It really happened---

As I was propped on the rail, improving my elbow calluses yesterday, a group of folks set up camp just inshore of me. Three girl children and one boy. They were obviously beginners but they must have asked a couple of questions at the tackle store because the mom started trying how to figure which end of a bubble rig the water went in. Ordinarily, I'd have offered help, but the kids were all older teens and you can tell by body language when people are approachable---this group looked like it would immediately form a defensive circle with weapons drawn if I spoke to them. (I sometimes have that effect on people.) I shrugged, mentally, and went back to mostly watching my float, but kept them in the corner of my eye for possible entertainment value.

Sure enough, the oldest, a boy who looked like Napolean Dynamite, put a good chunk of squid on the straw of his bubble rig and made a mighty cast.

The reel fell off his rod. Into the water. It was a spincast and was still in freespool so they had to do a lot of line retrieving to get the reel back. Two of the sisters glared at me as though it were somehow my fault. My eyeballs were bulged out behind my sunglasses to keep from laughing out loud at them, but I kept my mouth straight and my feelings concealed.

Once they got the reel back on the pier, the line back on the reel and the reel back on the rod, three of them went into an intense engineering consultation, examining the mechanism that holds the reel in place. Deeming it secure, they gave it back to Napolean and he made another cast. All went well---alas, no bite---until he got it back to the pier and let the bubble rig swing back up under the pier where it quickly and gleefully hung up on some of the exposed structure underneath. Now we have all done the same thing at some time, whether we want to admit it or not, but I don't think we called a committee meeting and debated the solution for fifteen minutes. The whole rig is still dangling there.

The whole bunch of them seemed to be there as a support group for the boy, and he may have needed it---I forgot to mention that he had a nice looking leather, er, book bag slung over one shoulder. None of the others wet a line, even though they had a couple of rigs. They fixed him up with another bubble and straw and turned him loose on the fish again.

This was when I had pretty much all the action I had the whole afternoon. One Spanish on deck, another lost lifting it, several skipjack hookups and a giant skippie landed. Right next to them. (All on live bait, of course.) I think they got discouraged because the girls dispersed to different parts of the pier and the boy put down his rod by the bench and read his book about the Hobbit the rest of the afternoon.

I shouldn't laugh at the expense of others, but us two-leggers are the funniest people there are.

LOL!!!!!! That just made my day!!! Thanks for sharing Mr. Haywire!!!!!

I died laughing. To all the lurkers and others wondering what exactly is a googan...well Mr. Wire just gave you the perfect description.

Wonderful and funny story because it's soooo True!

That was GREAT!!! Thanks for the laugh Haywire. See y'all in a couple weeks.

I always loved The Hobbit.

if he was using the spincaster upside down on a spinning rod, that would have made it even better.

I remember that kid! haha i wondered what kinda shenanigans he was getting into on the pier but figured it takes all kinds! haha