Fishing Has Its Moments

Just your average day-----if you happen to be Laurel and Hardy----going fishing. Never begin a story with the weather as a backdrop so my friend and I, with sunny blue skies, fluffy white clouds and temperatures in the 70's decided to launch his light weight, twelve foot long aluminum boat on Lake May near Walker, Minnesota. This was exciting for me because it was five years ago that I caught my 6 lb. 11 oz. large mouth bass on this body of water. A bass that size in Minnesota is comparable to a mastodon being captured anywhere. I'm the first to admit I'm not proficient at backing boat trailers into the water so I let the learned do it. My job is to unhook the boat from the trailer and hold a rope so the boat doesn't float away. Well, as it started to float away I jumped onto the trailer frame and immediately fell into the lake. That's alright. My sneakers weren't that new. Then in trying to get out of the water I banged my right shin against the metal frame of that darned trailer. That's okay. Even though I hit it directly on the bone and blood was oozing at four different spots I knew I'd live. It's just that at my age what used to heal in a week now takes six months. Our neighbor's dog at the lake bit me a month ago and the scarring is still there. When he was alive our neighbors called him Tiger. My friend reminded me to put some medicine on my wound so I wouldn't get the flesh eating disease. Continuing on, my buddy drove the car and trailer to a safe spot and I grabbed a rope and pulled the boat alongside the dock that was sitting in five feet of water.
We had our gear already in place and as my friend was situated in the craft I stepped onto a seat but slipped and my momentum pulled me to the side where THAT other fisherman was sitting. "Uh-Oh, the boat is starting to tip over", I yelled to no one in particular. As quickly as possible and in a horizontal position I laid out across the boat perpendicular to the stern or is it the aft? But it might be the port side. Regardless, the boat was all the way underneath the dock with the front end caught on the underside of the dock away from us. We were stuck. My friend had hit his rod entering said boat and it snapped like a dry twig. For what seemed like an hour we just laid there. Someone had to take action and it might as well be MJ Hawkeye so I did the only thing left to do; I slid backwards into Lake May while attempting futilely to free our piece of aluminum junk from its immovable position. Finally, with all the force my fat, buoyant body could muster it tore away from the dock and we were saved from a fate worse than death. Our next move was to start the process all over again and that was successfully accomplished except as I got out of the water I banged the same shin again..
My friend sometimes uses a 2 horse power motor. It's functional but can't pick 'em up and lay 'em down. In other words, it doesn't go very fast. As we left the shore we realized this public landing hadn't been dredged since the days of the Great Depression. Right away we were stuck in sand that was even with our motor prop.
Thank the Lord for a paddle. We successfully guided the boat to deeper water and we were off. In honor of this great bass trophy day I decided to use the same exact lure that Mr. Billy Bass jumped onto lo those five years ago and on the second cast it happened!
It became caught in a lily pad and just like that it was gone to Davey Jones locker never to be seen again.
We fished for an hour with worms, spinner baits, floating baits, deep diver rapalas. Our fish finder showed us that there were scads and scads of our finned friends below us but they never took the bait. We fished for another hour and as all determined fisherman are who haven't caught anything we decided on our next course of action. We bagged it. i.e. "Let's go home and say it never happened".
Oh, the first and last thing my friends said was, "whatever you do don't put this on your blog". Sorry, friend, but at least be thankful I didn't mention your name.