Bad fishing trip stories?

[Bushman]

This should be entertaining. We all hope to have a good trip, but sometimes just the opposite happens. My fishing buddies laugh about them now, but the stories that are the most entertaining are about the bad trips, not the good ones. Lets hear about some of yours.

[Twanger]

This spring 5 of us spent quite a sum of $ for a cottage in VA Beach and a two-day fishing charter to go load up on Rockfish, and caught zippo! Dang that was discouraging!

[DaveHawk]

It was 1981 The wife and I had just finished a canoe trip from Harper's Ferry to Scenca, a 2 day trip and along the way we detoured around this island and some guys were catching some nice smallys. I decided to make a return trip the next weekend and so I started out early in the morning down the river and across a wide section of river maybe 1/4 mile wide. Then down the shoot about 1/2 mile and fished all morning, it was a great morning for fishing. About noon I headed back when I got to the mouth of the river and started to cross the winds picked up, the river became white capped and I was blown down river. I made the other side ok but the winds were so bad I could not paddle up the river and had to walk it about a mile through the river mud. I was hating life by the end of the day.

[Bushman]

Fishing salmon in Lake Michigan with my buddy who drove his new Suburban that day. We limited out on big fish that pretty well filled up an 80 quart Gott cooler. We were gaffing the fish back in those days, but who cared because the gorp stayed in the cooler with the fish. Well on that particular day the drain plug came out on the bottom of the cooler for the ride home.:eek: Guess what he did most of the next day?

[Bill Gunn]

Back in the mid 70’s my buddy and I were really fishing fanatics.
ANY 3 days in a row we could get off, we would pack my truck camper, throw the 17’ Grumman Canoe/with 4 hp merc. on top, and we were on our way to Quebec. We would actually park the camper in Stonecliff, Ontario, run across the Ottawa River, & head up the Dumoine River. After a couple of portages around falls, we would be in the Fildegrand River, for the craziest Northern pike fishing you ever saw. The fish never see boats or people. 4 foot long Northerns would actually hide under the canoe when we were sitting in it, in 3 feet of clear water!
In the Fildegrand, there was a red sucker fish that I never seen anywhere before. They would hit spinners we were throwing for northerns, and then the big northerns would hit them from under our canoe… It was like an explosion 4 feet in front of your face. What a riot that fishing was. The Fildegrand River was only about 30 feet wide, so it was real close quarter fishing.
If we wanted any walleyes for breakfast, we would just fish at the first falls of the Dumoine, and we would catch all we wanted. It was the greatest spot you could imagine. It was tough going too, that first waterfall, called Ryan Chute, once had 35 pairs of hobnail boots nailed to surrounding trees as memorials to the loggers who had drowned there. Just a super cool spot.

NOW THE BAD PART…
I had a brother-in-law (don’t we all…), that Begged, and Begged, and Begged, and Begged, and Begged, and Begged, to go with us. He was in terrible physical shape due to a bad back, from falling off his roof at home (another good story…. but I digress).
I told him he would never be able to go through the portages, and we also, in areas, had to physically pull the canoe upstream against the current, and this time we were going for a full week.
He said he had a buddy at work that would be his partner (my B I L also had a canoe), and he would help him in the tough spots. He neglected to state one fact about his buddy, not only had he never camped, or canoed, but he never fished a day in his life.
This story could go on for 10 pages, but just a couple things…

They lost my partners, and my wallets with all money, fishing licenses, drivers licenses, credit cards, EVERYTHING at a portage (we had them stored in a water proof container so they wouldn’t get ruined, and they dumped it into the river).

½ way to the best fishing spot, my B I L gave up, and refused to go any farther, so we never made it to the best fishing.

The first day of fishing I got stuck fishing with my B I L’s partner (don’t ask, It must be God hated me that day). The first 3 times he tried to cast, his Daredevil spoon hit the side of the canoe so hard, it sounded like a rifle shot. It turned out he threaded his fishing line through the hook keeper next to the handle on the rod, before he threaded it through the rod eyes.

