Hey Alaska Dean,
I laughed for about five minutes when I read your line about your friend thinking it might be exciting to grunt like a moose!
Anyway, last summer, on a small river here on the southern plains, striper fishing...I get to the river to meet my guide and I'm pleasantly surprised to see the river high and flowing fast. So many other trips we've been confronted with low water and little to no current, and slow fishing.
Well, we get in the boat and although I'm fly fishing, my "guide" makes for his bait tanks, which he keeps in the river. The current is flowing so fast that it's all we can do to pull up and take a dozen or so baitfish out of the tank. We're slightly out of the current, near a tributary mouth, and I'm holding onto the tree limbs trying to steady the boat so this guy can get his baitfish.
We get them and head off. We pass areas that I've previously wade fished and the water is so high they are barely recognizable.
We arrive at the fishing spot, pull into a calm pocket off the side and throw out the anchor. We are three feet or so off the fast-moving current, in some slower, murky water of unknown depth. I start casting and then a few moments later I notice a hot-water heater floating down the river at a rapid pace. In fact, the water appears to be moving faster and faster. It's up into the trees now. There is all sorts of debris coming down the river and I can barely keep my fly down in the strike zone long enough to get a three-second drift through the productive areas.
No luck and we pull anchor and motor off. We come to another area where he throws out the anchor, only the anchor rope breaks due to the pressure of the current pushing against the boat and we start drifting downstream, and out into the main current. I grab some treelimbs and hold on tight, while he starts the engine. Except, he motors back to where we'd been and tells me to hold the throttle while he tries to fish out his lost anchor!!!!
This is supposed to be a full-day trip and we're barely two hours into the day when I tell him to take me back to the ramp, that I have a family to think about and that I really don't want to catch a striper that bad.
On the way back he tells me we're screwed if we should hit something and break our prop, the current is so fast and strong that we wouldn't be able to guide ourselves and we'd be at the mercy of the current.
Somehow we made it back and I've not fished with that "guide" since, nor will I ever. I was foolish to go out on the river, but he was absolutely crazy to have not called off the trip due to the conditions. Never have I felt so helpless and terrified while on the water.
Fred S.
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