Fishing in the Central Valley: Being confident is great; overconfidence can lead to trouble
Have you ever had a fishing buddy assure you that since they have lived in an area all their life, that they know exactly what they’re doing and that you can trust them?
I did.
It was during a summer trip to Florida when I stayed with a buddy named Bob, who lived in a condo right on the harbor in the little town of New Port Richey.
Bob had an 18-foot whaler with a 200 hp outboard that he used to run around - and fish out of in the gulf. Convenient.
Word was that the tarpon were out by some islands about five to six miles off the coast, and Bob felt we had a chance of hooking one.
It was a typical hot and humid Florida summer day as we headed out into the gulf.
This was my first experience fishing the shallow flats, and it was disconcerting to be able to see the bottom whisk by just a few feet below us. Bob confidently sped up.
We finally arrived near the key island in a fairly flat ocean — and saw a few tarpon pods working across the flats. My big chance came when a couple of them swam by.
I was overly excited and my cast hit the biggest one, which was about 100 pounds, right in the back with the lure.
The entire pod exploded away.
Circling the quarter-mile long island to the south, Bob told me there was a good spot just ahead. We were going about 25-30 mph when I began noticing that the water kept looking like it was getting shallower. He told me it’s no problem.
A few seconds later, we began hitting the sandy bottom, grinding to a stop and becoming stuck on the bottom.
Bob says there is no need to backtrack because a deeper channel is just ahead.
My confidence was waning as we both went overboard to free the flat bottomed hull that was stuck in seven to eight inches of water.
Bob said that all we needed to do was get over the next sandy high spot to get to a deeper spot just a “few yards away” .
It became obvious that the only way we could move the boat was to rock it. Bob lifted the front of the boat and I would push from the back. We moved it about three feet per attempt.
A few minutes into this Bob tells me I need to shuffle my feet instead of lifting them because of the risk of stepping on a stingray buried in the sand. Yep, this scared me.
And this went on for 45 minutes. We stop to take a break, the day is getting hotter and we are a half-mile away from the island.
The tide is not coming in for another four hours and there I am standing in in seven inches of water and there are no signs of deeper water ahead.
I should have insisted we turn around and go back to where we started.
An hour later and we finally found a little channel about two- deep. Yeah! We follow it for 100 yards before we’re back to very shallow water. We doubled down and “ rocked” our way out another 100 yards- to a four-foot drop. Exhausted from the 3 hour ordeal, we both felt lucky to finally get out of that trap.
We later found out that a huge hurricane the year before had moved massive amounts of sand all around the area, changing the channels and high spots.
Overconfidence can be humbling for all of us.
Remember — If you’re ever stranded out in the ocean, standing
in just seven inches of water, palm trees in the distance and surrounded by stingrays — never give up!
Roger George: rogergeorge8@protonmail.com, Rogergeorgeguideservice on Facebook and @StriperWars.
