A LESSON LEARNED
First off let me make one thing clear, Ultimate Bass, Mike and Laurie Cork, nor any of the staff condone drinking and boating in any way. In fact, we wish for all concerned to abstain from alcohol while operating a boat at any time. That said the following is simply for your entertainment and certainly should not be construed as anything other than a story.
One thing you will learn as a guide is that people are different all over the country. I have run across many funny and diverse situations in the course of my fishing career, and some of them are true. I had a couple of guys from Nebraska one time that raised corn and made their own corn liqueur. They came down to Toledo Bend to fish with me a couple of days one March. It was bitter cold and the wind was howling the first day. One of them had a hat that had bill shaped like a mans private parts in awesome detail. This one decided that a little home brew was called for the ward off the cold. We had gone way back in the woods ( at that time the trees were still in Toledo ) to get out of the wind, as I did not want to seem snooty I agreed to imbibe a snort or two with them. well we proceeded to get snookered and directly one of them fell out of the boat, being drunk as two skunks the other guy and I could not get him back in the boat. We tried everything we could think of (remember we were hampered in the thinking department ) I mean I was blind! Finally the other guy just jumps in and proceeds to try to help the first one in. Sad thing is it made perfectly good sense to me, Of course now I had two drunks in the water and could not get either in the boat I actually considered jumping in myself to see if I could help.. At this point I must have sobered up a little because I got scared for the first time and realized that we were in trouble. The first one was in trouble with the cold as he had been in the water for almost 10 minutes and the water was just over his head. Both were managing to hold on to the side of the boat so I decided to troll to shallow water so they could walk to the bank. There is a saying that the good Lord looks after drunks and children, it must be true. We finally got to the bank and started a fire. (Good OLE Mountain Dew starts a fire easily) I always had a pair of coveralls in the boat and a spare jacket, so one put on the dry coveralls and the other put on my rain pants and spare jacket. Now that everyone was warm and cozy guess what happens next? Yep, out comes the hooch again and we all proceed to get plastered all over again. I would love at this point to say we drank a little and then just went back to camp but that did not happen. You see I got lost trying to get back. I had no idea where we were, what with the hooch and being in the woods I did not know up from down. As I knew we were not going far that morning due to the bad weather I had not filled the tank and after about an hour of idling around we ran out of gas. Now we were lost, drunk and had no big motor Finally after a good bit of trolling we saw some smoke from our fire and trolled over to it climbed out and built up the fire a little so I could sober up and think. We were sitting there wondering what to do when we hear a radio and some guy singing along with the beetles. A little old man out white perch fishing. We hollered to beat the band (bad pun) until he heard us and came to our rescue. after a little visiting and of course a little more hooch he was able to pull us back to camp. Worst thing about that story is the guy with the strange hat told everyone he saw at the camp about our adventure and I never did live that down with the other guides. Camp owner was just about afraid to send me out on a trip for a while after that and I never did blame her.
Earnie Cella (Papa)
