Wednesday, September 26
Lake Erie EverStart, Day One
Dan writes:
So many times in this journal I have written about the importance of having a backup plan, especially when fishing these tournaments in waters like the Great Lakes. This week was a prime example. I mentioned yesterday that I didn’t know what else to do, other than try to get to my fish out on Lake Erie, so even though it was forty-four degrees, and windy, that’s what I did this morning.
We took off at 7, and I was glad to see that quite a few boats ahead of me were heading out to the big lake also. I could see perhaps ten boats in front of me, and I followed them for many miles. But as the waves got bigger and the boats began to spread out, it became more and more difficult to keep track of where people were. A half hour into the ride, when I’d counted five boats who had already turned around and were heading back, I began to question whether I’d made a good decision. My partner had expressed no concerns about venturing out onto the lake today, and I stopped a number of times to ask how he was doing. He was fine, we’re doing good, let’s keep going, he’d say.
An hour into the ride we had made surprisingly good time, and had already covered twenty five of the thirty eight mile ride. I had my Lowrance X15 set to navigate to the point of Pelee Island, and at any time with just a glance it told me how far I was from my destination. We were traveling mainly across the waves, and riding in the troughs much of the time, so it wasn’t too bad. The trouble came when the further out we got, the more the wind direction turned around, and shifted my course such that progress towards my destination became slower and slower. Eventually I had to quit traveling across the waves and instead head downwind to get pointed at my goal. This made for a very nasty ride, got us extremely wet, and it took us another hour to go just ten miles. The waves were now bigger than anything I had ever seen, with some towering over us that must have been ten-footer’s. By this time I was having serious doubts about my ability to make it back through these conditions.
About two miles from the Pelee Island I stopped to assess the situation. We had driven for two hours and were now within sight of our destination. On the other hand, traveling towards that destination was becoming increasingly more difficult, and I estimated at least another half hour to make it. The air temperature was in the forties when we started out this morning, and it was not expected to get much warmer throughout the day. The wind was blowing at twenty to twenty five knots, and as I said, I think many of the waves were at about ten feet. Also, the water was muddy, which the fish don’t like, we were soaking wet, and cold, and I wasn’t sure we could even fish under these conditions.
I now made a decision, and turned around. Wow. Up until this point, we hadn’t had to face these waves head-on. Now we did, and we realized how big some of them really were. Almost as soon as we turned to head back, we were faced with the biggest, steepest wave I have ever seen, and we were headed directly into it. It towered over us as it approached and looked like it would just swallow us up. It was truly frightening. Instead of crashing over us though the wave lifted the nose of the boat up, leaned us back in our seats like it was trying to dump us out, then shot us up toward the sky. I didn’t know what would happen on the other side, but somehow we came down straight, and dry, and thankfully there was not another monster waiting for us.
We traveled for perhaps ten minutes into the wind like this, hardly ever more than at fast idle speed, just trying to keep the waves out of the boat, and made very little forward progress. I tried turning north and heading across the waves instead. It was about twelve miles to the Canadian shoreline, and if the wind continued out of the north then it was possible there was some calmer water over there.
It took us forty five minutes to get within a mile of land, and conditions had not improved at all. The wind turned to be out of the west again, the waves continued to be monstrous and with the spray coming over the side of the boat I felt I was driving blind much of the time.
This was the point at which an uncomfortable ride was turning into a dangerous one. I was so wet that there was absolutely no possibility of drying out out here in the boat, even if we had found calm conditions for the rest of the day. Combining wet clothes with these high winds and temperatures in the low fifties could spell hypothermia, and I could already feel myself beginning to shiver.
I made another decision. There was a launch ramp somewhere on the Canadian shore. I could call Annie and have her meet us there with the trailer. We could dry out and warm up in the car on the ride back, then re-launch the boat in the river and get a re-start from the tournament director. We might get in two or three hours of fishing, which is more than we’d get if I tried to drive the boat back by water at this point, and I wasn’t even sure I could do that.
By sheer luck, when we made landfall we were within a quarter mile of a protected river mouth, with a marina and a launch ramp just inside. We pulled in, shut down, and stood up for the first time in three hours. Water that had settled into pockets of our clothing gushed out now and ran down the insides if collars, sleeves and pant legs, and stiff muscles were pressed into service as we stumbled up onto the docks with what had to be forty pounds of wet clothing on. The first thing I did was dig out my cell phone and call Annie. She didn’t answer and I had to leave a message, but she called back within a minute or two. I was shivering and my voice was shaky, and when I told her I needed her to drop whatever she was doing and come and get us, she knew I was serious. She was already on her way over to the tournament site, and I told her to call me back after she got there, got the trailer hooked up and found a map, then I would tell her exactly where we were.