My B I L & partner lost our box of 500 night crawlers into the river.

We went and got minnows, and they accidentally let them go too by not shutting the top of the minnow bucket.

My B I L’s partner didn’t like to put on bug spray (can you say “Canadian Black Flies”), and YET, he insisted walking around shirtless (I swear to God, I’m NOT making any of this up). He was so bloody one day, he looked like a goalie for a friggin’ dart team.

I swear, I could go on and on (and some are really bad, like how we got thrown out of Quebec, and I'm not lieing...), but I’m not good at typing, and it still makes me mad thinking of that trip about 34 years later.
We ended up leaving Canada 3 days early, totally disgusted!!!!
I was never so happy to get back to work…

Oh, by the way…. I SWEAR To GOD… My B I L’s partner caught the biggest fish of the trip…

[dave-t.]

Not quite as bad as Bill's, but I had a buddy I was bragging to about trout fishing, and he wanted to go, so we set up a date with my dad to hit the river early early in spring. The day before the trip the wather forcast was a high in single digits, ridiculous wind chill factor, and snow. We went anyway. It was so miserable, that we'd just look at each other and laugh that we were in such a situation by choice. Ice in the rod guides, frozen gloves, and we all had vaseline smeared on exposed skin (the tip of your nose was about all that was showing) to prevent frostbite per dad's instructions. I believe we all caught limmits, but it wasn't one of those days where you cull any and try to up your catch numbers.

Another was a trip to Kentuckey lake for crappie in early April/late March. A whole group of men from church went and stayed for a few days. We rented boats, and covered totally unfamiliar water for 4 days. I think at most 15 crappie were caught between the 12 guys and six boats, with cold rain and mid 40's tempts for the whole 4 day trip. Cold, wet, miserable, and bad fishing with no knowledge of what to do or where to try next. So, we tried the same thing a year later on Reelfoot lake, and it wasn't much better that time, except on that trip one of the guys caught a fish a little over 3' long that he had no idea what it was and released it thinking it had to be a gar. After describing it back at the boat docks, he had probably released a near state record Pike.

[Scout]

Late teenage years. Wading trip to a local river (about an hour away from home). I thought I'd try out my brand spanking new fancy chest waders...you know, the ones that'll make me look like those pro-fessionals on tv:D. Approximately 1 mile up stream from the truck....stepped off a ledge and went from 3 feet of water to about 8 feet:eek:. Saved the rod and reel....and lost the waders:(. Had to wade back to the truck in my socks and some very sharp rocks:mad:.

That trip really sucked!:cool:

[Bushman]

What a fun thread this one is going to be. Does dropping your boat on the highway count? Back in the days when we could fish outside of the nuclear power plant without being suspected as terrorists, we would take our little boats after the salmon after work. There was only one unimproved slip and lots of guys knew about it, so come dark there was always a line of boats in a hurry to get the boats on the trailers and out of there. Full dark thirty and my partner and I got my S-14 Lund winched up on the trailer and out of there. Well in our haste we forgot to put the hold down strap over the back of the boat and insult to injury, we didn't lock the ratchet on the winch either. About five miles down the road we went over a little bump and the boat went to the end of the rope on the winch. Do you have any idea what kind of noise that makes inside the truck? A very sickening one to be sure. I had two outboards on the boat and they both kicked up breaking the skeg on the big one. We polished the boat's keels some that night and the guys in the car behind us helped us lift the boat back on the trailer. Talk about making a memory albeit a bad one.

