TheBanyanTree: Reel Father's Day Fun

[B Drummond]

My Father's Day this year was memorable in more ways than one --  reely fun, 
in fact.

First, I was showered with gifts that I truly needed (no funky ties, nothing 
with, "World's Greatest Dad" written on it, no strange gadgets that I would 
never use, etc)

Second, my oldest daughter knows very well how much enamored I have become of 
fishing lately and made it possible that I had an afternoon appointment with 
one of the best fishing guides/partners in the entire area, on, arguably, the 
best fishing lake around these parts.  

She bought me the hottest lures and matching tackle for said fishing trip and 
even transported me to this famous fishing venue in her car, staying by my 
side as I boarded the "SS BassAintGottaChance" and bid me "Bon Voyage" from 
dockside.  It was a thrill and honor to be doted on by my daughter this way, 
to say the least. The grin on my face, as I basked in this paternal glory, 
must have been priceless, no doubt.  The buttons on my shirt almost popped 
off as I looked back on said, magnanimous daughter waving from the dock.

I was the one that caught the first of 29 bass between us twoo that day.  I 
figured, as I boated the first scrappy, 14-incher in the first few minutes of 
fishing, that I was in for a day of unequalled fishing luck. But immediately 
following that lucky strike is where things began to tack toward the slightly 
awry.

I watched in agony as my guide and fishing partner boated fish after fish 
as I whiled away the hours making fruitless cast after cast into the 
fishiest-looking places this side of fish heaven.  And all I caught was water 
weeds,  while baking in the sauna known as a late June afternoon in Georgia. 
The sun was merciless -- almost as merciless as my luck.

Later, after all I managed catching was two sardine sized bass with the 
amazing, unmitigated gaul to strike a lure bigger than they were, we motored 
up into a cove that my partner and guide said should, based on past 
experiences, produce a lunker -- even if, like I, one's luck had gone sour.  I 
couldn't wait.

The entrance to the cove was protected by a small stretch of water that, being 
so shallow, required my services as paddleman.  After negociating the 
shallows via my paddling prowess, we found ourselves bounded by a shoreline 
of reeds on the left side, a dock to the right in the distance as we drifted 
slowly into a body of water that appeared to me that it didn't belong to this 
lake at all -- the reason being the color of the water.  

The lake, heretofore, was clear for the most part, looking pure enough to 
drink, in fact.  This narrow stretch of water bore close resemblance to a mud 
hole.  A ruddy, mucky, foam-crested, Georgia-clay-stained orange that looked 
like it could hold nothing but the bravest of mudsuckers, swimming with 
snorkels and keeping their gills tightly shut. 

"You sure about this spot?"  I asked my trusty guide.

"Absolutely," was his reply.

So I made my best cast up into the cove, just to the right of the reeds as my 
guide did likewise, placing his lure to the left of the dock.

"Caught the largest fish ever caught in this lake just about where you cast 
just now," my guide said as he concentrated on making his lure dance 
enticingly on the surface of the water.

At that moment something sucked my lure under the water with a gentle, "plop"
causing a slight wave and a tug on my line.

I did the right thing:  I pushed my rod tip toward the fish and let him take 
the lure for a moment, took the slack out of the line, and prepared to set the 
hook in what I hoped to be a larger fish than my guide had previously caught 
in this unlikely looking haven for big 'uns.

I did the wrong thing:  I snatched hard to set the hook, something that must 
be done when fishing with the type of lures we used, and fell sprawling 
backward as I lost my balance and landed on the bottom of the boat quite 
ungracefully, I might add.

I quickly rightened myself and reeled franctically to take up the slack and 
boat the monster of a fish that had to be on the other end of my line.  But 
nothing resisted and I saw, dejectedly, my lure bobbing on the surface again.  
The fish had spit out the lure without getting hooked.

In the meantime I became keenly aware that my guide had developed an agitation 
of spirit.  

Said agitation expressed itself with these words,  "My reel!  my 
reel! You kicked my reel out of the boat when you fell backward and it went 
underwater before I could grab it!"   

You'd a thought that I had just drowned his only child.

"I didn't mean to,"  I pleaded.

