Last Updated on February 1, 2019 by Terry
If you read my fishing book, you will remember that I have fallen from a boat many times. (11 to be exact.) Some folks believe that is nothing to brag about. I believe they are wrong. They’re just jealous of me having too much fun while they live boring lives.
I wrote about some of these adventures a few months ago. Well, it’s real cold outside so I thought we might chit chat about warmer days.
Losing one’s balance
This is the number one reason for my being overboard so many times. When you fish from the small boats we did, you sit on your right leg while sculling and sometimes you get to losing feeling in your legs and feet. A fellow needs to stand up occasionally to stretch and regain the use of the lost limbs. This can be very scary in small boats, as my fishing partner must remain quite still in order for me to maintain my balance and stretch.
Back in the spring of 1992, we went to an old fishing camp along the White River. We were planning on staying the entire week. We rented a small cabin for our headquarters. As we arrived Monday, we threw all our gear on the beds and food in the fridge and headed for the ramp to launch the boat.
I motored around to our cabin. We gathered our fishing equipment and headed downstream. This was going to be one of those trips where we motor to a certain spot, pull the boat up on the bank and tie it off, grab the paddle and rods, and walk through the woods to a small oxbow with a few boats tied up. We chose the best one and shoved off. Turns out the best one was 14’ but only 32” wide and had very shallow sides. In other words, it was unstable with both of us in it.
We began catching fish immediately. We circled the lake once and were heading around again when I raised myself up to stretch my leg I had been sitting on as I artfully sculled the boat. I was standing with feet apart when I lost my balance. I’m not sure if someone had shifted or I was just dizzy.
Doesn’t matter, I was destined to be in the water very quickly. It’s not that big of a deal, you just jump up and the boat will shoot away from you due to the “action-reaction” of physics. That’s when the trouble started. The boat was so light weight that it shot away too quickly. My right foot and leg made it over the side but my left foot was still in the boat.
My right foot settled on the bottom about 5’ deep. Again, my left foot hung on the side of the boat. That’s what you call the snatch splits, and I can’t do the splits. Turns out I had torn everything in the groin area. Tendons, leaders, muscle, everything that could tear tore. The pain was apparently more than my limit as I fainted and was now floating face down in the water.
The camp boss recognized my dilemma and quickly turned me over so I would not drown. He then paddled over near the shore dragging me alongside. When he had drug me into the mud he got out of the boat and pulled me up away from the muddy bank to the dry area. I was barely coherent and we were not sure what to do. We decided we would rest a few minutes and I would probably get to feeling better. As yet we did not know the extent of my injuries.
I pretended to feel better so we could get back to fishing. I informed him it was his turn to guide the front of the boat. I just lay in the bottom and moaned. He got tired of my whining after about an hour and decided to head back. He paddled around to the trail and gathered our stuff.
The problem now was that when I stood up, I would black out. He carried our fishing poles and paddle back to our boat and came back to get me. I put my arm around his shoulder and he finally got me back into the middle of our boat where I could lay down while he motored us back to camp.
He helped me up to the cabin where I could lay down on the bed. He went to the guy’s house that ran this camp and came back with some OTC pain meds. The label said to take two so I took two doses.
He showered and fixed some supper. The NCAA Final basketball game was on TV so we ate while watching. He finally went to bed and started his usual ritual of snoring and keeping me awake. I could not sleep anyway. I knew I was in trouble but did not want to leave.
About an hour later, I needed to urinate really bad. (Piss for those of you who do not know big words.) The urination room in these small cabins was very small and I simply could not make it work in those cramped conditions in my current condition.
I decided I would work my way to the front porch where I could hang on to a post holding up the roof and lean forward and take care of business. This put me in such a strain that urination was out of the question. I hobbled back to bed. Now I needed to go worse. I crawled back to the front porch and tried again. Nothing!
I concluded that I was in pretty bad shape. I knew I needed medical attention but was not sure what steps to take to accomplish that. I crawled to the side of the bed and lay on the floor for a few minutes. I was eventually able to get back into bed.
After exhausting every scenario, I decided the only way I could relieve myself was to roll over against the wall and pee off the side of the bed into the wall. It worked. I felt sure that it would soak through the cracks in the floor before anyone noticed.
As it finally became light outside, I yelled at the Camp Boss to wake up and take me home so I could get some help. He pulled the truck around to the ramp and walked back to the cabin to get into the boat and motor around to load up.
The boat was gone. The river had risen about a foot during the night and we forgot to secure the boat with all the confusion of me being hurt. He ran down to the launch area and a couple of guys were putting their boat in and agreed to take him downstream to retrieve our boat. They found it about a mile downstream just drifting along.
He came back and we got loaded up and headed for the nearest drug store in a small town in the area. The pharmacist gave me some ibuprofen and told me to take 4. I did and we headed for home.
Sometimes when it comes to fishing, we don’t make the best decisions. I got to feeling better about half way home and we pulled into another lake to try fishing for a while. That lasted about two hours and my pain meds wore off. I informed him I really was done this time and take me home no matter what I said otherwise. We got home about dark.
I took a bunch of meds, took a shower, and went to bed. Next morning, I pretended I was doing better so my wife would go to work. I then contacted my mother and had her take me to my doctor. I forced my way in, having no appointment.
My doctor at the time was kind of a quack and a clown. He talked to me a few minutes while looking me over and informed me that this will be the first dislocated crotch he had ever dealt with. He asked me why I waited this long before getting help. I informed him that I was fishing. He understood. He gave me some “special” pain medicine and sent me to a physical therapist to deal with me.
As I awoke the next morning, I was sure something was wrong due the abnormal dizziness I was displaying. My wife noticed my back was black and blue. I soon discovered the discoloration was from the center of my back down to my left heel. Back to the doc.
They ran some tests and found that I was between two to three units of blood low due to the internal bleeding. More meds, and back to bed.
By the next Monday I was able to get around a little but was confined to a wheel chair for a week, then crutches for two weeks, and a cane for a few days after that.
I’m still looking for the guy that convinced me that “fishing is fun”.
“Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?” -Voltaire
I hope you’re paying attention.
Thanks for your time.
You can go to my web site and find my complete fishing adventure book. Click on it and it takes you to Amazon where you can read a few chapters as a sample.
