True Camping Story

My brother and I went on a camping/fishing trip to East Texas to catch that big bass. Our boat was old but did float. Got out on the lake early morning among the stick ups and did some worming. My brother caught the largest bass he ever laid eyes on, about 8lbs. I caught a few but had to throw them back because they were not in the slot limit to keep. I was driving the boat back to the ramp when I looked down and noticed water coming in around my feet. I told my Bro, which was in the front of the boat, that we were not going to make it. He looked at my feet and said, with a commanding voice, Go to that shore line. The shore line was about 75 to 100 yards away. I turned the boat in that direction and gave it full throttle, while looking at the water coming in at my feet. The motor was starting to bog down with the weight of the water in the boat. You can imagine our concern of making it but I hit that sandy beach so fast that the engine kicked up and we and the boat were completely out of the water. Keep in mind that this was a power plant lake with pine trees surrounding the lake, except this small stretch of sandy beach. We got out of the boat and looked at the situation. First of all we noticed how much water was in the boat. We than noticed that no one else was on lake and a rescue was out of the question. We could not move the boat because of the water, so we started dumping out the water with a bucket. When we got most of the water out we noticed that the plugs to the inner hull were left out. Thank goodness that this old boat had a outer hull and an inner hull. Next, we had to figure out how to turn the boat around to face the lake because pushing backward was a no win situation because of the weight of the motor. My brother and I started lifting the front end of the boat little by little until the front end of the boat was in the lake. Now we could push the boat from the rear until the motor was in the water and started towards the ramp, which was still a ways away. Of course we had to plug the two inner plug holes first. When we got back to the ramp and the boat out of the water, we looked at the outer hull and noticed a crack about a foot long. We surmised that the faster we were going, the more water we were taking in. You see, those stumps that we were going over and rocking the boat back and forth to get free of some of them, did the damage. A fishing trip to remember, when my brother caught his big bass and we almost sunk the boat. Mike & Robert