Trouble on Golden Lake

This is a view taken somewhere on Golden Lake. However, this is not the area where we ran into trouble.

My friends and I were enthusiastic about our fishing trip on this particular weekend; more so than any other fishing trip. None of us had ever gone night fishing on a boat before, and we spent a good deal of money on fishing gear and on the trip itself. “I’ve been excited about this since I heard they closed the lake and re-stocked the walleye,” Sid said.

The sun was setting when we shoved off from shore. We knew we couldn’t go very far with the six horse power aluminum boat we were using. Especially not when there were four of us. “So who’s going to be the first one to bring in a biggie,” Peter asked. Kim, our host, recommended a couple of areas where she had caught some large walleye; we picked one and set course. Our destination was a channel near an island that some of us camped on a few years before. It took about 15 minutes to get there.

On arrival, we noticed a pontoon boat trolling in the area. I had to use my LED headlamp to alert them to our presence, because our boat didn’t have any fixed lights on it. We also had a 1,000,000 candle power flashlight which wasn’t fully charged and started to die soon after we started fishing.

As per common fishing strategy, we tried several spots. At first, we kept to a zone not too far from the shore, but we weren’t having any luck. So, when the pontoon boat moved on, we expanded our range to include the open water it was covering. That’s when the engine refused to start. I tried it many times to no avail, giving it time to rest in between attempts. We all thought it would start eventually, so we kept fishing.

Still no luck, we thought we’d try another spot. Sid offered to row. Peter thought we should focus on getting the motor going as soon as we reached the new spot. He remembered Kim said there was a crack where the gas line connected to the tank, and air sometimes gets in the line if the bulb is pumped and the crack isn’t pinched. So, he wanted to make sure air wasn’t getting into the line while I tried to crank the motor. But Peter is a diehard angler; he was the first one to cast as soon as the anchor was dropped.

“We’re stranded and the engine won’t start, but if your priority is fishing, go ahead,” I snapped. “I didn’t think you needed me to help with that,” was his reply. Nevertheless, he reeled in his line, and we got down to the futile business of starting the motor. The tank was in the middle of the boat where Sid was sitting, so he had to move so Peter could work with on the tank.

Sid sat beside me as I cranked the motor. I didn’t think much of it, except when I noticed about eight or ten inches of the tip of my rod hanging peculiarly beside him. “Sid, did you break my rod,” I asked. He looked down and answered. “Oh s*** I think I did.” I was upset; it was a new rod, and it I hadn’t caught a fish with it yet. But I knew I couldn’t blame him. It was dark and we were in a dire situation. However, none of us realized something else had happened and we were in serious jeopardy.

Earlier in the day, I tried unsuccessfully to get the motor started, and in doing so, my foot knocked the drain plug out of the drain and water started spouting into the boat. It wasn’t in securely to begin with, so I forced it back into the hole as tightly as I could. The water stopped, and I bailed out what had got into the boat.

Because of that incident, I was mindful of the plug’s precariousness, and I kept my feet away from it. Now since we still couldn’t get the motor started, I switched off my headlamp and gazed at the stars while the others continued to fish. It took a few minutes but the thought hit me like a hammer; a sudden fear radiated from my stomach through the rest of my body. I promptly switched on my headlight.

“Sid you have to move,” I yelled. He looked at me, somewhat shocked by my sharp tone. I looked down and saw the water pouring into the boat, but I couldn’t see the plug anywhere. “Sid, move now”, I reaffirmed. I pointed to show him what was happening. There was already about four or five inches of water in the boat. He swung his legs up and over the seat so swiftly that he rocked the boat. He then leaned over to put his finger into the hole, while I fished around till I found the plug and forced it back into the hole. Peter was in the bow of the boat and Hass was a little further back. They both continued to fish, oblivious that the boat was on the way to sinking. 

I kept trying the motor periodically, Peter and Sid continued to fish. Hass and I were getting fed up. We weren’t having fun. My rod was broken and his line was badly tangled. We argued with Peter and Sid about rowing back to the cottage. There were no other craft in our vicinity to give us a tow. Rowing that distance seemed daunting to me, and I was in denial, thinking I could get the motor started.

“We’ll have to row back anyway, but since we are here, we could as well fish”, Peter argued. Hass and I conceded to let the other two continue fishing. We’d be leaving the next day, and this would be the only chance to fulfill the purpose of the trip.  But Sid and Peter didn’t continue fishing for long. There was another hazard on the horizon. “Hey, that looks like rain coming up behind that island over there. Let’s get to f*** out of here”, Peter yelled.

