Worst fishing injuries.

[fcap60]

A few years back I was casting for bass from a boat around 10:00pm with a buddy and his then 11 year old son. While we were drift fishing when a lobster pot wrapped around the propeller of my friend's boat. With the tide/wind pushing us to the east, water started filling up the stern of the boat. Just as we noticed that the boat was filling with water, my buddy yelled "grab a life-jacket". I did, grabbed my cell phone and wallet that were at my feed in a small soft cooler and within seconds the boat flipped over. My buddy and his son were clingining onto the hull of the boat (now upside down) and I yelled to them to follow me towards shore ...about 150yards or so. When I turned around to check on them, the boat was under water. I yelled out again....follow me I know where we are.

About 1 minute later, both the father and son are screaming to me..."Come back-were' having problems". Meanwhile, I was making decent progress towards shore and I'm thinking to myself "we're all having problems" so I turned around in the water and I flashed them with my flashlight telling them to follow my light and stay on my tail. I tried calling my home from the cell phone to say goodbye to my wife and tell her and my daughter that I might not make it. I heard my daughters voice, but she could'nt here me or my distress call to call emergency services - just before the cell phone died out. Anyway, I managed to make it to shore. My buddy laid on his back and his son sort of used hiim like a kick-board to get them both to shore about 5 minutes after me.

What I didn't realize is that my buddy couldn't swim and both he and his 11 year old son were wearing long rubber boots when the boat flipped and that's why they were screaming "come back...we're having problems" This I learned once we were all out of the water safe on land.

I've had nightmares of him calling my name to "come back..were're having problems" for months. Actually, I still think about it, but don't talk about it much, but I thought it was appropriate for this thread.

At the end, we were a little banged-up, but forunatley all made it to shore. It kind of makes you think differently about fishing.