| The Fog | |
|
by Jim Hurt
So
we got ready and launched the boat. We
headed out to the first area of reefs we had picked out on the chart to try
first. These were easy to find out
in the open water. Fred had a brand
new compass I had given him for his birthday, but that wasn’t how we found
them on that day. GPS had not yet
been invented, Loran had been, but we didn't have that either. The reefs were surrounded by a bunch of boats.
We just headed for them.
Jigs
and minnows, tear drops with minnows, fuzzy grubs with minnows, just about
anything with a minnow on it was the bait of choice over these reefs.
We tried some of each for about three hours without a bite.
We moved from reef to reef and from group of boats to group of boats.
We saw no one catching fish. The
air was damp and cold and the fishing was horrendous.
We tried every jig and minnow combo known to Al Linder and mankind.
Al Linder is a famous walleye fishermen and . . . oh, never mind!
"Fred,
this is terrible. That line 'It
doesn't get any better than this', isn’t the first thing that comes to mind
this morning. How could things be worse?”
About that time, the sky opened up and it started raining real hard.
"Jim,
I think that answers your question!" Fred said with a sadistic-sounding
chuckle. "You got any bright
ideas? I think we need to try something different.
Like maybe go to Florida!”
"Yeah,
you’re right, we haven't even marked many fish on the graph on these reefs.
I say we beat it out of here. I
am starting to get wet and cold," I said with a shiver.
"I
couldn't agree more." Fred
headed to the cockpit of his boat.
Within
a few minutes we were back at the launch at just a little past noon, and the
rain was coming down like a monsoon in the jungle.
We decided to go back to the room and change into warm dry clothes before
lunch. We sat in the small bar
looking out at the rain and tuned the weather channel on the bar’s TV. It said it was going to rain all the rest of the day, but
during the night, it would clear off and there was no rain in the forecast for
Sunday.
“Let’s
just goof off this afternoon, get a good dinner and a good night’s sleep, and
hit it again tomorrow.
What do you say?” I asked
Fred.
“That
sounds like a plan. All I know is I’m
not going back out in this rain this afternoon.
Where do you think we ought to go tomorrow?
We weren’t exactly tearing them up this morning.”
“Good
question, I don’t really know. Let’s
ask around at dinner tonight. Some
of these locals should know what to do.”
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