12-20-2003, 03:20 AM
It was about 4 P.M. by the time I backed my folks 38 foot CHRISCRAFT CAVALIER out of the birthing slip. I had invited a couple of friends for a few hours fishing on the lower SAN JOAQUIN river, lets just call my friends by HURK & BIG GUY;, now being this boat has full living quarters below deck means that when you unplug the electric and switch over to batterys you should allways turn your fridge and heavy appliances off because they drag the batterys down fast!!. Now after saying that I'll get on with the rest of the story, We headed for wisky sluegh and decided to anker in the mouth of Mildred Island. the mouth is were at time the Island used to be farm land but 10 years earlyer the levee broke and filled the Island and the mouth because of the flow of water from the break and years of tidal surges has left a deep hole between 85 &105 foot deep, while the rest of the river is maybe 15 to 35 foot deep and inside the island maybe 10 foot deep,. Well wqe fished 2 or 3 hours and decided we'ed had enough espesially since we'ed not had one bite. Well it dont take much figguren to realize the batterys are dead as doornails or why!.[unsure] so hear we are stuck, its dark, we'ev no phone and thers nobody insight, not even enough power for the ship to shore radio to work. But luckily or allmost unluckily the liquer cabinet was fully stocked,[
] so we just broke out a bottle and decided to keep on fishin until someone came along. On about our third bottle and about 2 or 3 AM we were feelin no pain and we were all thinkin bout what our OL'ladys where thinkin bout when all of a suddin the water around us started to boil with fish and not just any fish, these were STRIPERS!!! so we reeled our bait in off the bottom and whent to pluggin for them, we thru every thing we had in the box at'em, but they wouldent touch it.Now were stranded,drunk and pissed,[mad] At about 7:30 AM a single small bass boat looms in the distance and all three of us are screammin and waven and half sober by now, lukily he happend to see us and we were able to jump start the boat! but we took a vote and since we had allready been ther all night and our ol'ladys had probably thrown our clothes out hours ago we decided to stay awhile and try troling off the back of the boat so we would not have to kill the moter, so we started at the mouth and whent all theway around the inside of the island when all of a suddin my pole bent in half, the styriper i hooked on to may have easily went 75 pounds, I'll never know because he spooled me, but we all got agood look during the fight cause he tail walked behind the boat three or four times, and i had 27 pound trileene, during that same fight while big guy and hurk were retreeving ther line for my fight they retrived slowly and both of them hooked up, so for the first 5 minutes all 3 of us were hooked up!. they both landed ther first ones; they were like 15 and 20 pounds. out of all three of us, none of us had anymore fishing line so i tore thru the boat and found one big spool of 10 year old 10 pound PAYLESS FISHING LINE [shocked] so i spooled up with about 500 yards of that, now big at first said no way was he going to loan me any of his rebels because he only had three and hurk had allready borrowed one; but with enough beggin and a 5 dollar deposit he reluctantly released one 6 inch bright ugly florecent orange rebel and said as he handed it over that i would never land one over 5 pounds, so i got set up again and got the boat turned around and back thru the school we go again, this time hurk hooked up first and on slow retrive big guy and i hook up to, they had both of thers in and they both 20 somthin pounders and i fought mine for 30 or 40 minutes before i could get it to tire out and belly up, that fist one i landed whent 47 pounds and was the biggest of the day, every time i landed one i tore off 20 foot of line and retide, in California your only allowed two stripers apeace so as we caught them we thru the smaller ones back, and that ol'boy who gave us a jump that morning hung around jiggin could only shake his head watching us throw 15 and 25 pound stripers back after every run thru there that day, we hung that stringer of 6 striper on the scale at jolly joe's bait shop in Stockton that afternoon and it wight 217 pounds, and i landed the biggest at 47 pounds on 10 year old 10 pound PAYLESSLINE and that rebel hung the until the folks sold it acouple years back,and at the end of that day it was no longer florecentorange it striped of all but a couple scratchmark slivers of paint.
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] so we just broke out a bottle and decided to keep on fishin until someone came along. On about our third bottle and about 2 or 3 AM we were feelin no pain and we were all thinkin bout what our OL'ladys where thinkin bout when all of a suddin the water around us started to boil with fish and not just any fish, these were STRIPERS!!! so we reeled our bait in off the bottom and whent to pluggin for them, we thru every thing we had in the box at'em, but they wouldent touch it.Now were stranded,drunk and pissed,[mad] At about 7:30 AM a single small bass boat looms in the distance and all three of us are screammin and waven and half sober by now, lukily he happend to see us and we were able to jump start the boat! but we took a vote and since we had allready been ther all night and our ol'ladys had probably thrown our clothes out hours ago we decided to stay awhile and try troling off the back of the boat so we would not have to kill the moter, so we started at the mouth and whent all theway around the inside of the island when all of a suddin my pole bent in half, the styriper i hooked on to may have easily went 75 pounds, I'll never know because he spooled me, but we all got agood look during the fight cause he tail walked behind the boat three or four times, and i had 27 pound trileene, during that same fight while big guy and hurk were retreeving ther line for my fight they retrived slowly and both of them hooked up, so for the first 5 minutes all 3 of us were hooked up!. they both landed ther first ones; they were like 15 and 20 pounds. out of all three of us, none of us had anymore fishing line so i tore thru the boat and found one big spool of 10 year old 10 pound PAYLESS FISHING LINE [shocked] so i spooled up with about 500 yards of that, now big at first said no way was he going to loan me any of his rebels because he only had three and hurk had allready borrowed one; but with enough beggin and a 5 dollar deposit he reluctantly released one 6 inch bright ugly florecent orange rebel and said as he handed it over that i would never land one over 5 pounds, so i got set up again and got the boat turned around and back thru the school we go again, this time hurk hooked up first and on slow retrive big guy and i hook up to, they had both of thers in and they both 20 somthin pounders and i fought mine for 30 or 40 minutes before i could get it to tire out and belly up, that fist one i landed whent 47 pounds and was the biggest of the day, every time i landed one i tore off 20 foot of line and retide, in California your only allowed two stripers apeace so as we caught them we thru the smaller ones back, and that ol'boy who gave us a jump that morning hung around jiggin could only shake his head watching us throw 15 and 25 pound stripers back after every run thru there that day, we hung that stringer of 6 striper on the scale at jolly joe's bait shop in Stockton that afternoon and it wight 217 pounds, and i landed the biggest at 47 pounds on 10 year old 10 pound PAYLESSLINE and that rebel hung the until the folks sold it acouple years back,and at the end of that day it was no longer florecentorange it striped of all but a couple scratchmark slivers of paint.[signature]