"Of course, you didn't," he said with the same look of horror on his face, 
"but I can't leave that reel down there.  I paid hundreds of dollars for it! 
It's the best reel I own.  We got to get it out of there," he said pointing 
to the mucky water that held the fish that sucked my lure under, that I did 
the right thing and gave slack and tried to set the hook in too hard, that 
made me do the wrong thing, causing me to loose my balance and fall backward 
as my feet flew into the air and kicked his multihundred dollar rod and reel 
over the side of the boat, that caused him to repeat, "My reel!, My reel" so 
loud you could here it in at least 5 Alabama counties to the west of the 
lake.

Frankly, there was something about the way he said, "We . . .",  that 
disturbed me.

I quickly grabbed another rod and reel equipped with a nice hook on the end of 
the line and rammed it down into the water in an attempt to fish out the lost 
rod and reel.  He grabbed my reel and pulled it back into the boat. 

"No! not that way! he said.  "Can't take a chance of dislodging it or burying 
it in the mud."

I looked at him with a "What next?" expression.

"We gotta' go in and get it,"  he said.

I must have had that same expression on my face because, after a short pause,  
he expounded further,

"We gotta go in the water and get it.  I can't leave that reel down there."

There was that "We. . ." word again.

"We?" I said, looking down again into what looked like a mud hole that I 
wouldn't have dared jump in even in my wildest youth.

He hesitated a moment and then said, "I can't leave THAT reel down there.  
I'll go," and bent over slightly to unlace his shoestrings.

"No! I'll go, I said, "Afterall, it was me that kicked the thing overboard."

After taking my wallet and other items out of my pants, my shoes and socks 
off, taking a final look at the water and screwing up my courage another 
notch, I eased myself over the front of the boat and dropped down into the 
lukewarm, ocher-tinted sludge.  I fully expected to be sucked asunder and 
disappear into the great red unknown below and prayed that I had remembered 
to make my last life insurance payment on time.

To my surprise I surfaced intact.   After the shock of still being alive, I 
set about collecting my wits.  

Let's see, I thought,  Ignore how uncomfortable I am, ignore how I don't 
really want to do this, ignore the fear of a big ol' hungry moma gator 
lurking in an ambush mode below,  mesmorized by my white toes dancing in the 
mucky water just above her snout and get to the task at hand. I instinctively 
grabbed the front of the boat again to lift myself out of the water.

"How deep is it?" my fishing guide asked.

I stretched my body slowly into as vertical a position as possible and my toes 
dipped into the semi-solid muck on the bottom.  I screwed my courage up 
another notch and said,  "It's about 4 to 5 feet deep, I'd say."

"Good! you should be able to feel the rod if you get above it," he said.

"Hope so," was my reply as I probed gingerly with my toes and came across 
something solid, which made me recoil from it first,  then realize I hadn't 
lost any toes, and then probe again.  It felt like a rod.

"I feel somethin," I said.   

My guide's face lost a little of the shadow of gloom it held earlier. "Yeah?" 
he said, his neck craning over the edge of the boat.

I have long toes.  Proudly, they make an acceptable set of fingers in a 
pinch.  I grabbed the item with one of them and lifted my leg to where I 
could grab the item with my hand.  It was not the rod and reel. It was a 
stick, a short limb that had fallen into the water sometime back.

After countless futile attempts, rendering nothing for my probing but limbs,  
in several areas that we thought were the "right spot",  I finally felt 
something like a rod again.  I worked my toes along its length and felt what 
I thought were eyelets and then, Voila! the face of the reel!  I grabbed it 
with my toes firmly and lifted it to my hands.

As I lifted the rod and reel from the water, it was truly a hallelujah moment. 

The expression on my guide's face was that of deepest gratitude and relief, 
like a father seeing his child saved before his eyes, from the most dire of 
circumstances. The expression on mine was probably near the same, no doubt.  
I really think he might, for the briefest of moments, have forgotten how 
clumsy his fishing partner had been in the first place. 

But I still had to extricate myself from the mudhole, which I did by swimming 
reluctantly to shore and trudging through the sludge until I placed my feet, 
clothes sopping wet and orange tinted, on the bank. Only then was I sure that 
I wouldn't end up as tablefare for what had, in my imagination at least,  been 
no less than a dozen gators lurking somewhere below those sticks that I had 
to probe in my quest for the irreplaceable, multi-hundred dollar rod and 
reel.

Believe me, any difficulties, dangers, and turns of luck subsequent to 
that reel fishing expediton in the mudhole were inconsequential.  

I and the reel were saved.

Oh, Hallelujah!



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