Dana

Friday we were e-mailing back & forth at work, talked on the phone to pass the time & talk strategy until we left work and met at the Hook.

Hats and shirts were passed out & the waiver signed then it was off to eat pizza at Tony B's & have a group meeting. At nine pm, Cooch went to the captain's meeting and returned a little later to put my tackle in his borrowed boat.

We take off & Cooch takes a wrong turn going to his house. I was looking back hoping my chaperone decided to follow us. It ended up, Cooch wanted to make sure I was okay handling the 6'6" heavy Cameron rod, or he was going to switch me for a 6' medium heavy. So at 11pm I am getting pitching practice after 3 1/2 hours sleep the night before. Guess I handled it okay, because I still have the 6'6".

I got back to Tony's and Tina was still up chatting with a friend. Well, I walk in and it dawned on me after the looks on their faces what I looked like - eyes drooping, hair falling out of the ponytail & it is midnight.

Thanks Cuccia. I stood there trying to explain I was really fishing, then gave up, I was too tired to care. Then I ended up keeping Brat from sleep by talking about eight pounders and how I needed to set the hook right.

2 am the pager beeped & in my dreams I thought it was a jig alert telling me I had to start pre fishing all over again. I can't remember anything else about the dream but that jig alert.

After Blast off we hit our first spot, pulled up to a point and had Keith fishing the other point. We decided to hit the back just in case of a nice trash pile & before someone else did.

About halfway back the trolling motor wouldn't work. A few choice words from Cooch - he flipped it to 12 volt, it was working. He turned around and said our game plan has changed. No problem. I got out of tournament mode and went into pre fish mode to keep his mind off the problem.

We get to the back - drooling over the plywood in the water, but the 6 1/2 came from in front of the blocked pipeline. Damn! I was fishing the plywood. Cooch was now out of tournament mode and in a playful mood. We picked up another along the rock wall on the way out where we had left Keith & Steve earlier.

We got out to swifter current, and pulled up to a sunken something. I didn't even have my rod out when I was scrambling for the net. The wind & current was too much for 12 volts, so I was motoring us around the structure to fish the rest of it.

We left the open and headed to water we never planned to fish - dangerous with all the sunken barges, and misc. I caught my 1.5 fish between some boards. Cool, I had one in the boat. In a dark 90 degree corner, Kerthunk! Cooch had the 5 pounder. It was time for music & fun. The fun kept coming as we were culling by eight, rocking out to the music and generally looking like asses, but hey...we were still catching.

At one point I pitched the jig into a perfect spot, Cooch was saying there was the six pounder, but it didn't nibble. He threw a frog beyond the spot had me take a seat - on his lap - telling me to watch. I nearly went over board when that fish hit the frog. Ker-splash!

We listened to one last song on the box, and had just under five minutes to get back to the Break, no problem, we are two minutes away. Cooch turns the key, nothing. He tries again, nothing. My heart just sunk to my feet as we were sure we had just gotten ourselves DQ'd & we had a good bag of fish.

He started cursing said it's over, I said no, it wasn't. "Light bulb went off over his head, a few stumbling minutes later a trolling motor battery was pulled, we had a 50/50 shot at picking up the battery that worked. The battery wouldn't fit in the other compartment.

But before I could offer a suggestion, he was turning the battery on it's side and hooking it up that way….we jumped into the front key turned, we jammed! As we hit the 5 mile an hour buoy we had 45 seconds left.

Being both Catholic, the first thing we did was look at each other and say "We did something wrong for the slap on the hand we got". Too much fun fishing? I don't know but we could have lived without that scare.

Dana