Watch Out for the Guys in the Grass
Bob Lawless, Port Ludlow, WA
This epistle is meant to warn all of you, my
dearest and only friends, of the dangers of
crawling through grass to get the drop on some
big Brown Trout and finding someone else crawling
beside you, intent upon the same fish.
Somehow when I am crawling like this, I get the
feeling that I'm a bad person, sneaky, dishonest,
thief-like, certainly a jerkwater.
And so this is how I felt when I spotted George (this
is an AKA because his real name is William, but his
friends all call him Nancy, and I've taken to referring
to him as Phil). My pet vest parrot, "Oleander" calls
him sewer ears and smolt, my tiny vest dog, just calls
him woof (it's all you can do when you have no human
vocal cords and your brain somehow got dropped on the
floor when God made you).
Now Phil is ok as far it goes, sneaking, as we were,
toward the same objective, the big bad brown. I tried
my best to be friendly but I found this difficult because
a sharp rock was digging into my elephant and I thought
he should move over a bit because only a few strands of
grass separated us, and this is way too close when
crawling along together after fish.
He said he hoped he would not disturb the pool too much
seeing as how he would fish it first. I told him to
"HOLD IT" because I thought I was slightly ahead of
him. He then pointed to the rods we were poking along
ahead of us. "I see you have an 8 1/2' 3-4 weight rod;
notice that mine is a 5-6 wt. and is 9' in length. I
think that settles it," he concluded. "I'm more than
six inches out in front," he said with authority.
So I then unleased my fly from the keeper and banjoed a
small cast forward, enough to give me the lead. Then Phil
jumps up and starts flailing the air to get line out and
makes a ridiculous, sloppy cast, landing with a huge splash
in front of the fish, the fly having a bit of weed snagged
on the hook. Brown gone.
So I hit him.
He then started to chase me and I could see our friendship
was not progressing as it should. I ran out into the river
and swam for it.
Phil was in hot pursuit. When I touched bottom on the other
side, I grabbed a nice, mossy rock and beaned him. He floated
off face down. I think you could safely say that our
friendship was now on the rocks.
But I dragged him out after I was sure he was mostly drowned
and would not punch me. Remember here that by doing so, I
had saved his life. And I told him so.
He said, "Yeah, but you started it."
We waded back across the stream together, arm in arm,
to fight off the mossy rocks and heavy current.
After we had used each other thusly, I told him to never
let me find him again on the river or I would kick his
caddis. Now he starts chasing me again.
I got away. But what is the lesson here? I thinks it's
don't wear waders when fishing, but get yourself a good
pair of track shoes. What do you think? ~ BOBLAWLESS
Lighter Side Archive
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