Life Lesson 4: Laughter shall fuel your spirit's engine

When things get slow during the day as they usually do at some point, I find myself looking for someone to pick on. When my friend Terry G. is on the boat, he is usually my victim.

One day I had a near shore trip and Terry was helping me out, as my deckhand was sick. He was up in the front of the boat helping someone with a large backlash ( when you cast too hard and the spool is revolving faster than the line, and you get an awful tangle of line on your reel ). His rod was in a rod holder, dragging a sardine across the bottom, hoping a big halibut would eat it. (HEH, HEH, HEH, the perfect scenario for a "GOTCHA")

Running inside the cabin I notice a 5 pound Rock cod sinker, ( this is a 5 lb. lead weight used in fishing 500 to 900 feet deep.) Yes, that's the same as three football fields, stacked end to end. Attaching it to his line with a snap swivel, and letting it slide down his line to the bottom, I quickly loosened his drag a little and yelled, "Terry you have a big fish on!!" He ran back and picked up the now bent double rod. You've got light line, play him carefully! Terry would reel the weight up about 20 feet when the loose drag would start to slip and the sinker would pull 15 or 20 ft of line off the reel ( this is how some halibut feel, just a very heavy weight on the end of the line, sometimes making short runs and pulling line off the reel ).

No one else had seen me do this dastardly deed and everyone else thought he had a reel fish. After about 20 minutes Terry's face was beginning to show signs of strain, so I said, " He's getting tired, tighten up your drag," several times during the "fight" heh, heh, heh, he looked at me and whispered, "W R?" Meaning "world record".

I had already helped Terry catch two world record Bonita, on a fly rod, and his wife, Diane, catch a thirty seven lb. halibut, also a women's world record. I could see it was getting closer to the surface, so I yelled to everyone, "GET BACK!"

It was huge, so I swung the net down and hollered, "It must be a world record, "SINKER"!"- as it hit the deck with a loud THUNK! For a moment everyone just stood there stunned, then every one burst into laughter, EXCEPT TERRY! But he was a good sport and after a couple of months he actually started talking to me again. ( Just kidding, this was just one of the many jokes we were always playing on each other )

Life lesson # 4 Laughter shall fuel your spirit's engine

A thirty seven pound halibut, also a world record!