(12-24-2020, 07:14 PM)eTherapist Wrote: Okay, TD is sand bagging you all. His "small craft" was his old round float tube. He fished those waters out of the old round style tube, spinning rod, and 4-6" curl tail grubs all those years. IF you ever doubted his sanity, you need to know that on several occasions he was TOWED out to sea by these fish. I would contend that part of his knee problems stem from having to kick back to shore 3-5 miles after getting hauled around by some large critter he hooked into. The guy is one of a kind !!! MERRY CHRISTMAS to you TD and the rest of the board. Hope the Happy New Year has some great fishing for all !!!!There ya go. Now ya gone and did it. There were probably at least a few BFTers who only mildly suspected my mental stability. But I still got a few secrets. And Merry Christmas to you too.
I did enjoy some "donut cruises" courtesy of large fishies. But never for really great distances. The big fish either "rocked" me or otherwise arranged their own early releases...for bad behavior. My biggest challenges were getting caught in the heavy currents of changing tides and being swept down the coastline. But if I did it right, I could fish going one way and then fish the other way after the tide changed. It was great when I worked it right. Tough when I had to get out of the water on some lonely beach and wait it out.
Some of my most memorable experiences in the "donut dinghy" were of the non-fish persuasion. Several times I had curious young sea lions come up swimming around me and seemingly inviting me to play. Thankfully none of the big nasty territorial males thought me worth bothering with. And then there was the big green sea turtle. Kinda shook me when I looked at my shadow on the bottom in the clear water and saw TWO big shady spots. And when I turned around there was a big ol' turtle with lust in his eyes. I had a tough time convincing him that I had a headache.
Thankfully, I never saw any large sharks while tubing. Quite a few small ones. Fun to catch. The biggest shark I encountered was about a ten footer I hooked on a big handline while being a gringo deckhand on a shrimp boat. It had chomped a cabrilla I was reeling in on my rod...leaving only the top half. I put that on a big shark hook rigged on a stout rope and chain and dropped it back over the side. The shark came back for seconds and it was game on. I wrapped a couple of loops of line around a stern cleat on the boat and the shark started jerking the whole big shrimp boat around. That woke up the Mexican shrimpers and they came up from below decks to see "que paso?" Took a few minutes and a couple of rifle rounds to settle the shark down. Took longer than that to keep the crew from wanting to throw me overboard.
And then there was the night when a couple of coyotes raided my camp while I was sleeping on the beach...
And then there was the time when I was purposely sprayed by a cropduster while driving down a long dirt road to the water...
'Twern't all fun and games. But mostly.