Fishing in the Central Valley: Delayed intelligence makes for funny stories
It recently occurred to me the number of fishing mishaps I have had. Here are some of my more memorable ones, which are examples of “delayed intelligence:”
I’m pulling my boat, headed for home to quickly pick up something, turn around and head off for the lake from there. After my stop, I’m driving back down the same street I came in on, when I notice some kind of transparent line on the road.
Curious, I realized that it just kept going, through the stop signs — for quite a ways. I pulled over, looked out my window and saw it was actually fishing line.
I thought to myself, ”I bet someone was dumb enough to have a spool in their car, and it must have fed out onto the road.” What a mess they had made.
Didn’t they know any better? And of course it finally hit me that I had just fully spooled over 400 yards of 25-pound test line on a big reel on a pole hanging over the back of the boat.
And the reel in my boat was now empty. Someone later asked me if I saw that fishing line on our road.
I said: “Yep, must have been a pretty dumb angler.”
Another time, I was striper fishing by myself at San Luis 10 years ago and I hooked a very nice 20-pound striper. Of course I wanted a picture of myself holding it, so I got out a camera tripod and quickly set it up on the front deck of my boat. I realized I needed to have a higher vantage point to get a good picture, so I telescoped the tripod up higher, but it looked a little shaky and I was concerned about its stability.
I was working quickly to get a picture and then carefully put the fish back in the water, unharmed. My tripod is set and my cellphone is on top of the mount. I grab the striper, take the picture, and quickly move to skirt the tripod base and then release the striper.
It was going well, until I clipped the side of the tripod with my foot-and almost fell into the cockpit, while holding the fish.
In slow motion the whole top-heavy tripod, with my iPhone on top, crashes into the windshield and the entire thing slides down the glass and is headed for the side of the boat.
I watch in horror, while still holding the fish.
The tripod stops for a second as it hits the side of the boat. I think I have a chance to get my phone but it slips out of the mount and plops into about 100 feet of water.
No fish photo. No cellphone. And no way to call home.
And for full disclosure, it was the second phone I have lost in the San Luis.
Oh yeah, I got a bunch more stupid moves I’ve made, but I bet most anglers out there do too!
To this day I still get these garbled underwater sounding telephone calls from my old number? Is it possible?
And never give up!
Roger George: rogergeorge8@protonmail.com, Rogergeorgeguideservice on Facebook and @StriperWars.
This story was originally published July 23, 2024 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Fishing in the Central Valley: Delayed intelligence makes for funny stories."