Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
A while back, I had three fellows fishing with me who brought along and wore their own personal floatation devices (PFD’s), but unlike normal lifejackets or vests, what they had resembled a set of wide suspenders. With the help of a CO2 cartridge, the device would automatically inflate if the wearer ended up in the water, or if they pulled a certain red plastic tab.
I certainly have no problem with anyone who chooses to take the extra steps to help ensure their personal safety. In fact, I applaud such actions and agree with safety statistics indicating that if all boaters would wear PFD’s (even people who can swim) there would be a lot less fatalities on the water. Still, seeing three guys step aboard my boat and immediately don lifejackets had me wondering what kind confidence they had in me as a captain. Hey - I’ve got a good sound boat, with high enough sides that people just don’t go falling overboard very easily and I’m happy to report that I’ve always managed to bring home every customer I’ve taken out. Of course some have come back a bit on the “pickled” side, and more than just a few have been burnt red like steamed crabs, but fortunately, all have arrived back at the dock alive and well, even despite the pleading by some of my seasick clients to just kill them right there on the deck and put an end to their misery. Some things I just won’t do – dead customers don’t pay very well.
While my clients always seem to stay in the boat, I wish I could say the same about myself. I don’t know if you spend enough time on the water, it’s just bound to happen to you sooner or later, if it’s a matter of getting older and clumsier or that I’m doing dumber things these days. I only know that I’ve found myself climbing back into boat more times in the last twenty-some years than I have in my first thirty, and it’s getting embarrassing!
The first in my string of splashdowns occurred while fishing by myself down in the Florida Keys. I was working a flat in about 3-feet of water, standing on the bow of a skiff casting to a bunch of barracuda. I hooked one of the toothy torpedoes and as it immediately headed towards the stern of the boat, I tried to follow by walking along the wet gunwale, which proved to be a lot slicker than I imagined. Barracuda are revered for their jumping ability when hooked, but they’ve got nothing on a 183 pound doofuss doing the two-step off a boat while trying not to break or lose an $800 fly rod!
When I stood up in the waist-deep water, I was happy to find that the cuda was still hooked-up and slowly moving off into the current. Unfortunately, my boat was quickly moving off “with” the current, forcing me to wade after it at warp-speed. Of course, I wasn’t wearing shoes to protect my feet from common wading hazards like coral, sea urchins and stingrays, after all I was supposed to be “in” the boat. I made haste, caught the boat and the fish, and later found that Soft Scrub works very well for taking human blood off a fiberglass deck.
The next time I took an unexpected plunge was also in the Keys. I had jury-rigged a poling platform on an old boat and it was the first time I tried to use it. In fact it was the first time I had ever tried poling a boat at all, a deadly combination from the start. I had two friends with me, one elected to get out and wade (he had shoes) while saying something about being in the water with barracuda and sharks might be safer than standing in front of me while I’m perched on an elevated platform wielding a 20-foot push pole. I wasn’t about to argue with him. I’ve seen him cast and the thought of standing behind him on an elevated platform while he wings a fly rod around didn’t seem too safe either. My push pole may be 20-feet long but it’s only 2-inches in diameter, and not much to hide behind when someone’s backcast goes wild!
Anyway, with one brave soul (and better caster) up on the bow, I pushed the boat around a flat, looking for potential targets. Spotting a couple of nice barracuda up ahead, I elected to stop the boat by staking-out and letting the angler make his casts. “Staking-out” is like anchoring except that instead of an anchor, once the boat is stopped, the push pole is jammed into the bottom and then tied to the boat via a short piece of rope. With my inexperience I didn’t realize the importance of the “once the boat is stopped” part of the routine, and preceded to stake out while the boat was still moving ahead, propelled by both wind and current.
Keep in mind that, at the time, I was standing on a 2x3 foot platform, 4 feet off the water. As the boat drifted along, I suddenly realized that I would not be stopping the boat by holding onto the firmly planted and severely flexing pole. In fact, as I had not yet tied the two together, the pole and boat were connected by only one weak link – me!
As boat and pole separated, I had two decisions to make, either let go of the pole or get dragged off the platform. I’m going to blame the brain frying effects of the Florida sunshine on the fact that I chose the latter of the two options. I would like to say that it was kind of like pole-vaulting, but I wouldn’t want to insult any real practitioners of the sport. It was actually a “snatch, fling and splash” that happened so quickly I barely had time to get “oh sheeooot” out of my mouth before I was gargling saltwater. In the brief time I sailed through the air, I do recall the look on my wading angler friend’s face. No, he wasn’t grinning from ear-to-ear. From fifty yards I could clearly make out that the corners of his mouth were easily touching both temples!
That day I learned that wading after a wind and current driven boat with a 20-foot fiberglass pole in your hand is tougher than doing the same with an expensive fly rod. Later that night, I was glad to see that Soft Scrub also removes blood stains from poling platforms.
Over time, I convinced myself that since both of those incidents occurred in Florida, it must be that saltwater in lower latitudes is more slippery than it is up here in the mid-Atlantic and certainly I’d stay safe and dry on home turf! Then I took a couple friends fishing on my little boat in the bay. It was a hot afternoon, and taking note that my water temperature gauge was reading a balmy 79-degrees, I decided to put a foot in the bay and feel for myself. With one hand holding a spinning rod and the other gripping the back of a pedestal seat, I dipped my foot in the water just as a wake came along and rocked our little boat. I lost my balance, gripped tighter to the seat (which proceeded to come off the pedestal) and with a rod in one hand and swivel seat in the other did a very ungraceful “back flop” into the water. So much for home turf advantage!
My most recent splash occurred while stepping off my big boat onto the finger pier beside it. It’s something I do thousands of times a season, but rarely after a bunch of slimy fish have been unloaded from the boat next to me. I found out real quick that flip-flops on fish slime are like skates on ice; the foot just keeps on going – over the boards and into the water while dragging the rest of the body along for the ride! I’ve really come to love quick-dry clothing!
The guys who came aboard my boat wearing their inflatable PFD’s might have seemed a little strange at first, but now that I think about it, they were all older than me and I’m beginning to think a whole lot wiser too. They didn’t need to use their life jackets that day, but then we weren’t cleaning the deck with Soft Scrub that night either!
Capt. Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