[Bill Gunn]

Back in '74, a brother-in-law (a different one) and I wanted to go walleye fishing at a small lake. The preferred method was to troll at night, close to shore in 4 to 10 feet of water with #9 Rapala's for a few hours, and go home with your limit.
The season opens on the first Sat. of May, so on Friday night we left to go, and were fishing just after midnight on Sat.
The weather wasn't warm, but it was a nice night to start with. Back in the early 70's the weather forecasting was nothing as good as today, so we were in no way prepared for what happened.
About 1 am, the wind suddenly changed, and the temp. dropped like a rock. Then the snow started. Within minutes we were in a full blown blizzard. Being the young, tough idiots we were, we kept fishing.
I put on a yellow rain coat, kept fishing, and kept driving the boat. We were defiantly getting hypothermia, and started making some really stupid decisions. I've fished in very cold weather up in Canada, where the actual temp was at -25*F, and also one time where the wind chill was -70*F (we were in a heated hut on that one). I've also worked on rooftop heating units on days with -32*F and -36*F windchills, so I really know what cold is.
I would guess the temp was down to a wind chill in the -30's the night on that lake. The snow was so hard, we couldn't see the lights in the cabins on shore, and shore was only 20 to 50 feet away. Back in the 70's there was no GPS, so we really didn't exactly know where we were, and after a while had no idea where the shore even was.
We decided to anchor the boat, and hunker down to keep warm, we were in a very, very bad situation. It got to the point where I wanted to fall a sleep, and I didn't care any more, and didn't really feel the cold much at all.
For some reason we suddenly decided to try to find the launch. I knew we would not be able to get the boat out of the water because of our physical condition. We were past the shivering stage, but were both very weak by then. We were 27 years old then, and pretty tough guys, but our strength was sucked out by the cold.
Somehow we found the dock, and got in the car. After warming for a while, we got the boat on the trailer.
Believe it or not, we decided to sleep in the car and try in the morning if the weather improved.
In the morning, the sun was shining, and it was a blue-bird spring day! You would never believe what had happened the night before by looking at the weather then. We went back out fishing, but went home that day skunked :(
I never went back to that lake for the walleye opener in all these years.
Two years later, at the young age of 29, my Best Friend, Fishing Buddy, Brother In Law, died of cancer. He worked for a local town highway dept with a sprayer, killing the weeds in ditches along the roads..... With Agent Orange.... :mad: :( :(

[dave-t.]

Bushman-Here's a boat/trailer story for you.

The day after Christmas, I was going to head back home to KC from St Louis towing my new (grandad's old) 1963 jon boat and trailer. Dad had put in new bearings on the trailer and checked the tires to make sure they would make the trip. At about 8pm I was half way and driving through Columbia Mo at 70mph, when the trailer started to wobble, and then it really started to bounce, hop, and then it started throwing sparks as the driver side wheel shot off into the median.:eek:

The Christmas traffic was thick so I went to the median too and pulled over. The lug bolts had been knocked out of the hub plate. Gone. Nothing there but oblong holes. The wheel was in such bad shape it was useless. I stood on the side of the hi-way and cursed. I cursed a good long while. After it was clear that cursing was getting me no where, I composed myself a bit, dropped the trailer right there and went to an Auto Zone and bought some stainless bolts and nuts, a trailer tire, and managed to go back and get the thing off of the hi-way and into a parking lot. Dropped the trailer again because it was terribly unstable, and went back and bought lug bolts and nuts. I had to get a hotel for the night, and left a few messages with portable welder's I found in the phone book. I got a call back at 7 am, and had the guy come right over. He charged me $40 to weld on the bolts, and he did a good job, but at the time I was thinking "this guy doesn't know how screwed I am right now", so I counted my blessings, put the wheel back on and made my way home safely, and slowly.

There was snow on the ground in the east part of the state at that time, and I can only think that the weight of that little boat and trailer weren't enough to get good torque on the lug nuts when Dad changed out the bearings, and they worked loose on the road, and caused the trouble. I was debating if I should ever tell the old man, because I knew he'd feel just aweful about it. I did tell him later in the summer, after enough time had passed that the story seemed a little more funny than tragic. He still took it hard, but not as bad as if I would have called him from the hiway cussing a blue streak.

That wasn't the last trouble I had with that trailer. Not by a long shot.:confused: But I still have it and Grandad's boat, and can't imagine ever selling it.

