a bright moon out, but I couldn't see anything because of all the trees along that part of the shoreline. The fish was stripping drag and severely straining my rod--to the point where it eventually broke.
I was busy trying to pull the fish towards me when I realized my line was heading up. No matter what I did, my line just kept going up, up, up. It was about the same time I realized my line was well above the water that I saw a huge owl flying across the sky--with what appeared to be my line following it.
By now, my buddy had found a spotlight and lit up the sky, which proved conclusively I indeed had hooked an owl in the foot after it tried to pick up my jitterbug. I still was holding onto my broken rod, trying to figure out what to do, when the owl crash-landed into some blackberry bushes along the shoreline. We were discussing a game plan when the owl suddenly jumped out of the bushes and took off, leaving my bait tangled in the bushes.
All of this happened in probably no more than 30 seconds or so, but it felt like a lifetime.
Many years ago, a buddy and I decided to go on a camping/fishing trip. We spent the first day fishing and, that evening, sat around a campfire, getting plastered. Finally, my buddy decided he was going to sleep in the johnboat, which we had pulled up to the bank. The last thing I remembered was watching him stumble off toward the boat.
I awoke the next morning, still by the fire. When I went to wake my buddy, I discovered the boat had drifted out into the lake. The anchor, however, was on the bank, so I simply pulled the boat in. My buddy, though, was nowhere to be found. I started calling his name but got no response. Then came the sinking realization he probably had gone to sleep in the boat and, sometime during the night, likely had fallen overboard.
In a panic, I ran and jumped into the truck to go and get help (this incident happened before the widespread use of cellphones). So, here I was, hauling down this gravel road in the middle of nowhere, sliding around curves, still feeling half-blitzed, when I hear this tapping on the back window of the truck. I glance back to see my buddy yelling, "Hey, where the hell are we going in such a rush?"
No comments:
Post a Comment