When she called again she was standing with the Operation Bass tournament staff, and I relayed to them where we were, and also that another boat had staggered in after us and was looking for assistance as well. It was arranged that those two fishermen would ride back with us, and could return later that night with their own truck and trailer to retrieve their boat. (It turns out this other boat had put in an emergency 9-1-1 call about an hour earlier, because their big engine had gone out, the bilge pumps weren’t working and they were taking on water. A half hour later while waiting for rescue they got the engine running again, and started heading for port. They called in and told the dispatcher that they were out of danger, but somehow the message never got relayed to the Coast Guard, who launched a search-and-rescue mission with cutters and helicopters and were out for hours looking for these guys.)
Annie finally arrived about two hours later. She had had to cross the border into Canada, which is a long and slow process these days. During this time we were able to get some hot coffee into us, and I had a chance to peel of my wet clothing and dress instead in the spare rainsuit I keep in the boat. I exchanged nine layers of wet stuff for one, thin layer of dry, but at least it was dry and by staying out of the wind I was able to warm up some.
It took another two hours to get back to the tournament site, where we arrived just in time to see some of the weigh-in and to talk to others who had been through similar experiences today. The overall results of the fishing today were: out of 142 boats total, only 71 caught any fish at all, and only thirty-something caught more than one fish.
My practice partner Scott also went out to Pelee Island, and he actually fished for an hour or so before making the return trip, by water. By the time he got back to safe harbor he was so shaken up that he said first, he had never been that frightened in his life, and second, he was not going to fish the next day.
Posted next to the weigh-in area was a sign-out sheet. It was the list of anglers who were dropping out and not going to fish tomorrow, and the list was growing rapidly. Me, personally, I had had a terrible experience, bad enough that there was no way I was going back out on that lake tomorrow. I’ll fish, in the river where I’ve caught only one fish in two days, but after this I’m simply not ready to go out on the big water again.
Before I close here, I’ve simply got to give credit to my partner for today, Steve Hamilton, who never once complained, even though I almost drown him and we never made even one cast all day. He was a real trooper, and had he had less fortitude, good nature and understanding, then a bad experience could have been made even worse for all of us. Thanks, Steve.
Annie writes:
It was a pretty unusual morning. I woke up with Dan, showered at 4:30 (not recommended, as I froze), and then loaded up the truck since I planned on staying out in town for the day. On the way to the ramp I asked Dan how he felt about today, he said that he wasn’t looking forward to it. Dan never talks like that about fishing. I had a very unsettling feeling about him going out and I actually had tears roll down my face as I told him to please be careful.
I got him launched, dropped the trailer in the parking lot, so I didn’t have to tow that around all day, then went into town, where I found a nice Laundromat and got all our laundry caught up. I went poking around in Home Depot (never liked that store before I had a house, now it’s my favorite), Target, Meijers, and then was driving when my phone beeped and said I had a message. I was waiting for the message, saying to myself “Please don’t let it be Dan, Please don’t let it be Dan”, then the message came, and it was Dan. He said “Hey Baby, I need to talk to you so call me as soon as you can.” It was left one minute ago, and I quickly called him back. It was awful, his voice was shaking, and I knew he was freezing. He was in Canada, on shore, and they could not get back. They wanted me to get the trailer and go pick them up. Where? That was the problem, he knew approximately where he was, but I didn’t have a Canada map. I hooked up the trailer, told Operation Bass I was going to get him, and was on my way to Canada. I had the computer with me, turned on our road atlas software, and got a few main roads to travel in Canada.
Throughout the ride we kept in close contact with our cell phones, talking at least six or seven times. Thank goodness we both had a phone, or I would have been lost. I got into Canada and headed South, basically until I got to the water, then I followed the water all the way. Two and a half hours later, after driving the shore and beeping my horn every quarter mile in case he could hear me, I see this soaking wet guy, walking on the side of the road, talking on a cell phone. It was the best sight I had every seen.
We turned into the marina where his boat was, and there were two other guys there whose boat had broken down, and they needed a ride back to the U. S. to get their trailer. I still had our laundry, so I offered everyone dry shirts at least. We got back to the launch ramp at 3:15, which coincidentally was Dan’s due-in time, but of course that didn’t apply after all this. At the weigh-in, I had never heard so many pro fisherman talk the way they did today. They were all scared, saying prayers, and were very glad to be back on land. I heard the Coast Guard had to make three rescues of tournament anglers today, and I think lots of other guys called for their trailers, too.
We went to the Christian Anglers meeting after the weigh in, and from there went back to the Laundromat, and threw all Dan’s wet clothes into the dryers. They were so heavy we could barely carry them in one load. With dry clothes, we then went out to dinner (much deserved) and to talk about or days.