Last week the trophy wife and I had the great opportunity to spend a few nights with my parents and some extended family members at Piney Knob Lodge in Rutherfordton NC. If you’ve read some of my blogs (and I hope you have) you know three of the things I love are water, fishing and the mountains. Piney Knob had those and more. I decided I was going to go down to the fishing pond Friday and see if I could get lucky.
I should have known it wasn’t going to go well. I keep a box in my Expedition and always carry a couple short rods with reels and a mixed box of tackle for various types of fish. Well, y’all, as my bad luck would have it, when I checked the box on Thursday, I had one rod and reel and nothing else. Not a good sign. After a quick trip to the local bait and tackle shop I had what I needed for some time on the water.
Keep reading. It gets…better?
Okay, so last Friday’s fishing adventure didn’t go as I had planned. I saw a few while fishing on the bank, but couldn’t get anything to bite. I had the same luck fishing from the boat. One thing that did happen was when I was getting out of the boat the first time. I had bought some dough bait to see if I could catch some of the catfish and carp that was supposed to be in the pond, and had left it in the Expedition, so I was going to go and get it then get back into the boat.
I had beached the boat, and stepped my right foot into the water to climb on out and pull the boat up on the bank. The bottom seemed solid enough so I put my weight on my right side and proceeded to lift my left leg over the side of the boat. Just as I lifted my leg my right foot slipped and I sank mid-calf into the muddy bottom.
This is when it gets fun! Keep reading…
As my right leg was sinking my left leg, which was still in the boat, began to drift farther to the left, causing me to start a split maneuver that a fat man shouldn’t do. Fortunately, I had the fore-site to see how this was going to go, and threw my cellphone onto the bank before attempting to get out of the boat. Finding myself in a precarious pose, and not wanting to stretch out any further and damage anything below the waist, I let go of the boat and just fell back into the pond up to my beard. I lost my flip flops (and anyone who knows me knows my flops are my main year round footwear), however, I did find one in the mud with my foot and the other one was floating near the boat, so I got them both back. Whew!
After getting my feet back on solid ground I pulled the boat out of the pond and walked back up the mountain – it was more of a steep hill, but, by this point, it seemed like a mountain – to get my dough bait. One of the things my daddy always said about me was, “If there’s water around he’ll find a way to get wet.” Well, folks, daddy was right! They all laughed when I came back up the hill soaking wet. I got the bait, went back down and got back in the boat.
I didn’t catch anything, but the time spent on the water was well worth proving daddy right. And whose to say it was an accident? Remember…I did throw my phone on the bank before I let go of the boat.
Broken Anvil Publishing, LLC 2021
Photo credits: Jim G black
Jim G Black Writes 