Close Calls


Fosgate

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Have you even taken any of those chances that you come away from unscathed and think you can get away with more until it nearly costs you your life? Let’s hear about those experiences and the close calls you escaped from or places you really should not have been.

When I was a kid my father took my brother and I to Ft. Randall Dam fishing the tail waters in a 14ft aluminum boat with an old Johnson 10hp. We would float to about 30 ft of the outlet, fire up the motor and drift around again until the current pool would push us back to the turbine outlet. Once, the engine wouldn't fire and we got within 10ft of that outlet and at the age of maybe 7yrs old I knew we didn't want to be there. 

Second time, same boat, maybe a year later my brother and I had it out near Platte SD. We were having great luck almost reaching our limit of Walleye when we tore into a big freakishly aggressive Northern Pike that kept us late getting back to camp. We got him into the boat it was sunny but turn around and a big thunderstorm was rolling in and a wall of wind hit us. We fired up the engine and started to haul ass back to the camp with the wind at our back. We were surfing 4ft-6ft waves heading back to the camp ground. Granted, those don’t sound like much to ocean going guys but different story in that small boat. My brother was a nervous at first but once we found the sweet spot in the throttle to maintain speed in the low spot of the waves and kept the wind off us we had a ball. Dad was at the shore freaked out along with 3 other guys that were with him as they were preparing to come out and try to find us. Next morning we found out a boat capsized at the same time we were coming back and a guy lost his father and his son. 

Several years ago I participated in a fishing tournament with my cousin in Chamberlain SD. It was a late season tournament out of my cousin’s new Ranger multispecies boat. The last day of the tourney we were doing well in the rankings fishing about an hour south of the dock. The news for the day was there was a winter blizzard rolling in that day. No big we figured we would head to the opposite side of the river far down stream to our spot near Platte SD or south yet, out of the wind and it looked like the storm was on a path to graze the dock area. Throw on our Cabelas Guide Wear and set off for a 50 min boat ride down stream with the 275hp Merc Verado pushing us along at a good clip. It took us a while to get on the Walleye but once we got into them we were hammering them and in no time we were filling the live well.

I believe some of those past experiences and a few others built up a certain level of overconfidence on the water. We were one away from our goal to head back and we noticed that the snow that had been coming down suddenly turned to freezing rain and. We both knew immediately the freezing rain was not good. We cranked up the engine and started heading to the dock an hour away. As soon as we got out of our sheltered area we were hit with what was probably a 40mp sustained wind with 60-70mpg gusts that instantly created a freezing spray every time we crashed a wave. Half mile up stream and the water was notably getting slushy as snow was blending with this frozen spray. We are taking on ice with every wave we hit with the boat or that the wind blows off from a nearby wave peak. This is not good we are saying to each other as we crash so hard into one wave that it knocks the glass out of the windshield in front of me. What do we do? We passed the Platte dock and no one was there. Shit! There is nothing around, no towns, homes anyplace we could go to get out of the blizzard. If we go to shore we’ll freeze to death in the cold. So we run back over to the western shore and we push on with the boat barely able to plane. We get about halfway back to the dock an hour later and my cousin tells me the boat won’t plane anymore even at full throttle!!! Look around us and oh hell, we must have 3+ inches of ice covering the boat! We did not have any tool on board to help with this. Just a bag of small wrenches and punching the ice with my fists was all we had. Once we pulled the throttle off of plane the front wanted to dip dangerously low in the water.  We pull up close to shore and then I could move forward to chisel off some ice using little wrenches, fists and elbows. When we set off again the storm was nearly full blown with visibility down to maybe 25ft and just following our GPS Nav. We had to pull in two more times to clear ice while facing the danger of being swamped or hitting floating debris. In total it took us a little over 3 hours to make it back to the dock in Chamberlain.

When we arrived at the dock we loaded up and just looked at each other and I think he said “I didn’t think we were going to make it.” Took it in for a minute staring back out to the end of the dock. We loaded up and drove to the building with the scales and when we opened the door mouths fell open. Here we come walking in with a bucket of fish to weigh oblivious to the helmet of ice freezing our stocking caps to our hoods as we try to play it cool to what just happened by looking back like “What? Haven’t you seen Walleye before?” We took the tournament but man that was dumb. It was the first time I really thought I the odds were in deaths favor and I have not been on the water since. All the times we think how others are stupid for taking an unnecessary risk, getting too comfortable etc. That all happened, going out that morning with blinders on and full of self confidence based on experience was nearly our downfall. 

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