Dumbest Thing On The River

Dustin Chromers said:
Making a cast into an impossible to land a steelhead spot and getting bit. It gets worse. Then performing rock climbing maneuvers in waders above a rapid with the rod in my mouth. It got away. So did I.

Almost as bad is casting a spinner out of a solo canoe in a rapid with a log jam in the botto and hooking a spring king. You can't paddle a canoe while playing a fish in a rapid. It's that hard. Again, I lived. The fish got landed miraculously. I released it based purely on the stupidity of the whole thing.
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Fishing while navigating a rapid is one of a handful of accepted definitions of "hard core." That you landed the fish (a springer, no less) takes it to a new level.
 
Ask any emergency responder and they will inform you that the human intelligence is greatly diminished whenever it is around any kind of water. It can be surf, streams, lakes, pools, etc... Frozen water (snow, ice) has the same effect on the human brain. Even hot springs elicit this effect. Put simply, humans tend to behave recklessly and sometimes extremely foolishly around any source of water. Who knows why? But I'm sure most of us have witnesses or participated in this phenomena. I know I have. That one cliff I dove off of into the Colorado River comes to mind...The key is to recognize that this is a (very real) mind altering affect that is actually taking place in your brain, whenever you are nearby water.
 
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Hiking through the snow, as a youngster, along a fast rushing stream, my sister's Beagle attempted to jump across the stream with the other big dogs. Well "Patches" ended up on a wild ride down some rapids into a deep pool of ice cold water. The dumb mutt was drowning, trying desperately to climb out on the steep rocks on the other side of the pool. I had no choice. Strip down, bare naked, in the snow,, and swim out to save that damn dog. My friends were laughing hysterically. My young, wet, cold, naked body emerged from the brief swim, and stood triumphantly in the snow, holding that damn wet Beagle. One of the dumbest things I've ever done....
 
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God, there are so many things to choose from….. It's probably a toss-up between submarining a boat in 39 degree water in about 1963 and trying to James Bond jump a boat across a narrow sand bar while standing at the tiller. That was about 1960 when I was 12.

Both events involved a 12-foot aluminum cartopper with a 10 horse Evinrude. While the early March submarine saga only resulted in a couple of near downings, there wasn't any permanent damage other than the loss of a couple of seat cushions that were our “life savers.” But as for the ill fated jump… As referenced in a previous post, sand doesn't provide a gliding surface for aluminum. Despite a running start at about 25mph, the hull came to a dead stop about two feet onto the sand. Since an object in motion tends to stay in motion, despite the boat's precipitous stop I continued forward at said 25mph. Despite eating the bow cleat during my flight I did clear the sand bar and landed in the water on the far side. That cost me portions my upper incisors which had to be crowned.

I still had those crowns on my teeth a few years ago when I cinched a split shot onto a leader by biting it. I heard a loud kaPOW inside my head and discovered I had just broken off my left incisor below the gum line. That necessitated a $3500 implant.

And the there was the day I went through the Big Eddy rapid without benefit of a boat. Or the time, still in my ignorant early teens, I took a 15 foot Dorsett across a closed bar.

Like I said, there are so many to choose among..
 
Jim in Anacortes said:
Hiking through the snow, as a youngster, along a fast rushing stream, my sister's Beagle attempted to jump across the stream with the other big dogs. Well "Patches" ended up on a wild ride down some rapids into a deep pool of ice cold water. The dumb mutt was drowning, trying desperately to climb out on the steep rocks on the other side of the pool. I had no choice. Strip down, bare naked, in the snow,, and swim out to save that damn dog. My friends were laughing hysterically. My young, wet, cold, naked body emerged from the brief swim, and stood triumphantly in the snow, holding that damn wet Beagle. One of the dumbest things I've ever done....
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I wasn't in the river on this one, and not so much dangerous, but dumb.

I had a shitty week of work last August, so I snuck out early and went and camped on one of my favorite rivers on a Friday night. You can't camp on the bank unless you're in the developed (paid) sites so I usually just sneak back into the forest service roads and find a nice quiet place. I woke up early to get to one of my favorite spots before the hoards show up (this spot is usually good for a bull or two if you can get there first). I had three rods rigged up and put them on my suction cup rod mounts on my truck. In my haste, I didn't clean my hood well enough before I put the racks on (you can see where this is going). Well at 40mph the came off and all 3 rods rolled off my truck. I swerverd hard enough to miss them and thankfully it was early enough in the morning there were no other cars on the road. No rods broke, but they're definitely pretty beat up. My euro and 8wt both lost their fighting butt (I had a local builder fix them up), my dry fly rod but cap got some scars and I lost some finish on all the blanks. But all rods have since caught good fish so it doesn't seem like there was any major damage.

On a different note, that day, I still ended up breaking the tip on my euro--I really don't believe it was from the accident, I highsticked a fish as I was landing it and put all the pressure on the tip, a no no on a euro (and it was a white fish to!). And my buddy also did the fly in the tree snap the tip off while trying to retrieve it. It was a brutal day.
 
