Lost at Sea

Call it fate, destiny, or just plain bad luck, but no matter how hard you plan things, sometimes they just never work out quite right. The same is true with a well planned out fishing trip. You can have every tiny detail planned out, but when you hit those unpredictable waters it can all go into disarray. This post is in response to my last post labeled "Getting Ready". As you will see, even though I had the "getting ready" part down pat, the trip still did not go anywhere near planned!

As you recall, I had made all the food, gotten all the poles ready, checked the boat, and was merely just waiting on my buddies to arrive to start a "wonderful" day of fishing. My friends finally arrived and off we went. The trip was still rolling along smoothly as we pulled into the boat ramp. We launched the boat and excitement ran through us as we were preparing for the long ride to the snapper hole.

I flipped in a new cd I had burned, and we cranked up the volume on the boat and began cruising out to the coordinates for the snapper hole. I estimated the ride to be around 29 miles and with the way the water was rolling I figured the trip to be about a 30 to 35 minute ride. After riding for more than an hour I realized that my calculations where way off.

I fiddled around with my gps to come to the realization that we were 42 miles off shore, and still 2 miles away from our destination. I bit the bullet and pushed the throttle down to get us to our new 44 miles out fishing hole. As we began to approach the coordinates on the gps, my worst fears came to life: I looked on the horizon and saw five boats not too far away. Sure enough, 44 miles offshore and in the same exact dang spot that I wanted to fish were five other boats. With all the water to fish, what are the odds of that?

I consulted with my friends on what to do, and we decided it best to just simply turn around and head back in to some familiar spots we had. Not only did we burn alot of unnecessary fuel, but we were all extremely upset at the fact that we couldn't fish these new spots. We toiled around the waters most of the day without much luck. We tried to stay optimistic and keep in mind that this day of fishing beat a day of school or work. I became extremely pessimistic, and then one of my buddies quoted his favorite fishing quote by Chuck Clark, a fishing writer:

Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn.

This quote by Chuck Clark pretty much summed up our trip. It was not the extravagant trip we had imagined. We did not pull up to shore with blisters on our hands from reeling in so many fish, but none the less it was a good time on the water. So when you say you have a bad fishing trip do you mean that: you went out and spent all day in the blazing hot sun and left red as a lobster, all the while not catching a single thing, or do you mean that you got to spend all day on the water without a worry in the world, all the while escaping the horrible confines of work or school. So looking back, although I say it was a bad day of fishing, it was still a good day in general.