By: Capt. Tim Ramsey
I hate relearning things I already know. I never seem to relearn things I like, just things I don’t. This is one of those.
The other day, I decided to go fishing by myself. I didn’t really want to, but I did it anyway. “But Tim, not wanting to go fishing is crazy” I hear you say. I know, especially for someone as addicted to fishing as me, but I’ve never liked fishing alone. To me, fishing is a group activity. Hear me out.
First thing I noticed was I was standing alone next to the truck in the dark, about three hours earlier than we usually go. My wife was in Panama. My son was up in St. Petersburg. My friends had to work, and my brother is another story. “Suck it up, Tim, there are snook to be caught,” I said. “You could be back in Afghanistan,” I added.
This gave me an opportunity to evaluate what I take fishing. Oddly, I found I didn’t pack any lighter. Five rods, the green bag, the blue bag, my blue tackle box, my tackle backpack, the cooler. I still brought them. All I did was take only one good luck beer and cut the amount of food and mandatory Slim Jims in half. Then I pulled the boat to the ramp.
Launching by yourself is always fun. First check, the plug. I screwed it in, then banged my head on the emergency ladder on the way out. Typical. All straps off except the bow, Steering blips and tilt bar removed, strap off the power pole, unplug the trailer, ready to go.
I decided losing the boat while unassisted at the ramp is a bad thing, so I clipped a line from the bow roller on the trailer to the boat’s bow eye, backed down until the engine was in the water, scurried onto the boat, started the engine, checked the gauges, checked to make sure the engine was pissing, checked the steering, then went forward and slid off the bow past the trolling motor onto the trailer tongue. I unclipped the strap, let the boat slide off the trailer until my line went tight (bunks and carpet are new and slick as snot on a doorknob), unclipped the line, hopped back on the boat, then motored over to the dock and tied up.
I jogged back to the truck, hopped in, pulled the trailer away from the ramp and parked. Did I say “ready to go” before? Right. I wasn’t. As I locked the truck doors the sight of two rods in the truck rod holder caught my eye. I didn’t load any of my stuff before I launched the boat. Duh. My son normally loads the bags and rods and gear as I get ready to launch. I had only the three rods I can reach from the holder in the bed of the pickup from my side. Fifteen minutes and three trips a hundred yards back and forth and I was actually ready to go.
I skipped the bait guy. The family likes shrimp or bait but I always use a bucktail with a Gulp tail added. I ran the Skeeter for about twenty minutes across the bay and up into the back country, skipping the whole “getting bait” activity. Time saved or time recovered, I don’t know. Keeping my castnet from getting smelly? Definitely.
Across the bay I saw a school of bluefish. Normally we would excitedly run over and cast to them, doing our catch and release angler thing on bare bucktails. Now, I hesitated. It didn’t feel the same. Instead, I looked at my GPS and studied the tide and wind. Then I went basically meandered over, caught two blues and moved on.
Up in the backcountry, I got on the trolling motor and started casting. Again, it felt weird. I normally let my son fish from the bow and control the “Minn Kota” as he calls it from the stern platform. I caught my line in the mangroves far more than normal. I caught fish but it had no spark.
I ran out fish along the beach. Along the way I ran past a couple other guys fishing by themselves. Normally I would say, “look at that sorry bastard fishing by himself.” I didn’t say it. Instead, I got a sinking feeling in my chest like I regretted saying it all those other times. Lesson learned.
I pulled up on one of the outside beaches and tied on one of my favorite lures, one called a “Mirrodine.” I consider it an improvement on the chrome rattle trap of my youth. I cast down the beach and hauled in a decent trout. Not what I was looking for, but I’ll take it. I was releasing it anyway.
A few minutes later I hooked a decent snook. When it got close to the boat, I “half-expected” someone to show up with the Boga grip or just come to help out. Nope. I was alone. I landed the fish, held it up, then automatically said “hey man” as I turned toward the back of the boat. I stopped. My son wasn’t there. Disappointed, I silently revived the snook and let it go.
There I was, standing close to a bunch of my favorite gamefish looking like they were ready to bite, and I wasn’t motivated. I motored out about a half mile off the beach, put up the umbrella, then sat under it on the console seat and lit a cigar. It was a beautiful day, fish were jumping, dolphins in the distance, far south a rain squall pushed inland, cigar was good, and instead of enjoying it, I thought about the trip back to the dock and pulling the boat out by myself. In paratrooper terms, my head was “up my fourth point of contact,” but I just don’t like fishing alone. Plus, nothing good ever comes from it, and a minute later that was proven yet again.
I spotted four cobia cruising nearby. I grabbed my tarpon rod, threw my tarpon lure past them and started reeling. The line went tight, the line went slack, the line went tight again, I leaned back to put pressure on the rod, the line went suddenly slack. Then, miraculously, the lure hit me directly in the nether regions. You know, the general and two colonels. Larry and his two buddies. The junk. You know what I mean.
Then I stepped backward and the ball of my right foot pressed precariously on the end of the front platform. Until it didn’t. It slipped off and my foot dropped for the deck, making sure to scrape my shin on the metal catch part of the bow latch as it went. Then a cigar ash dropped and magically landed in the space between the tongue of my slip-on beach shoe and the top of my foot. I recoiled from the burn and slapped the ash sideways off my skin as I winced in pain and set both feet on the lower deck. The resulting body motion reminded me I still had an X-Rap attached to a fairly sensitive spot, and the new pain told me it was also connected to the back of my hand.
I shuffled my feet better than Morticia Adams in her tight black dress as I tossed the cigar overboard and put the rod in the holder. Then I went for a more discreet location to investigate my predicament realizing I was muttering “ow, ow, ow” as I went. To add insult to injury, one of the wires from the umbrella poked me in the neck as I went past. Fast forward: If you ever used the string method to snatch a hook out of your skin, I don’t recommend it in the “pre-frontal area” (as I circle my open hand about five inches from the zipper of my fishing shorts). I thought about current events and chuckled.
“Imagine if I fell overboard,” I said, smiling. “What a dumbass,” I added, laughing at myself.
Fifteen minutes later, I stood behind the console, bleeding from the back of my hand, bleeding from a scrape straight down my right shin from knee to ankle, and from an undisclosed location. I realized I didn’t drink any water, left my coffee in the truck, wasted a $15 cigar, forgot to apply sunscreen, and even though it was still early, I was letting too much water get into the backcountry.
…and I still hated fishing alone.
See you out there…but not by myself.