I took my Dad to the Detriot River yesterday to go walleye fishing.
We got to the launch just before 6:00 and hoped that we would have our limits in a few hours and then go home to a tasty dinner.
Well... the fishing wasn't as good as we hoped, by 10:30 or so we only had three in the box.
making another drift in front of the BASF plant, Dad finally caught his first walleye.
About five minutes later, My Dad jumps up and gives a couple explitives.
Now my Dad is not a guy to just jump up and do something like that... in fact, the only thing he really jumps up for is dinner!
"What the hecks the matter with you" I said, " you get stung?"
My Dad wasn't talking... finally he said, "no, there a D$%* snake in the boat!!"
Now my first thoughts were, "How could there be a snake in the boat?"
I'm petrified of those things!!! When I see em on TV I pick my feet up off the floor and cover my eyes and wait till it's gone.
Dad picks up the net and heads to the back of the boat where a 4 foot water snake starts to make his way onto the back deck of my Triton. (I'm just guessing it was a water snake, we were in the water... the snake was in the water... it must be water snake, right?)
So Dad starts to shoo it off the deck as it retreats to the back of the transom where it really doesn't wanna leave.
Now Dad is swinging at it, hitting my couling more than anything else.
I then remembered back to when I was a kid, every time my Dad would build something, I always wanted to help. So when he let me pound some nails with him, I would repeatedly me miss the nails and hit the wood, at which time, Dad would be screeming at me "The nail! The nail! hit the nail!!!"
So I thought I would return the favor and save my shiny couling... "The snake!! The Snake!!! Hit the snake!!!"
Dad finally gets the snake off the boat and the things starts swimming, and can they swim!
Remember we're floating down the Detriot River, that snake is swimming around like there isn't a bit of current and my 101 pounds of thrust can't get away from that snake in the current as it starts to come back to the boat!
Dad is cussing at it furiously and gave it one final warning of which it decided to ignore. As it made it's second attempt to get back into the boat.
Dad's accuracy with the net greatly improved with out my couling distracting him and gave the would be stowaway a head ache I'm sure he's still feeling today.
My only and last hopes were that a musky would come up from the depths and make him a tastey mid morning snack! Nothing doing!
Thankfully, nobody was around to see this gracefull display of pest management.
It was the first time I ever wished my 21 foot boat was bigger.
We only managed to put one more eye in the boat before we called it a day, but let me tell ya!
It's hard to fish when you have the heebee jeebee's!
For the rest of the day, Dad was known as the "snake charmer"
joshimoto son
