That's the question an angler asked his buddy one day on Smith Mountain Lake (right). They were on a day of fun fishing in the buddy's 1990s model Ranger, which, equipped with a late model 225 Optimax, ran pretty well. It was about mid-day when the back-seater had noticed an overwhelming smell of gas and asked his buddy if he smelled it too.
"Ah, that's normal," said the buddy...unconvincingly.
About an hour later, the angler's alarm system was at a point where he no longer was believing what his buddy had said. He knew something had to be wrong. The tipping point came while the back-seater had a box of spinnerbaits open, laying beside him on the back deck.
"I opened the lid to check on the smell," he explained, "and saw fuel leaking. At the same time, I accidentally kicked the box of spinnerbaits into the battery compartment, and somehow they bridged the two adjacent batteries, causing a fire to erupt. Fortunately, we got it extinguished quickly and found someone to tow us back to the ramp. The culprit in all this was a cracked fuel line.
"It took only about two minutes to put out the fire," noted the back-seater, but it felt like an eternity."
It was 1992, and we had launched my Procraft at Presque Isle and ran maybe 10 miles to an area called the "Ws" in Lake Erie (left). Morning was like glass, but with a small-craft advisory starting around noon. The plan was to fish until 10 a.m., then run back and fish the bay.
"Around 9 o'clock, though," said the boater, "we could see the lake was changing colors from all the wind and immediately started back. Only had gone about a mile when it really got rough and ended up taking almost two hours to make it to the ramp. We had to power up each wave, then surf down the back side.
"We had good rain gear, but it was May, and Erie still was cold, and we were soaked from running west on a big northwest wind. When we were at the bottom of the waves, all you could see was water...darn scary, if you ask me," noted the boater.
Many years ago, when Toledo Bend (right) still had big tree stumps in the water, a non-boater drew a boater with a 21-foot Champion bass rig in a Red Man Tournament trail event. They were the No. 2 boat that day, with plans to head up north, where the boater boasted "he was on some big heads." Only problem...besides the big tree stumps, that is...was that they had to go through two really sharp, back-to-back turns in the boat lane.
As it turned out, they missed one of those turns...thanks to the watchful eyes of the non-boater who happened to notice a string of bass boats peeling off in a 90-degree direction from where they were going.
"I immediately had a strange feeling something wasn't right," said the non-boater, who subsequently grabbed the boater by the arm and told him to shut it down...which he did.
"What's the problem?" asked the boater.
"Do you know where you are?" returned the non-boater.
"Sure," said the boater in a high-pitched voice...about the same time they hit a tree stump. Simultaneously, his eyes got about as big as silver dollars, as he looked and saw the string of boats running north in the boat lane about a mile away.
It took about a half-hour to idle back to the boat lane. Along the way, they hit 15 stumps that were just mere inches below the surface.
"Trust me," said the non-boater. "I know we had angels in the boat with us that day."
A non-boater was fishing a B.A.S.S. Federation northern divisional on Lake Ontario (left) back in 2003. His boater was a guy from Ohio with a Skeeter ZX 200. They were running into a bay when the non-boater noticed an old wooden Chris Craft cruiser running about a mile in front of them.
"I could see the big rollers coming off the back," said the non-boater, "but my partner didn't (or chose to ignore them), and we hit the first one at about 70 mph. We launched off it and caught the second one with the Skeeter's stern, which kicked up the transom into a nearly vertical posture. When we came down, both windshields got broken, both GPSs were ripped off, and all the boater's rods came through the windshield, cutting up his face. I ended up breaking four of my rods.
"Most of all," added the non-boater, "I remember the wall of water that came rushing at us. When we surfaced, the water in the boat was level with the consoles."
The boater had no hotfoot but had let go of the throttle when they hit the first roller and grabbed the wheel with both hands.
In the words of the non-boater, "He was so shook up he hardly could fish the rest of the day, even though he was leading for his state at the time."
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