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Hunker Down with Kes

Why I Don’t Go Fishing

Posted

I think I could have been a great fisherman. I can read a nautical map. I still have the needed hand/eye coordination. I have a “light touch” when the occasion calls for it and I have worked on my patience over the years. That can be critical when you are “waiting out” those northern pike! I believe, with just a little practice, I could “set the hook” on a rainbow trout, largemouth bass, walleye...

I could be like that famous Tennessee fisherman, Bill Dance. Or maybe like that unrelenting one legged captain that chased down Moby Dick. I could travel America one river, one lake and one ocean at a time!

Listen, I could have my own fishing show on TV. I could get rich selling aluminum boats, Johnson motors and Daiwa spinning reels...

There is one small, tiny hitch in this plan. It is the only thing that has held me back from surpassing Orlando Wilson, Captain Ahab, Andrew, Peter, James and John...

I get seasick. Very easily. And immediately. Every time the water ripples. And I don’t recover very well. Sometimes I don’t recover at all! I think I died for certain on a fishing trip out of Carrabelle, Florida, when I was fourteen years old.

Uncle Ben arranged the whole thing. It looked like fun. I drank a Root Beer to get the morning started and climbed aboard. I was throwing up before we passed that bridge that guarded the entrance to the harbor.

Uncle Ben said later that we went 15 miles out into the Gulf. We could have. But I didn’t see any of it. I was down in the bottom of that boat throwing up hot dogs, pork and beans, cornbread, calling birds, French hens, turtle doves, a partridge in a pear tree...and everything else I had ingested in the past fourteen years!

I didn’t leave nothing in the tank.

I also didn’t have one single “swallow” of another Root Beer until my grandson begged me to “share” one with him while we were waiting in front of a Cracker Barrel in Franklin, Tennessee, for his sisters to be born.

My weak stomach and its aversion to all things spinning, rolling, undulating or bouncing up and down—which doomed my fishing career—didn’t wait till I was a teenager to rear its ugly head. It started on a strawberry crate “boat” on Archie Moore’s pond when I was five years old.

My older brother Leon tied several crates together with bailing wire and shoved us out past the thirsty cows. Before I could drop my string in the water sweat broke out on my upper lip, all color drained from my cheeks, my stomach started revolving like a run-a-way Maytag...

Ben Everett somehow talked me into floating out into Carroll Lake when we were ten or so. He had this small boat with no motor and one oar. Pretty soon we were drifting across these 20 foot waves... Ok, maybe they were 2 inch waves. I still threw up right before I jumped overboard and dog-paddled ashore.

The next summer I attended a church camp in Linden, Tennessee; on the Buffalo River! One of the main activities was fishing. Folks, I knew the outcome before I even got in the canoe. But I couldn’t think of any intelligent way to get out of this deal without looking like a chicken.

In hind sight, I could have cut a big gash in my leg with one of the tomahawks...

We had been camping beside this river for a whole week. I had watched the water rapidly tumbling by day after day. I didn’t have a chance.

Let me tell you, I was the talk of the Arapahoe tent until our mothers picked us up on Saturday. I go back the next year and the first thing the counselor said was, “We have added a mandatory water safety course because we had an incident last summer where a camper turned a canoe over and four people almost drown...”

Billie Jean loved the water. I’d just gotten my driver’s license and wanted to impress my first girlfriend. We unloaded her uncle’s boat up at Paris Landing. It was going to be the “perfect” outing on Kentucky Lake.

I never even got the thing started. We were drifting toward open water when my head started spinning. I saw, and heard, two Billie Jeans fussing at me. Both of them shut up when I threw up on the nearest one’s fancy Capri pants as I leaped into the water and made like Tarzan toward dry land.

I’m telling you, ole Bill Dance is lucky my stomach is on the touchy side. I would have showed him some fishing moves like you ain’t never seen!

’Course, on the other side of the coin, I could be married to Billie Jean...

Respectfully,
Kes