Float Tube Mishap...

I just thought of a funny float tubing story. This was around 15 years ago, when most float tubes were just truck innertubes with a thin nylon covering over them. My Cousin and I were out catching big slab crappie and bluegill from the tubes one evening on the lake, doing really good, when James reels a big gill up to the top. He swings it a bit low and it hits the front of his tube, right at the waterline. Spines first. Immediatlly we both knew what happened, HISSSSSSSS and bubbles coming from that spot. Not being one to come unprepared, each of our tubes had a compact bicycle pump aboard, and James hooked his up to the truck tire innertube and started pumping like crazy while we both kicked our way into shore. I was laughing so hard I about peed my waders. You might think a fella can pump faster than a spine-hole leak can lose air, but you have to figure in the couple minutes of lost air while he got his pump hooked up and going, and he is the kind of guy who can't chew gum and walk, let alone pump a bicycle pump and kick the fins as fast as possible, so he was losing a lot of air. And we were around 100 yards from shore. By the time we got to shallow water, he had his waders so full he couldn't walk backwards into shore. He just kept falling backwards, trying to hold onto his fishing pole and do the backstroke with a half-flat truck tire float tube around his middle... All he had for the legal required life jacket was a square PFD with the handles on it, tied to the side handle of the float tube. Couldn't get that quite under him either, so he had this full wader side-stroke going all splashy and cussy, while I got out of my tube and got my fins off so I could wade back out and help the flounder to shore. I was wearing a good vest life jacket, didn't get much water in my waders, but had to drive home with wet pants, my Cousin mostly soaked all over... Precious Memories, how they linger.....

Haha, good story! thanks for posting !!

lol very good story. I bet you rib him about that to this day.

That was good, :)