[saltysully]

Went to one of the lakes in Marsh island. The tide was very flat and the water was muddy. When I got in the lake, the wind was pushing against the left bank. Got tired fighting the wind, so let the boat just drift up against the bank. I was kind of inthe middle of the grass. As I'm fishing, not more than 1 foot from the boat, I look down, and there's a red that weighed at least 25-30 pounds. I had just reeled in my fresh shrimp, and only had the shell left. I dipped the shell in front of the red a few times, and he gradually moved away with it. When I set the hook, he burned up about 30 feet of line in about 10 seconds. Pretty exciting. I guess I got a little too excited and set the hook and unfortunately broke the line. But it was fun. The interesting thing is when I was watching this red who was actually feeding, I could see how he feds. He almost kind of flounders very, very slowly to the left and right I guess cause thats the way they feed. He almost looked lothargic.
After catching the red, I noticed the boat was kind of stuck against the mud and the grass so I was able to push it off with my push pole, with some effort, from the bank.
Anyway, I thought the technique of letting my boat drift against the bank and fish was a good one, but I was in for a surprise.
I moved on to the next fishing spot and let the boat drift against the bank, and fished the grass for a while, then decided to move on. I pulled out the push pole and was not able to budge the boat. The waves had wedged my 2000 pound boat up on the soft mud. I tried to get out with my troll motor (80lbs)...no good. I started my big motor. and the alarm went off cause the water was too shallow. I tried the push pole again, then realized, non of this is going to work.. Not one person was in the lake. Finally, I used the push pole to see how deep the water was and found it was maybe a foot, so I stepped out on the mud, which had that rough grass on the top. I used the grass for a footing, got to the back of the boat in the water and pushed and rocked the boat to unwedge it from the mud. Finally the boat started to rock, the waves kicked in a little to help it rock more and after about 15 minutes of pushing I was free.
Unfortunately, the alarm still went off on my big motor, which I shut as soon as the alarm went on, while testing to see if alarm would go on. I finally realized, I had to wait for it to really cool off and I noted that the water inlet had some grass stuck in it. Once I cleared that, the motor started w/ no alarm going off.
What an exciting day.