One Nation, Under God

Fishing is worth the scare

While pounding through the waves recently on Fort Peck Lake I couldn’t help but recall how many times I’d been here before.

Not necessarily on Fort Peck, and certainly not in a boat this big, but for sure in waves large enough to give me pause.

Probably the scariest were the trips Barb and I used to take on Yellowstone Lake where if anything happened and we ended up in the frigid water we were toast, or more accurately ice cubes. The wind at that elevation came up quickly and with little warning. We endured some very uncomfortable crossings in our 15-foot boat.

The fishing, however, was always worth the scare.

Those trips on Yellowstone Lake also made rough water anywhere else a little less intimidating although we have been forced to seek safe harbor on much warmer and smaller bodies of water.

Camped on Lake Powell years ago with Barb and my daughter Leslie, we ended up spending the night at a marina on the other side of the lake when the wind came up while we were out fishing.

I’ve also been forced to seek shelter on Nelson Reservoir until the wind laid enough that I could return to the ramp and get the boat out of the water.

The only ramp at Nelson at that time was on the eastern shore and caught the brunt of any west winds resulting in boat removals that could only be described as “Western.”

It’s not always the weather or the cold water that make me pucker. Fishing just off the alligator-filled boat channel on Lake Okeechobee a number of years ago, we looked up to see a fast-approaching sportfisherman running nearly full throttle headed our way. The boat’s wake was enormous and we were too close. I fired the motor and turned us into a narrow cut in the grass kicking up mud with the prop. We rode the wake with the gators, and I saluted the captain as he passed.

On Canyon Ferry in our early boating education we were driven ashore more than once where we would sit on the beach, wait for calm, and dream of bigger boats.

Now we have one, and as we raced across the bone-jarring waves a couple of weeks ago on Fort Peck, I couldn’t help but wish we had an even bigger one.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]

 

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