Highlight of My Fishing Day Wasn't What I Wanted...But Oh Well

When I launched my boat at West Neck about 6:30 this morning, I expected to catch a few fish, even if they didn't prove to be worthy of writing home about, and I managed to do just that. However, none of them individually or all collectively were what I would call the highlight of my day. As a matter of fact, that "highlight," as you will, didn't come until I arrived home this afternoon.

I had unloaded my van, moved everything into the garage, and immediately had set about updating a replacement lure that I plan to put into action at the open tournament this Sunday (yes, truth is I had to leave one behind today) . All was going well until I pulled out one of my bigger tackleboxes to retrieve some of the items I needed for the update. Even that went swell, too. Things quickly went south, however, when I grabbed the bigger box to put it back from where I had gotten it.

There was just one problem. I had absent-mindedly forgotten to secure one of the latches on that bigger box...and, as a result, I dumped nearly all of the contents onto the garage floor. No one could have been any more surprised than yours truly when I didn't blow my top. Reckon my self-control could be attributed to a couple of factors, starting with the fact I had no one to blame but myself. And secondly, the incident brought back a painful reminder from the distant past in which I had pulled a similar trick. The only difference that other time was the fact it happened on the water, and I still remember ever so vividly that I immediately stopped and looked around to see if anybody else on the water had been watching when I pulled that earlier trick.

On that occasion, I just had purchased a huge, new double-sided case to hold my giant collection of Charlie Brewer slider worms. I just had opened the case and grabbed one of the worms, hurriedly put it on the slider hook, and was putting the case back when the only half-snapped latch turned loose, dumping the entire contents of one side on the front deck and floor of my boat.

I wasn't about to take the necessary time out of my fishing day to put all those worms back. Instead, I looked around and found a large plastic bag in one of the storage boxes and just threw everything in there for the time being. It was two or three days later before I got around to restoring all the worms to their rightful places.

It has been a lot of years since I pulled that earlier trick, but the memory of it returned with blinding speed this afternoon. And you know what? I couldn't help pausing for a moment and chuckling to myself. I've always said that a person has a problem if he/she can't laugh at themselves once in a while. Besides, just like the earlier time, I managed to catch a few fish today, so what the hey? Right?