Should Have Known Something Was Wrong

That was the take of an angler who was going to fish a club tournament as a non-boater. The boater whose name he had drawn wasn't very popular, but he had no clue as to why. Had he known what was in store for him that day, he might have entertained thoughts about calling in sick at the last minute.

Said this angler, "The boater called me a couple of days before the tournament and asked that I pick him up. He also explained that I would have to use my truck to pull his boat because he didn't have a tow vehicle. I knew this fella was a bit down on his luck, so I decided to cut him some slack."

Unfortunately, as the non-boater would learn later, there was more to this situation. Seems that the G3 boat had a couple of holes in the hull, and, as a result, the automatic bilge pump would come on "from time to time"...which meant every five minutes or so. It also didn't pump out the side. Instead, it shot a fountain of water into the air off the port side of the transom.

Subsequently, explained the non-boater, "I had to keep remembering not to stand on that side when I needed to take a pee.

"I will give him credit for one thing, though," allowed the non-boater. "When he started catching fish on a Chug Bug (I know someone else who likes that old bait), he was kind enough to loan me one. The only problem: He never put me in a position to cast where the fish were.

"I did manage to catch a keeper on a shakey head with a trick worm in the area where he had thrown the Chug Bug," but then we left to fish docks the rest of the day, which is about all the ever does," said the non-boater. "Immediately, he started getting strikes but couldn't get hooked up with a fish. I soon became convinced that he was getting bluegill bites instead of bass bites but just kept that thought to myself."

The non-boater stayed quiet as long as he could. It wasn't until the boater started having a tantrum and screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs after every miss that the backseater pointed out they were within about 50 yards of people's homes, and he might want to tone it down a bit. The tantrums, however, continued throughout the rest of the day. That wasn't all, either.

"He kept positioning the boat where I couldn't get a cast into the good areas under the docks or in the boat slips," said the non-boater, "so I just started fishing wherever I could get a cast. I ended up with five keepers, and he never caught a single fish from the docks. He got so frustrated at one point that he told me to get on the trolling motor."

"I'm not fishing any more," came his retort, as he plopped into the driver's seat and started sulking. "I'm tired of this ****!"

The non-boater promptly caught a keeper fish on the first cast, and the boater quickly jumped back into the front seat. As the non-boater returned to the backseat, he couldn't help thinking, "At least, I won't have to fish with him again until next year."

All marriages aren't made in heaven, and neither are all tournament partnerships. In some cases, it takes a while before you realize it wasn't a good idea. Other times, as in this example, you know it from the start.