Long_Rod_Silvers said:
Trout setting a steelhead eat.......so dumb.
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Years ago I had a steelhead hit my fly on two casts in a row, I was ready on the third cast, I gave it the bassmaster Hooksett. Hooked solid and landed.
I normally do nothing but I think whether a fish gets hooked or not has more to do with what the fish does than what the angler does.
 
Out of tiredness and haste I left rods in the rod tubes in the boat and ran shuttle at the end of the day, figuring we can all break down at the same time. Going through a small tunnel I heard what sounded like metal grinding. Pull over and the one rod had popped out but where the line leaves the tip top and then back to where the fly was hooked on the reel, that got caught on the oar lock. The rod and reel were dragging on the ground. The fighting but got grinder to about half its width, the reel looked like a belt sander hit it and the counterweight fell off (newer battenkill large arbor). But all still work fine to this day. Oddly I found the counterweight (with screw attached) in the boat a few weeks later when I washed it.
 
I pinned my oil skin hat to my back with a large iron driven by a ten wt Spey rod with a poorly chosen cast given the wind and seven or eight hundred grains. Now for the dumb part. I was alone on a tidal river seeking Chinook, successfully, so I didn't stop fishing. I cut the leader in my teeth and kept fishing. The really dumb part was not knowing if I had crimped the barb for certain. Upon reaching home a few fish and hours later it was removed by someone who could reach it. It was crimped. I used to be a sick sick person afflicted with a severe case of anadramousitis complicated by chromes disease. I'm better now. My hat, none the wiser for wear. My gortex jacket, needed repair.
 
Tried to wade across a river when I was a newb without knowing how to read the river. The current swept my feet out and I fell face first w/ head pointed upstream. Instant wader fill up and was heading down towards a deep hole with a knarly tree root ball protruding well out into the river. Was able to claw my way to shore and got out. That reminds me...I still need to buy one of those wading staffs from @Herkileez
 
Dustin Chromers said:
I pinned my oil skin hat to my back with a large iron driven by a ten wt Spey rod with a poorly chosen cast given the wind and seven or eight hundred grains. Now for the dumb part. I was alone on a tidal river seeking Chinook, successfully, so I didn't stop fishing. I cut the leader in my teeth and kept fishing. The really dumb part was not knowing if I had crimped the barb for certain. Upon reaching home a few fish and hours later it was removed by someone who could reach it. It was crimped. I used to be a sick sick person afflicted with a severe case of anadramousitis complicated by chromes disease. I'm better now. My hat, none the wiser for wear. My gortex jacket, needed repair.
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That's poetry bud
 
majpreal said:
Tried to wade across a river when I was a newb without knowing how to read the river. The current swept my feet out and I fell face first w/ head pointed upstream. Instant wader fill up and was heading down towards a deep hole with a knarly tree root ball protruding well out into the river. Was able to claw my way to shore and got out. That reminds me...I still need to buy one of those wading staffs from @Herkileez
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I watched a buddy wade a swift deep spot above danger that was chest deep. This activity has forever since been referred to the moon walk for it's resemblance to the old footage of the first NASA moon landings/walks on the moon. The anti gravity properties of the water combining with a stiff nervous bodied angler as he bounces his way through danger to safety. One small step indeed......
 
I once successfully launched my Supercat into East Lake and then realized I had failed to put on fins ... when you rely on fins alone, it made it a tad difficult to get back to shore 😳

I never counted falling in the river while wading as dumb ... for me it was part of the game. This is why I'd look downstream to figure where I swim to if I did end up in the water ... which did happen more often than it should have. But those were my young and "aggressive wader" days... there's no way I'd attempt to wade across moving water today in the same place I did when I was younger.
 
The combination of water, gravity and youth can be a wet, hard and cold lesson. When I was a kid, hurricane Gloria flooded the creek in my best friend's back yard. During the storm a group of us neighborhood kids played a game of tackle football in his yard. We were soaked head to toe in mud. After the game as the storm passed, we stood on the still high bank in awe of the raging flood water a foot or two below. Someone decided it would be fun to see who had the guts to run as close to the river before stopping short of falling in (you can see where this is going). Full of testosterone and youthful ignorance, we collectively stepped back 50 feet or so and sprinted towards the raging brown ribbon that was the Neshaminy creek, each with the intention of stopping well short of the flows. But some of us didn't factor in the slickness of the grass and our competitive juices which resulted in 3 of us sliding into the river, myself included, all unable to stop his momentum. I instantly knew my life was in danger before I hit the water. I recall the unprecedented adrenaline rush, the immediate tunnel vision, and lost sense of feeling in my extremities. I instinctively knew not to fight the current and swam diagonally with the flows towards the opposite bank as one is instructed when caught in a rip current. I focused on the trees there that stood like pilings against the current. But then those trees became an unexpected hazard as the force of water made them impossible to hold. One had to "hop-scotch" diagonally downstream tree to tree at hand, each section resulting in less pressure and shallower water until I got to a point where I was able to exit the river wearing half the clothes (and twice the humility) as when I unexpectedly entered.

Yeah, that was dumb. But the resulting rescue of my friends further downstream later that day made the local news.
 
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