[Bushman]

Funny how one of your stories reminds me of others. A bunch of us were headed up to fish Lake Superior and we were taking three trailer boats up there. I was the last truck and we got separated on the highway. Those were the days before cell phones so we were on our own. About 100 miles up the road the driver side trailer wheel took on an ominous cant to the outside. Luckily we were pretty near my cabin so my buddy and I stayed the night. I had a spare wheel and tire, but I didn't have a spare wheel bearing set and couldn't get one until the next morning.

I had been greasing the wheel bearings with something other than wheel bearing grease and it was not "crawling" like good wheel bearing grease subjected to dunking in the water on a boat trailer should have.

[Bushman]

Did you know that you can sink a fishing boat over night when a transducer screw through the transom backs out? When ever we took the trip up to my buddy's cabin on the Huron River half a mile from Lake Superior, we figured something could go wrong but we never knew what. Well instead of John bolting the transducer mount to the transom, he sheet metal screwed it on and the vibration of all those trailing miles backed it out. Surprise.

My buddy's place up there was 12 miles back in down a rutted logging trail. We at times made our own road around washouts from the torrents of rain coming out of the Huron mountains. There was one time where we had a winch on both the front and back of my truck, both strung out banjo string tight to keep it from tipping over in a washout. Anyway, Tom figured out that if we could cross the Huron river in the trucks that it would cut 9 miles off the trip. We found a shallow crossing point and went in that way a few times and it did cut some time off the trip. That was back in the gas crunch days so that weekend we decided to take the cars instead. Tom had a new Subaru 4wd wagon and he and his family would go across the river and I would leave my Saab on the near side and wade across. Well the river was a little higher than normal and a 4wd Subaru was a lot shorter than an F250. I came around the corner and there sat the Subaru in the middle of the river with all four doors open so the river could flow through the car and Tom and his family sitting on top of the seats. We didn't go in much that way after that.

[Bushman]

The sad truth about booking an outpost fishing trip into Canada is that the experience can range from sensational to dismal. We booked a trip once where they had built a brand new outpost camp on a new lake accessible only by float plane. That sounded good right? Well, the camp was first rate, but while they had scouted a good location for the camp, they did not scout the lake very well. Over half the lake was no more than four feet deep and the other half had nearly no fish. If it wasn't for a half mile walk through the brush where they had two other boats on another lake, we would not have caught enough fish to eat.

If you are booking a trip, at least get some references or go with someone who has already been there. The good places do not need to advertise because word of mouth and repeat customers keep coming back and keep the camp full.

My buddy went with a friend who had won a week's fishing trip to a camp on Eagle Lake. That is a huge lake north of International Falls and they needed 90hp outboards to get around. Well a 90hp outboard does not troll too well and the transmission was mush from people shifting them back and forth into neutral. Big waves and big lakes go hand in hand so they took a pounding and all they caught all week was one northern pike and one walleye!

[GF.]

There is no such thing as a bad fishing trip, so long as everybody makes it home alive.

Just sometimes it takes a few years for things to funny up a little ;)

Reminds, me, though, of a story I once heard during a sermon. A guy was fishing way up north where the water is so clear that you can count the fish from the air as you pass over the lakes. There was a guy down on one of these lakes, having a wonderful time, but not catching anything.

About then a pilot lands his float plane on the lake and taxies over.

"Catching anything?"

"Nope, not yet, but I'm here for another week yet."

"Oh, well, not surprised you're havin' trouble. There aren't any fish in this lake. Froze to the bottom last winter......


Have a good week!"

I don't remember what the point of the sermon was that day, but I do recall thinking that that fisherman was S*O*L :D

[Bill Gunn]

There is no such thing as a bad fishing trip, so long as everybody makes it home alive.

A friend of mine had that happen :eek:

Up in Canada on a trip, his partner in the front of the boat keeled over dead (at least he was once he was back in the boat) from a heart attack, and fell into the lake ..
A passing boat would not stop and help him get the guy back in the boat because they "didn't want to touch a dead guy" !! :rolleyes:

He had a heck of a time getting him back in...

