Funny Anecdote From The Lake...

[Hooligan]

Went to the lake today and, oh how it was gorgeous...

Funny thing happened at the ramp, though. Pull up to the ramp to launch, ready to dump in. Pull the clips, undo the buckles, undo the winch strap, dump 'er in and in all of a minute and a half we're clear of the ramp. Park the truck, and walking back down, this guy starts just RIPPIN' me about cutting in line to launch, he was giving me all sorts of he*l. I politely pointed out that he was in the rigging lane, and didn't have his boat even remotely ready to launch, so I just went ahead and dumped in. He was furious that I had the nerve to put the boat in before he did. When I asked him if he was ready to launch before I was, he said that, "That doesn't matter, it's the principle of it."

At this point, I was already back to the dock, and Jeeves was ready to chauffeur me on to the fish. I told him what had happened, and we both had a pretty good laugh.

We ended up marking a TON of fish on a channel swing that was relatively close to the ramp, in hearing distance, even. Skip forward about half an hour and a dozen green fish. We hear the guy at the ramp screaming bloody murder than not only did we cut him off, but now we were catching his fish. This is comedy GOLD, now. It's getting to the point that we're both just laughing our butts off about it. Neither of us know the guy, but we've both seen the boat on the lake an awful lot. It's usually either within 10 yards of shore, or tied off to trees jerkin perch; so it's pretty hilarious that we're catching his fish now.

Well, apparently, the guy was so frustrated that he couldn't even launch his boat. We moved on to another couple spots, only planning on fishing for a handful of hours. We wanted to cover some water and see what we could make happen in short time. Skip ahead to 1:00, when we're ready to head back to the launch. We get back to the launch and find that the entire ramp (I failed to mention it's a three wide ramp) is blocked by this guys van and his 18' Lund- IN THE WATER! Have NO idea what the guy did to manage it, but he had the boat floating the trailer, he hadn't removed the tie downs, and the van was in the water up to the drivers side door mirror. I figured the thing would have floated away, but it didn't. I figured there was enough room that I could back down close to the dock between where his rig was, and the wall. I made it in, loaded, and out in about 60 seconds. Before pulling all the way up the ramp, I asked the guy, being nice as possible, not even remotely condescending, if he'd like me to pull him out. Boy did I get an earful! He proceeded to blame the whole mishap on me, which I thought was hilarious. I figured it best not to take pictures, and just get out of there before it got ugly.

So today, I'm thankful that I know I can launch and load the boat in under three minutes. It sure saves headaches at the ramp.

[Tuckahoe Joe]

Ha! Thats fantastic! Guy sounds like an idiot. You must have really threw him off his game for him to end up like that.

[unionman]

I woulda took like 100 pics just to tick him off more....jerk. lol

[Sam]

Great story.

We see so many who don't know how to launch their boat or launch the boat and clog the ramp by loading it with their equipment which they should have done before they launched.

[WRB]

Can you say "temper managenet"! The guy managed to lose his temper over nothing. You are lucky he didn't jackknife his rig across the entire ramp before you had a chance to luanch. At least you had enough space to load and leave. Thanksgiving Holidays; we are greatful you had a good day on the water. Give this guy his space, he might do something really stupid next time.

Tom

[38 Super Fan]

Man, karma jumped all over that guy.

[00 mod]

Nice! I would have taken a photo for sure. Just to post here!

Jeff

[slonezp]

You should be more sensitive to morons. My son used to work at a local marina. He had a hard time understanding how he and I could have the boat launched in under a minute and there are people who spend 1/2 hour or more loading and unloading.

Don't tell anyone. When I first became a boat owner a number of years ago, I attempted to launch the boat. Put the drain plug in but forgot to undo the tiedown straps. Slipped my mind. The boat, trailer, and back end of my rear wheel drive truck were floating. I couldn't get out of the truck because if I took my foot off the brake we'd float away. There was a guy who happened to have a tow strap who helped tow me out. I learn from my mistakes and it has never happened again.

[Sun Fish]

Lol, I don't understand how people do that. I guess I havent been to to many boat launches but my rear tires never even get close to touching water. I back up until my trailer fenders are 1/4 to 1/2 way sticking out of the water and launch and load nearly effortlessly. Mind you I most often do this on electric only lakes where I load my 1000+lb rigs by hand. I have yet to drive onto my trailer to load, that should be fun

[Bluebasser86]

That's awesome! I had a guy start screaming at me and a friend a couple years ago during trout season on a local lake. We'd found them schooled up right at the end of the boat ramp, I'm assuming eating bugs that people were blowing when they were loading up. There used to be a rule on the lake that you couldn't release trout but they'd recently changed it so you could release them if they were caught on lures, not powerbait or livebait, and they were in good enough condition to survive. So we were catching them left and right on spoons and releasing them without even touching them when this guy starts screaming "You can't do that! You have to keep your limit and leave!" I have a feeling somebody was having a hard time catching fish and it chapped his butt to know that he just hadn't found them. Well apparently he thought it would be a good idea to call the park ranger and report that I had 30 trout in the livewell and was still putting more in there. What he didn't know was it was a good friend of mine who was working the lake that day so he came over to have a talk with the poor confused individual. First I pulled up to the dock and showed the ranger and the guy the 3 or 4 trout we had in the livewell that were hooked badly and probably not going to make it, so we were good. Then the guy starts yelling again about how you can't release them and it says it right on your fishing permit. So my buddy the ranger asked him to show him where it says that. The guy whips his lake permit out and reads every word on it and of course it doesn't say it but he still decides to go on about how it used to say it and we still shouldn't be allowed to turn them loose like that My friend that was the ranger explained to him how we had broken no rules, but he had by lying about us supposedly poaching fish. The guy already had his boat loaded on his trailer so my buddy told him maybe it was best he just headed home and didn't cause any more racket and he'd just let him off with a verbal warning for filing a false report