The man wanted to know if Palaniuk had lost a pair of sonar units while competing at Lake Champlain, where strong winds toward the end of the final day had made for a rough ride to the weigh-in.
"No," replied Palaniuk, "but I know exactly whose they are."
The 10-inch Humminbird Solix and 12-inch Humminbird Helix belonged to Seth Feider. They had been knocked off his boat after spearing a wave on the bumpy ride to weigh-in.
"I didn't really stuff the wave," said Feider. "When I clipped it, I got spray in my face, and I kept getting spray in my face. I assumed my graphs still were hanging by the cables over the side of the boat."
When the spray finally went away, Feider figured his front graphs were gone...likely 100 feet down at the bottom of Lake Champlain.
Actually, however, they eventually washed ashore at Isle La Motte, a big island on the northern end of Lake Champlain. A lot of stuff washes ashore there, especially after strong winds. The sonar units still were bracketed together, just like they were when ripped off Feider's bow.
"That whole setup weighs about 15 or 20 pounds," said Palaniuk. "And somehow, I guess they float. I gave the kid who found them a hundred bucks. He had a power cord for the Helix, and it still works. The Solix, though, had some water in it.
"The whole story blew me away. The fact that those two sonar units would float ashore, that one of them still worked, and that a guy I had met at the 2011 Classic would be the link to recovering them was just unbelievable."
Feider was blown away by the story, too. "The odds of that happening have to be a million-to-one," he said.
Just goes to prove you never should underestimate the exponential power of the bass-fishing network. In this case, it performed a miracle of sorts.
The original version of this article (slightly different from the above) appeared under the byline of Steve Wright of Bassmaster.
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