A sudden sense of urgency filled the boat. Sid manned the oars. He dipped the oars with powerful strokes and rowed at a frantic pace. We were desperate to escape the incoming bad weather. But he couldn’t keep his heading. As the boat zigzagged towards and away from the shore, the rest of us constantly directed him back to the right heading. Because he was facing backwards, he couldn’t see the campfire that was still burning in front of Kim’s cottage.

Next, on the oars was Peter. He thought he could do a better job, but he was wrong. “It must be the wind that’s blowing the boat like that”, Peter said. “There’s hardly any wind at all, but somehow it’s the wind”, I rebutted. Not that I was able to do any better either. I also caused the boat to meander when I took a turn at the oars. The only one who didn’t seem to have a problem was Hass. But that’s because he rowed about 10 feet and gave up, saying it was too hard and he was too out of shape.

At one point when Peter was rowing, we saw something in the water ahead of us, but we couldn’t see clearly to identify what it was. Peter thought it was weeds, and that was a reasonable assumption because there was a large patch of weeds in that direction. By this time the big flashlight was completely dead. As we got closer to the object, I turned on my LED headlamp. What we thought were weeds turned out to be a very large rock, directly in our path.

We managed to shun another hazard, but we still had a long way to go. As the boat laggard forward, I could hear the sound of the water causing the propeller to turn; so I lifted to motor out of the water to reduce drag, and make it easier on whoever was rowing. “Wait a minute, there are no more stars in the sky at all”, Hass said. We all looked up to see the sky was now over cast with dark clouds. Shortly after noticing the clouds, we saw a couple of lightning strikes, which appeared to be just behind the island where we were fishing.

Sid, Peter and I already had a close call with lightning, earlier in the summer on another body of water. Another friend, Donny, was with us as well. It was a nasty storm, but at least that incident happened in daylight. There had been periods of light rain most of the day. But when it started to rain steadily, we decided to head back to the dock to wait it out. As we rounded a point, we saw the full brunt of the storm over the open water. “Is that what we have to go through”, I asked rhetorically.

Although the rain was getting heavier and coming straight for us, we kept our heading. It was only when we saw lightning strike the open water a few hundred yards in front of us, we knew we had to get off the lake immediately. The first strike held us awestruck; we each sat staring with our eyes and mouths wide open. The second strike caused sudden hysteria. 

We decided to pull up to the nearest dock. I turned the boat hard to the left. Peter’s hat flew off into the lake. I offered to turn the boat so we could retrieve it, but the others scolded me for suggesting such a thing at such a time. “F*** the hat, I’ll get another one. Just get us off this lake,” Peter said. There were a few private cottages with docks on the rim of a nearby bay. We pulled up to the closest and waited out the storm there. That was a bad enough experience during the day. None of us wanted a similar ordeal at night, especially not on a boat without a working motor.

But Mother Nature granted us a reprieve. We made it all the way back to the cottage and it hadn’t rained yet. As we go close, Peter joked about continuing to fish. Knowing him, there was seriousness behind that joke. Nevertheless, the rest of us weren’t interested. The warm camp fire looked more inviting, so we headed to shore. As we got closer we realized it was the wrong cottage. For the entire two hours or so, we’d been rowing towards the wrong campfire. We thought our friend, Dave, who remained at the cottage, had kept the fire going. But no such luck for us.

Now we couldn’t tell how far back the other way we had to go. And while paddling around trying to figure out where exactly we were, we ran into a very nice boat that we didn’t see until it was inches away. It was anchored a few feet from shore, and luckily, we didn’t hit it very hard.

As we looked back up the shoreline, we noticed several campfires we somehow overlooked before. After all, it was summer and cottages by a lake. Lots of people found pleasure around a nice campfire, not just us. As we debated which of these fires would likely be ours, we notice another one that looked like somebody was reviving it. We thought Dave had heard our chatter on the water as we passed by the cottage. And since he didn’t see us come ashore, he must’ve realized were in trouble.

So, we headed towards that campfire. This time we stayed a few feet away from the shore. That turned out to be the smartest move of the night. “Hey, what about this one”, Sid asked. We all turned to see what he was talking about. It was Kim’s cottage. There was no campfire; it had gone out long ago. There were not even any lights on in the cottage. Dave was fast asleep. It goes without mention that we were very glad to be on dry land. And it wasn’t very long before we were all fast asleep too.

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