Originally Posted by duck enticer
Thought I would share my misfortunes with you fellows.....I posted the same on the sportsman this morning.
After a long hiatus from saltwater fishing I thought it was time to go try some of my honey holes.....Being that they are in the shallow marsh I usually start catching the Red fish pretty good in Late April-August. On the fight card was my good fishing buddy who can not swim and my sister who is a super trooper, I will explain the super trooper thing later.
The wind forecast looked good enough, ENE winds about 6-8 knots in the morning, switching to SE at 10-12 knots in the afternoon. Good enough to allow me to get to my spots.
We start out toward Rockefeller only to run into immediate trouble when a vehicle in front of a line of 20 vehicles on Hwy. 13 is doing 30 mph. The vehicle behind the slow one is a big old rig with a trailer....he's not passing. To top it off it is foggy. Long story short we follow these goombas for about 10 miles till they get to the T and go left. We were making good time again when all of a sudden on Hwy. 82 a vehicle in front of us is wanting to pull off of the hwy......Only thing is he can't figure where he wants to pull off, so we go through the tap the brake lights and vary your speed from 15-35 mph thing for about 2 miles! It was torturous.
Not a big deal, I am patient. We launch the boat (no catastrophe here) and are on our way to catch some bait. We get to the bait spot and I don't see much, but I've got to try right. First cast with the cast net catches a 3 foot gar which proceeded to thrash and tear a human head sized hole in my net! No big deal, still can catch bait. Catch about 2 dozen mullets and off to the hole.
Get to the hole. Tide is up all the way. The entrance to my hole is almost completely silted up! I skid the boat over a sandbar and make it into the cut. This cut was wide open last summer, but it is not going to last long. Immediately when I entered the cut I noticed the lack of fish....I mean nothing. No bait fish, no big head wakes from reds, maybe a few Garfish, thats it! Long story short back here, we fish for 2 hours, covering about 2 miles and nada! Well, no big deal I've got other spots.
We head back out to another cut and proceed to look. We were in a long and winding cut as we were coming up to a bend I notice a bay boat come flying around a curve on the left side of the canal....I shut it down and immediately move to the right, (Road rules), this guy tries to go his left at the same time, while on half plane! As we pass within 10' of each other he is smiling......Thank God we didn't collide. Wheewwwweee! After this experience we continue to scour over 3-5 square miles of marsh for reds only to avail nothing! I was at my wit's end with the reds, so we decided to salvage the trip by catching some crabs.
We found a weir and starting catching some crabs. We caught about 5 dozen and figured that was enough, that it was time to head home. Here we go! While we were crabbing I had left my boat floating on one side of the weir, while we crabbed the other. Well, I get back to my boat and there is a good bit of water in the motor well.....hmmmm, wonder how that got there. After I re-rigged my bilge (Automatic float switch type) and removed the water we were on our way.
By this time it was about 1:00 and the wind was blowing pretty good (13 knots out of the ESE). I knew a back way, through the marsh to get to the launch, but I figured we would do fine in the gulf. Done it with ease plenty of times. When we get to the gulf the waves have gotten steep and close together....we only have a couple of miles to the entrance of the boat launch canal, so no big deal. We are moving right along when I look back at the motor well and my battery is almost floating.....Holy! Immediately I tell my sister and buddy to get on the left side of the boat, since I was quartering waves and they were coming in from right to left. As we moved a little weight to the left water came gushing in from the left side of the boat.....In the blink of an eye I was standing in water. The drivers console was about 5 foot up from the back of the boat, so that gives you an idea how much water was in the back. I hollered at my buddies. "Get to the front".....They both urgently ran to the front, my sister on the deck and my buddy right behind the deck. I had no choice but to throttle up to keep the back of the boat from submerging. This is where the waves started beating the Tar out of my buddy and sister. I was moving a flat bottom boat 30 mph in a steady 3 foot stacked wave chop in the gulf! Every wave that we jumped my sister and buddy were bouncing in the air, but I had to keep that boat horizontal or it was all over........Within about 3 minutes I was ankle deep in water, I dared to look back at the motor well fearing I might turn to salt, only to find the battery and the gas tank floating and the top of boat even with the waterline! We made it to a calm cove not a minute later........
Wow.......that was heavy. First thing my sister says...."Chris, I think I broke my elbow". We looked at her elbow and it was already the size of a Softball. I wanted to die for putting my sister and buddy through that. The bigger problem was to bail the water though, as the floor was now completely filled with it. Oh yeah, the bilge was running the whole time while this was happening. Couldn't keep up.
Luckily we were at a spot where we could go through the marsh to make it to the boat launch. I got my buddy to come towards the back of the boat and plane it off while I pulled the plug. After about 30 minutes of running on plane while bailing we got all the water out and we were almost at the boat launch. The boat had a huuuggggeeee gushing hole though. I figure water was coming in at least as fast as it was leaving through the plug hole in the transom! When we got to the launch we had not a minute to spare before this boat was going to sink. I dropped my buddy and sister off at the launch, my buddy cranked the truck and backed the trailer down......by the time I got the boat on the trailer I was ankle deep again. He pulled the boat and trailer out of the drink and the horrific experience was over. We could now breathe.
We didn't talk much on the truck ride home, it was only me apologizing and saying I will pay the doctor's bills. On our way back the toneau cover on my truck peeled open and a couple of my fishing buckets flew out of the bed. We just laughed.
Hope ya'll had a better weekend.
Edit: My motor got clogged with silt and stopped peeing, so I had to remove the cowling. I also had to remove the tell tale hose on my motor to blow out the debris. Without thinking, I removed the hose and the piece of plastic (re-stricter) which joins the cowling to the hose fell in the water. It goes on and on.
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04-21-2010, 10:48 AM
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