Went fishing today, this morning at around 6am in a 4-5 acre man-man lake. Was having a good time, my casting was off for some reason, might be because of my little leader and my 7wt line. But anyways.....


I'm about 50-60' out from shore in chest high water and this boater is out on the water racing around. He's plenty far away from me. So I continue to cast, and cast, and cast. Then he got a little closer to me, the wavie water was making me bob a little. So he goes around and again and I had my line a good ways out, bout 40 feet, maybe a bit more. So he gets a bit further away from me. But!!! Just close enough that my line caught onto a rope (maybe for skiing?) dragging on the side of his boat....So, my reel goes zinging like mad, and I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to try and "grab+tug" for 2 reasons, my hand burning and my rod breaking, so I quickly grab my pliars and I cut the line. Which broke an eye because it yanked the pliars up past the eye because it didn't cut fast enough.

At this time, I was angry, really angry. Because he had tons of room, he didn't need to be that close to me. And angry at myself because I didn't need to be that far out.

As I was walking home a truck pulled up, a man got out. "Was that you?" this man asks. I said "You the guy in the boat that killed my reel?" He explained to me he was very sorry and that he did not see me in the water. So we talked a bit and I accepted his apology and I left.

So my drag was toast after this morning. And I have to order new line, reel etc. No more FF till the end of Auguest.

So the point of this is......Keep an eye on those boats and your line. You may want to strip in lots of line before it's too late.

Learn from my mistake.
Shane

Edit: Was talking to a friend a little while ago, and we had a debate on how big the lake was. He told me an acre is about the size of a football field. So, this lake, probably around 20 acres...But, whatever the size of the lake, be cautious about the boats!