By Don Quilici
As my longtime friend and frequent fishing partner Don Hettrick (Don H) of Carson City was driving down the highway at the ghastly hour of 4 a.m., last Wednesday morning, I was sipping on a cup of hot coffee, occasionally yawning and mentally running through a check list of those things that we had brought for our fishing trip at Wildhorse Reservoir.
That reservoir is located 364 miles from Carson City, near the Idaho stateline, and we had left early so as to be able to fish all that afternoon, all day Thursday and then return home on Friday.
As it turned out, that outing was actually a short, I-hope-to-forget, fishing trip where just about everything imaginable went wrong. It was an unreal adventure.
I sat there going through that mental check list of a whole multitude of things such as items for a quick, get-up-and-go breakfast, each morning, in our motel room: Chocolate doughnuts, cups, spoons, coffee grounds, filters and...then I suddenly sat straight up and said, "Oh, my God, I forgot the coffee pot!"
Well, as it turned out, we would have been far better off, if we had stayed home with that forgotten coffee pot.
I have fished countless times at countless locations, but I don't ever remember so many things going wrong on one trip.
We just seemed to careen from one problem to the next, to the next, and on several occasions, we had multiple problems simultaneously confronting us.
Here are some of our problems:
The spare tire for the boat trailer came loose and was hanging down under the trailer, just inches above the highway.
The battery in the boat was not snugged down and bounced around inside the boat, as we drove toward Wildhorse. When we got there, Don H discovered the battery had somehow shorted out and had "fried" the wires to the electronic fish finder. So, for two days, we fished "blind" without knowing the water depth or the location of fish around us.
The boat motor was hard to start and on a number of occasions died while we were trolling. Don H had spare spark plugs for the motor...but they were safe and sound...back home in the garage.
A cold, fierce wind and driving rain came up both days and made life miserable for fishing out of that small boat.
And, I must honestly say that Don H should never, never, never consider getting a second job as a boat operator.
That's because of all of the problems caused by the way he steered his boat while being busy rigging up his fishing gear, letting line out, trolling, bringing in his flashers and lures or changing lures.
He sat in his swivel seat, facing the rear of the boat, and tried to turn the steering wheel (behind him) with his elbow, without looking to see where we were going.
Steering with his elbow! It's true.
You won't believe how many times, I urgently shouted warnings like, "Don, you're trollling in a circle," "You're getting too close to the rocks," "We are headed up on the beach," "My line is across the motor," "Our lines are at right angles to the boat," or "I can't bring in my line, you are going too fast."
However, not to be outdone, I, too, had more than my own fair share of problems and they included:
Trying to troll with two poles (I have a Second Rod Stamp) and having the two lines entangle, whenever Don H would make an unexpected sharp turn. Then, I would have an unholy mess on my hands.
On one occasion, my two lines, flasher blades and lures were so intertwined that I worked and worked for the longest time trying to untangle them.
I finally lost my cool and in frustration, grabbed that huge snarl of line, flashers and lures in one hand, and violently broke the line off with the other hand.
In doing so, I badly cut my little finger with that snarled line and bent the flashers blades. Then, while Don H stared with big eyes and in stunned awe, I loudly swore and threw the damaged flasher blades as far as I could from the boat.
That was right after I had become frustrated with my line constantly twisting and kinking as it came off the reel.
I finally pulled a bunch of line off my reel, cut it off and was trying to re-thread the remaining line through the eyes of my 7 1/2 foot, four-piece, fishing pole. I, carelessly, wasn't watching what I was doing, bent the pole over too far, and yep, you guessed it: I broke off the top section of my fishing pole.
So, I now have a three-piece fishing pole that I would dearly love to sell to some unsuspecting pigeon. And, I also came within a whisker of throwing that three-piece fishing pole as far as I could.
All of this occurred just before Don H made another erratic turn, while I was trying to bring in a nice 16-inch rainbow.
In doing so, his line wrapped around mine and all of a sudden, I was fighting an unbeatable combination of the fierce wind, choppy waves, rain, the fish, Don H's line, his lure and the "Warp Five" speed that he was operating the boat.
I shouted to him to please slow the boat down, and finally managed to bring the trout close enough to the boat where he could try to untangle the two lines, without losing my fish or his lure.
Don H reached out to take his lure off his line and proceeded to get the lure's treble hooks caught in his wool glove.
At that point, I had a good-sized fish trying to get away, the boat drifting sideways in the fierce wind, a drenching rain, Don H's line hopelessly wrapped around mine and his glove (with his hand inside!) caught on that miserable lure.
Believe it or not, I finally managed to catch and release that poor trout, despite all of those problems.
All of that happened just before the wind really began to blow extremely hard and we, prudently, decided to return to the dock and call it a day.
Then, as we drove at Warp Five speed, straight into that howling, gale-force wind and giant white-capped waves, getting totally drenched from the spray coming into the boat, we ran out of gas!
We ultimately made it back, safe, sound and soaking wet to the boat dock and our Wildhorse Reservoir fishing adventure was over.
Hmmm, I wonder if the next time that Don H and Don Q go fishing, if we should go to a smaller lake, have a much larger boat or if Don H should take some boat operating lessons before we go?
• Bet Your Favorite Pigeon
Bet your favorite pigeon that he can't tell you where we had our best fishing success at Wildhorse Reservoir.
If he grins and says, " It was while we were trolling around and around and around the island in front of the State Park boat ramp,' he could have been in one of the other boats on the reservoir.