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Authored By Michael M. Michaelson © May 2002 |
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The Lucky Rod |
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It was another one of those long anticipated days out on the ocean while fishing for Halibut off the coast of Oregon that I did finally hook this story. The days fishing was lousy but at least I did ultimately bring in this narrative. However, my wife tells me that unless I start bringing more than stories home I better stop wasting money fishing. There were two deck hands, Elmer the regular and most experienced and Klem, the less experienced an extra that had been brought aboard that day for a helping hand with all the anxious customers. Klem was a professor during the school year but was off for the summer working at odd jobs trying to make ends meet. The fishing conditions were really bad, in fact as experienced Halibut fishermen I say we should not have been fishing in these terrible conditions but the charters were out to make their buck no matter what. We were forced to use five pound weights in a heavy drift at 800 feet, yeah, you got it right, fishing for Halibut at 800 feet in a heavy drift is like trying to pull a bull out of a deep mud pit with dental floss. The entire episode was near insane but one bright spot unexpectedly brightened the day. It was about an hour into fishing in ridiculously deep currents and in the middle of many hang-ups with the bottom when Klem was called to help an older gentleman undo his hook up from the bottom. Klem slid and slipped across the deck, he seemed to not quite have his sea legs as of yet, nor did he have on the right deck shoes but finally managed to get over to where he was being called with the help of about 5 customers. After much struggle and without success in freeing the line off the bottom he tried desperately to break the leader off and at least salvage the line. The lines were the new braided lines, developed by the Navy for towing aircraft carriers, which was near impossible to break unless the hook broke off first or you pulled the bottom up. Now while the line grew tighter and tighter the pole suddenly shot out of Klem's hand…OOPS AND "Gollyfragadontis!" He had been holding the pole over the side but did not have his palm under the rod, a very wrong thing to have been doing. And when the boat lifted and the line tightened like steel the pole was ripped out from between his thumb and fingers, and there went the 200 dollar setup, disappearing down into the 800 foot deep waters! Poor Professor Klem turned white, then green as if he were going to get sick and then an embarrass red as he stood there in shock and watched his days wages and career as a deck hand swallowed into the choppy dark depths. All the fishermen groaned for his misfortune but there was nothing anyone could do for his devastating loss! It was really a bummer because he was going to have to replace it and that meant instead of bringing home a hundred easy dollars that day, he would have to pay the captain a hundred extra bucks for the full setup and it was not a great moment for him. When good old Cap heard that someone had lost a pole he came stomping out of the wheel house and sputtered out "xx-!>!!?00z" who the person was that had lost the pole overboard and when he heard it was his own deck hand he fumed quietly and returned back to the tossing helm. The few fishermen who were still not sick and saw what had happened felt really bad for Klem, for he was trying hard and was doing the best he could under the worst conditions but no matter, his loss would certainly tarnish his deck hand reputation. The drift was more than bad, few fish were caught and every half hour the captain would pull up and make another run up current about two or three miles and drop line again. This process was repeated over and over in all directions, covering many miles in rough seas and deep waters. After much fishless drifts and near to the end of our time for the day one elderly fellow thought he had a fish on but it was acting rather strange. After reeling for ten minutes he found he was only tangled in someone's line but no one was tangled at that time. He tried releasing the line but Klem came slipping all the way over, and took the line by hand and began to pull it in. Little by little he brought it in until there came a shout down the rail that something strange had come up along side the boat. He then followed the line and reached down for the object and with the anticipation of a groom on his honeymoon he slowly retrieved a very familiar fishing pole and lifted it up and you got it right, it was the very one he had lost a few hours earlier!!! The odds of this happening were too great to measure and I think that a national lottery could have been created with these facts and odds and no one could have guessed about the catching of the lost pole in a deep ocean with such swift currents. Then as an additional reward of his suffering at the whim of a miserable day not only did he recover the pole in near perfect condition, but as he reeled the line back in he soon discovered that it had a fair sized Halibut attached to the hook and after a good deal of reeling he now had himself a 40 pound fish. Out of consideration for his good and unusual fortune he gave the fish to the elderly man who had hooked the line and all was well. At least we caught one NEW POLE and one fair fish that day! I hope someone might get a tiny bit of something from this story; after all, it did cost me over $150 hard earned dollars without one fin of a fish to show for it! I guess we could say that Klem is on his way as a deck hand, for fishermen are a very superstitious lot, but the unusual recovery of that pole will weigh heavy in his favor of being a "LUCKY" DECK HAND. Contact Author at: |
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