What's the Worst Thing a Non-Boater Ever Did to You?

Ask that question in any group setting, and you're apt to hear a large variety of responses. Here's one I read about recently, which reminded me of something that happened a few years ago to a good friend of mine.

The incident I read about involved a young tournament angler who belonged to a club that made annual trips to Canada, where the boaters paired up with non-boaters for a week of fun fishing and camaraderie. In the third year of those trips, this young fella paired up with someone new to the club and looking to buy his first boat.

"By this point," explained the young man, "I had learned a lot about the lake...had spots/areas/techniques/etc. all mapped out. Anyway, as you'd expect with a group trip like this, we'd all talk fishing when we weren't actually fishing, and my non-boater constantly would frame our success his own way. In short, he would try to take credit for everything I had done."

We all know the kind. He would say things like, "Yeah, I found this hump...I found this school of smallmouth...I ran out to the islands...I figured out they wanted a drop shot, etc." It went on like this for the whole week.

Said the young boater, "I guess his ego couldn't handle the fact that a 19-year-old kid was running the show."

In any event, the club members all went back to the same lake the next year, and here was that guy in a new boat, fishing all the spots...literally, every single one of them...he had learned from the young angler the previous year. It was so blatant that all the members noticed what was happening.

That aha moment brings me to the one I mentioned earlier, involving my boater friend. He had been fishing tournaments all season long with the same non-boater when he decided to take a break from the action. The non-boater immediately paired up with another boater, and they proceeded to walk away with a payday at the first event they fished together.

That win for them was OK with my friend, but how they did it was a different matter. Turns out my friend was on hand for that weigh-in, and when he asked his former backseater where he and his new partner had fished, his response was, "Our spots."

My friend followed up with, "Which ones?"

"All of them," came the reply from my friend's former backseater.

Needless to say, that exchange ended a friendship. As the old saying goes, however, "The devil is in the details." And what you need to understand here is how far out of his way my friend had gone to make the tournament situation work with his former backseater.

For example, he let the backseater shower and stay overnight at his personal residence before a tournament. He also fixed breakfast for him the next morning and supplied a sandwich for tournament day. And further, on many occasions, he made up the difference when the backseater didn't have sufficient funds in his pockets to cover his share of tournament expenses. Get the picture yet?

My friend's wife and I tried to impress on him that he was being played for a fool, but he refused to listen. The sad reality here, though, is that, more often than not, my friend today usually fishes solo.