Kinda messed up the rest of the trip too :rolleyes:

[Bushman]

Dad was in his late 80's when we were doing fly-ins and we talked about what we would do if one of us ever keeled over. Get lots of ice and keep fishing was the general group consensus. They tell me that you don't want to croak in a foreign country.

My old boss had that happen to one of their guys up in Canada. The guy fell out of the boat and drowned. The Mounties flew in and took everyone aside to grill them to make sure that all the stories jived and that it was really an accident.

[Bill Gunn]

Get lots of ice and keep fishing was the general group consensus.

Kinda Like the old golfing joke... "It took me so long to finish because I had to..
Hit the ball... Drag Charlie, Hit the ball.... Drag Charlie..."
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[happycamper]

When i was 12/13 i cut some grass,mended some fences,begged my dad and papa and bought a nice little jon boat(think leaky piece of junk) with a little motor(i think it was a sears model o something).Well on its maiden voyage i packed up my gear and hit the water.I was really having alot of luck catching 6 inch bream(hahaha).Well i run out of gas.So i'm sittin' there drifting and a family friend comes by in his pottoon and asks if i need a tow.Well i tie off and off we go.Well this thing starts taking water and gets front heavy and goes straight down!!!!!!I guess it hit bottom and dug in the mud cause all i heard was a loud "snap"...........Needless to say the look on my dads face when i came back with nothing but a fishing pole and a life-vest was priceless.....And every now and then the family friend, now in his 50's, makes a point of cruising past my dock and asking if ive got any scuba gear cause he wants to find a sunken treasure!!!!!!I'll never live that down.

[Bushman]

HC, a jon boat is not the most sea worthy boat out there to be sure. I made the mistake of taking a 10' jon boat full of duck decoys and a 120 pound labrador out to the islands offshore in the Bay. The wind came up when the dog and I were out there and he was more nervous than I was and darn near sunk us. We were breaking the waves with the right front edge of the boat and still taking on water. I was pretty glad that we were able to made it back to shore. I never tried that again.

[Bushman]

This tread was a lot of fun reading when I started it last year. My fishing buddy is coming over tomorrow to kick around the idea of going to Canada fishing again this summer. Much as I like the idea of exploring a new area, all I had to do is reread some of these stories to convince me to go back where we always go these last years. Good fishing to one guy is different than good fishing to someone else. I remember talking to one guy out in the shop who just got back from fishing in Canada. He said "Jeff, you wouldn't believe it, we got our limit of walleyes every single day!!!" I had to bite my lower lip a little because that is five fish and if we don't do that in the first fifteen minutes, it is going to be a bad day.

Then there was that trip to Kello Lake "Lodge" some years back. We got to the fly out spot a little early and there were all kinds of broken airplane cylinder heads around that they were using as ash trays. What happens when you break a cylinder head like that I asked? "The plane drops like a stone" was an answer that kind of makes a memory. Fast forward to the "Lodge". We made a mouse drive to get some of them out of the one room cabin. The screens were full of holes so that the mosquitoes didn't even need to slow down to get into the cabin. One of our guys patched them with twist ties. The group before us left dead worms next to the cabin so that smell wafted through. We named one of the mice some expletive and finally put popcorn outside so they wouldn't keep us up all night. The door hung from one hinge and Larry nailed a piece of leather to it for a top hinge. We didn't dare make a fire in the stove which was a 55 gallon barrel with a rusted, rotten stove pipe that you could see holes through. The dock was rotten and had big holes in it where people had put their foot through. The gas refrigerator didn't work so we lost lots of our food. Crystal clear lake with lots of minnows and well fed walleyes that were absolutely uninterested in any normal walleye lure. One day four of us caught four fish total! We sunk a boat for a live box because all the regular live boxes had holes in them. The outhouse had a crown to it just below the seated position so enough said about that. We talk about that place pretty often because we could all hardly wait to get back from "vacation" and get back to work. The plane was more than half a day late to pick us up. More like serving time than having a vacation. Be careful if you book an "outpost" camp. They ain't all the same.