Hawg = one really huge bass (preferably a striper)
Hvn = the only place to be
VA = Virginia Beach, Striper Capitol of the World
My son called up last week and said "Hey, ya wanna go catch some smallmouth bass out on the James River?"
I'm a sucker. And I used to do a LOT of freshwater bass fishing until I took up salt water. And I did fairly well at it. So I said OK.
Little did I know that he and his mother had both taken out extra life insurance policies on me, with double indemnity clauses for "ACCIDENTAL".
So, now I'm committed to this fishing expedition. Then he tells me we are going by canoe. Now, I'm not gonna advertise the place, but it's a 4 hour drive from my house and they ARE a great bunch of folk that run it. And I got up at 3 am and was on the water by 8:15. We were running 9 miles of river with several Class I and Class II rapids. (Uh-huh. What's a rapids?)
Now, the "Fat Man in a Green Canoe" woulda made for a really great picture, but you'da laughed so hard that you mighta pulled something really important. So - no picture.
We handled the first few casts without any problem and actually fished for about an hour. Didja know that if you put a canoe broadside to the flow of a river and tuck it up against a fallen tree that the tree acts like a sieve and dumps your butt upside down in the COLD water? I didn't know that. Until . . .
Most of our gear was tied down. But my tackle box was lying at my feet, ready for use as always. And both of my rods were lying athwartships as I tried to keep the canoe upright. NEWSFLASH! Once that canoe starts to go? It's GONE!
We DID finally manage to get out of the river, upright, and back into the canoe. But, our main reason for being there, i.e., fishing, was suffering a bit since we lost ALL of our rods and reels and a great deal of tackle. So we floated on down a couple of miles, stopped at an island and had lunch, then continued our journey.
I won't bore you with much more - but the rapids we encountered, while tame to a real adventurer, makes for another embarrassing story I'll tell you some other time.
We found ourselves back at the take-out point before noon and home before we were supposed to be off the water. My wife got a really good laugh, but I could tell that she and my son were both disappointed that they wouldn't be collecting. She punished me by making me eat TUNA melt sandwiches for dinner.
Oh, the shame.
Anyhow, in every misfortune there is always a silver lining (or something like that) and this one is not different. This little trip helped me clean out the garage of all that dratted fresh water tackle and equipment that I REALLY didn't need any more anyway which was taking up space which I needed for all that new saltwater stuff I've been putting off buying cuz I didn't have any room for it!. Anybody got any stuff they wanna sell?