Well any of ya’ll who have been reading our blog, watching our videos or reading Team FLG tweets know that first and foremost that we like to have a good time.
That being said…today’s post comes from a fellow outdoorsman that enjoys the outdoors and having a good laugh as much as we do. Let me present the always funny Owl Jones from owljones.com and fishnewsdaily.com.
For the Love of the Game
The Always Effective "Blend" Technique
People do silly things for fishing, while fishing, and just to get to the fish they want. This guy is just one example of either bravery or stupidity that we’ve all seen over the years. Or, maybe it’s an example of bravery or stupidity that we’ve even done ourselves at some point?
When I was 17 years old, a friend of ours from church took us trout fishing for the very first time. He was our youth Pastor and he knew where to go, when to go, and what to use for bait. We didn’t know how to begin to fish for trout, coming from the flat lands of middle Georgia and we went along with everything he suggested we do. Some of the things he did not suggest were felt-soled boots, a wading staff, waders, sun-glasses, bug-spray and a first aid kit.
On the way to the creek, all we heard were stories of adventure and abundant trout. “They aren’t big, but there are plenty of them” he said. Unfortunately, for us there were only a few that weekend. But we did manage to climb over slippery, moss covered logs 20 feet above the creek, get ourselves lost, sit through two thunderstorms, eat some bad eggs, drink unpurified water and be sick for a week afterwards…..all for a few little trout. Stupidty? Perhaps. It surely wasn’t bravery.
I guess that’s not as bad as what I saw last year though….
I came upon this story, this event – as if I were there – by piecing together the details that I did know after the fact:
Apparently, a woman was trout fishing near one of our more frequented rivers (although nowhere near a town) and decided that she had to….you know…..go. And I don’t just mean “go” – I mean she had to “GO!”
After doing what she had to do – and apparently being fairly unsuccessful at keeping things as clean as she’d like – she promptly discarded her undergarments in the stream-side brush. Here in Georgia we have some of the finest folks you’d ever want to meet. We also have some of the most vulgar, inconsiderate, impolite and just down right nasty folks, too. Apparently this lovely lady (whoever she was) wasn’t going to let a little accident get in the way of her fishing! (Nor was she concerned with being a disgusting jerk to her fellow anglers, apparently.) Since I’d already seen the purple glob of unpleasant fabric hanging in the bushes, I made a wide circle to avoid it as I worked into position about 100 feet up-stream of where the “incident” apparently took place.
About that time, along comes a young man carrying a spinning rod and reel and he politely asks if he might fish down-stream from me. “Sure, go ahead – plenty of room.” I said. I didn’t think to warn the young man about it at first. Ahhh, well,….surely he’ll notice it too and move on to another spot.” I thought.
Upon catching his first trout, the young man looked around for a heavy, fist sized rock to use in dispatching his catch. Clearly he was going to keep a fish or two and in this stocked, put-n-take river it would do no harm. I knew what he was looking for and the sheer “rubber-necker” in me kicked in. I guess I wanted to watch him take it out – why, I can’t now tell you. But I watched as he suddenly saw a mid-sized, heavy looking rock over near the bushes. Holding his trout out where I could see it ( bragging about a trout a little is just respectful to the trout, you see) he made great strides over toward the rock. He’d apparently still not seen the purple garment (nor smelled it,… amazingly enough) and he reached down and wrapped his fingers around the semi-flattened, softball sized rock.
A funny look came over his face. He stood very still. Turning the rock over slowly, he stared at it. He looked closer. Then, as I was about to say something to him, he took his other hand – the one holding the trout, which was still wriggling for it’s life, and he rolled out a long index finger and touched the brown substance on the rock.
He dropped the rock, walked back to the stream, and let the trout go. Turning back to the bushes, his face got red and he said “ Damn.”
Then, without stopping for a full two minutes, he repeated it over and over and over again as he walked down the dirt road until he was out of sight.
That was the day I realized one of the 234 Truths of Angling: ‘People do some crazy stuff when they’re fishin’.