Toads Bait Shop #15 Comedy Open Mic Round 2

Worst Night in the History of Fishing

By midnight, I realized that this had to be the worst night of fishing in the whole history of the sport. John and I visited our good Buddy down at Toad’s Bait Store. He was telling us that the best time to catch big walleye was to fish when a winter storm front was moving in. I have caught about every kind of fish that Tennessee offers, but I have never caught a walleye.
I was exited at the opportunity and stupidly grateful that the weather forecast was calling for rain, sleet and snow with a possibility of high winds. How many times does the Weather Man get it right? Well he sure pegged this one. We got to the lake at 6:30pm and the temp was a whopping 31 degree‘s. We launched the boat and headed a mile down river to where Toad suggested we fish. The wind was blowing at least 30 miles an hour and the open water was starting to produce some serious white caps. We was fishing in my little fourteen and a half foot fiberglass bass boat with matching seat cushions, that just sits about twelve inches above the water. By the time we reach our destination, everything in the boat was soaking wet and sparkling with ice.
When dark arrived the waves were getting alarmingly close to coming over the side of the boat. The wind had picked up to a constant 40 miles an hour and the rain had now changed to ice. The weight limit on my boat is 500 pounds and with the ice starting to accumulating and all the extra gear stored on board it was apparent that we could be in serious trouble. We knew that we needed to find some sort of shelter from the waves so we made our way to the back of a little cove. We waited on an isolated bank under some low hanging pine tree’s hoping that the wind would die down at least enough for us to make the journey back across the river. We had a couple of sandwiches in the cooler but it had so much ice on the lid we could not get it open. Then the Coyotes started howling on the ridge right above us, by the time he got about half way thru his first howl, we was already back in the boat shoving off from the ice covered bank. Around 11 pm the temp was in the low teens and the ice had started to change to snow, but the good news was that the wind finally calmed down, so we made our way back towards the boat ramp. It took over an hour to get the boat loaded and we had to use Johns truck to pull my truck and the boat out of the water because the boat was so heavy from all the ice build up. Guess who was waiting on us by the ramp entrance? Yep, Toad, smiling from ear to ear. We rolled up beside him and he said we had to be the two stupidest folks in the county for believing him about the walleye. John piped up and told old Toad that he didn’t understand what he was talking about and we had to hurry up and get this fish we caught weighed, we think we may of caught a world record and John drove off. Later that next day Toad came into the diner a steeming, he had got his boat and fished almost all that day. Sven told him we lied and told him that to see if he would go fish in this horrible weather. When he confronted John at the diner, John simply said, we didn’t lie at all, how much do you weigh, I still think we could have the record for the largest sucker.

Gus

Photo from MPR News