Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1774
Like many great ideas that go south, mine sounded like a good one at the time. My wife Maria and I had anchored the boat for the night, intending to sleep aboard on the warm August evening and skip the having to dock, drive home and return again the next day to enjoy a weekend on the water. The spot I selected was on a large gravel flat that extended from the mouth of a bay on the local flood control res- ervoir where we do most of our boating and fishing. This was early in our relationship, when the closest thing we had to children was a twinkle in my eye that brightened considerably whenever I had (note the past tense here…) the hull of a boat underfoot or a glass of wine in hand. That particular night, both options conspired to set the tone for the evening, and we corked a bottle of bubbly within minutes of setting the anchor and watching the sun do the same over the west- ern horizon. While Maria poured the wine and got things shipshape for the overnight stay, I was busy setting lines for catfish. We are allowed two lines per angler in our home state, so I set four rods out, one at each corner of the boat, baited with long-last- ing, foul- smelling catfish dip baits and secured in sturdy rail- mounted rod holders. The last thing I did was attach little bells to each rod, which would serve to audibly alert us to any action the baits attracted once it got too dark to see the rods. The sun set, the wine did its job and we were comfortably cocooning when the first bell went off. Leaping from the platform I lunged for the rod, reeled in a respectable channel cat, and re-set the line. Accompa- nied by the scent of catfish slime and Junie's Catfish Dip, I returned to bed where I was quickly repulsed. I spent the balance of the night an- swering the call of catfish that had a knack for knowing just when I was dozing off before grabbing the line and ringing the bells topside. By sunrise, my shins were well- barked, all four rods were in various stages of retirement, two bells had mysteriously disappeared into the deep and my wife was no longer speaking to me. But I did have a brace of fat chan- nel cats for my overnight effort, thanks to the jingling bellwethers that let me know when a fish was interested in my offerings. Passive vs. Aggressive Ever since the first angler baited one end of his line, tossed it into the depths and tied the other to his toe before getting prone for a nap on the bank, pas- sive fisher- men have hooked 22 Houseboatmagazine.com Travel Buddy. Some bite alarms come in convenient carrying cases and feature several sensors for attaching to multiple rods. Alarming Bites By Dan Armitage