This fella lived only a mile or so from Castaic Lake, but his company bass club was having a small tournament at San Vicente near San Diego. He spent the night before with his in-laws in Oceanside and drove to the lake early the next morning.
As he explained, "Many lakes in California are only open from sunrise to sunset, and you have to get in line at the gate. This line can be several hundred yards long, so all you can do is take your place in line and deal with the mayhem when they finally let you in."
The angler used this time in line to ready his boat for launch, making sure everything was set to go. There was just one problem: He couldn't find the ignition key to the boat.
"For nearly an hour, I frantically was looking for the key," he said. "Over and over, I looked everywhere and finally found it just before the line started moving. Little did I know that the stress of what just had happened was going to set the table for some truly dumb stuff."
Turns out this angler was fishing solo that day. The ramp being used had very little slope to it, and as he started backing, he couldn't help noticing the boat was showing no signs of floating off the trailer. He kept backing further and further, until finally deciding to pull up and go have a look at the situation. It was then that he saw he had left the hold-down straps on the rear of the boat.
Having solved this problem, the angler soon was in the water and ready to pull away from the dock...or so he thought. As he pours some gas to the outboard, water sloshes up through the floor drain. Seems he had neglected to install the drain plug. He immediately switched on both bilge pumps and contemplated his next move.
"I stripped off my shirts and leaned over the back of my 19-foot Ranger to stuff the plug in, with water sloshing up into my ear," he noted.
Once he had put all his layers back on and tucked in, he assumed he finally was ready to get to fishing. However, once again, water sloshed up through the floor drain when he applied gas to the outboard. As luck would have it, he had stuck the drain plug into one of the livewell ports. There was no other choice but to strip down to the waist once again and take another stab at putting the plug in the correct hole.
Finally, it was time to fish...even if the angler was a bit frazzled by then.
"I eventually managed to catch one nice fish in the afternoon," said the angler, which earned me a modest check and sort of brought me solace, considering how the day had started. Looking back, I had pulled off the trifecta of dumb rookie moves...all in one short morning."
Bass pro Tom Redington has his own "blooper" moment to talk about. Click on this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5t7ELSOVdg) and take a look for yourself.
And then there's this note from a fellow pro who happened to see Tom Redington's fail:
"Your screw up, Tom, was surely a bonehead move at the time, but it didn't have much bearing on the final outcome. In my case, I had two BFL wins in a row, with an Everstart win sandwiched between...all within five weeks. The next tournament was a two-day BFL Super Tournament.
"On the first day, I had around 22 lbs. of smallies early and decided to quit for the day. My crankin' battery, though, failed to start the motor, so I had to unhook everything and wire them all together to get enough juice to start.
"As we were headed back for weigh-in, I looked down at the boat's clock and saw that we still had 15 minutes. And since my co-angler was still one fish short, I stopped at one of my honey holes, so he could fill his limit. In about 5 minutes, he boated his final keeper, and we headed on in.
"The check-in official, however, noted that we were six or seven minutes late. I had failed to allow for those 10 minutes it had taken me to rewire things to start the big motor. The boat's clock had been off that whole time, and my cellphone was packed away because we were running in 4-footers."
With the passage of time, drama occasionally turns into comedy, but the last fella here still isn't laughing about his incident. In his own words, "It makes my blood boil every time I stop and think about what happened."
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