This morning the fishing was good, catching smallies, largemouth, and some white bass on the river by me. Going down the bank with the TM speed set between 6-7 throwing a buzzbait when all of a sudden the boat comes to a complete stop...and I do not. In a flash I saw myself going over the bow of the boat and I am fishing in 9' of water. On the way over I must have tried to grab the trolling motor as when I landed in the water I had my one hand on the TM head. If someone can explain to me how my bait caster was FLOATING after I righted myself up I would like to know as I do not have anything on the rod that would have made that happen as that was one of the first things that popped in my head was "grab the rod".
So a lot of things popped in my head, with the first being "WTF just happened?". For some reason I did not take my wallet or truck keys out of my pocket and put them in the boat glove box like I normally would have so like within seconds of having my head above the water I reached down and grabbed those and threw them of the deck along with the rod. So I use my hands to maneuver myself to the back of the boat and notice I am leaving blood on the side of the boat, and after a quick look the padded part of the palm was sliced open about 3/4". Get to the back of the boat (fortunately there was lite current) and as I am pulling myself into the boat my feet hit what stopped the boat. A 2" diameter barge rope where one end is anchored to the shore, and the other anchored out in the water. NORMALLY these are always marked with a buoy or a jug so the barge companies know where they are at...this one wasn't.
So the TM was not deep enough to have hit it which if it did the same thing would have happened anyway so the skeg on the big motor caught the barge rope and brought everything to an abrupt halt. I am trying not get blood on the boat carpet by clinching my fish and when the blood was starting to drip out I would just throw my arm over the side of the boat so the blood goes into the water. Then I notice that during this process that my one pant leg must have caught the TM head too as there was a 18" tear down the side of my pants but my leg is not bleeding so at least that is good. So at this point I figure "F_ck it" and just put my bleeding hand on the pants so the blood doesn't get on the boat carpet. Fortunately the water temp was 76 degrees, but unfortunately the air temp was about 45'ish degrees so it was cold being wet. Soon as I got in the boat I pulled everything out of my wallet to separate all the paper stuff so nothing would stick to each other. Then I was a little worried that the truck keys were not going to work.
I was about 2 miles from the ramp and had the mindset of might as well haul ass back to the ramp as I am going to be cold regardless. Get back to the ramp and tie off at the dock, and as I started walking into the parking lot I hit the door unlock button and the truck lights up like they normally due so at least that is not going to be a problem. Bleeding in the hand slowed down enough by the time I got back to the ramp that I could marginally wipe the boat. Now hours later I am starting to feel some soreness of muscles, etc. as when I knew I was going over I must have tried to put a death hold on to the trolling motor. Got home, cleaned off all of the blood I missed at the ramp, and started to think about all of things that could have gone worse but then started retying baits as I will be back on the water again in the morning!
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Originally Posted by Bass Cat Boats
