Corpusfishing.com

[br1006]

first day I took out my brand new boat with the wife and kids etc... not knowing where to run too well and beaching it running through morris and cummins. Then losing my temper and making everyone hate me!

We ended up going to the jetties that afternoon where my wife and daughter both caught HUGE oversized reds!

Fishing tournament in POC and seeing a tornado touching down around port lavaca and then turn towards the back lake we were fishing in! I huddled under the poling platform in my rainsuit getting pelted for 45 minutes before it stopped. only caught a cold that day!

I guess so far I have been lucky not to get in too bad a situation?

[Fishbrains]

Went out to the near shore rigs in Jan. in my buddies 18' boat. We had a fishing capt. out of Port A piloting his boat. Figure they knew what they were doing so I never checked on weather report. Turns out there was supposed to be a northern come in late afternoon. Nope, it came in early afternoon.

We made it to the first rig ok, but no fish so we head out further to another rig. Now we are about 10 miles out. Tie off to rig & start fishing. We were tearing up, but next thing we knew the wind started howling & we could see big seas coming our way.

Oh heck time to go so I untie the boat from the rig & Capt. goes to start the motor, nothing. We are adrift now with no motor. Quickly we check everything to find battery cable is corroded. We jerryrig the cables & off we go. We are in 6-8 footers & the waves start rolling over the back. Big arse buddy sit on the front deck to keep the boat more level while I bail frantically with the plastic lid that fits over the battery. The wind & waves are pushing us south of the jetty, we say screw it lets head towards the closest shore.

After 3 1/2 hours we are near shore & start running up the beach towards the jetty. Just as we are about to round the south jetty we run out of gas, Adrift again. Capt. calls in to the dock for someone to run him out some gas. We throw out the anchor trying to stay put, but the anchor rope was dry rotted & broke so we are adrift again. Throw out the drift sock to slow us down.

Another Capt. shows up with a gas can & throws it over to us. After we gas up we try to start her up, but no dice. Someone saw us in distress & called the coast guard they are rounding the jetty to come tow us in. Right when they pull up next to us the motor finally fires up & we follow closely behind the coast guard boat into dock. The swells at the jetty were huge.

I literally kissed the ground when I stepped ashore. Took me a couple of years to work up the nerve to go offshore again, but in a much bigger boat.

I did have a rudder break on my sailboat during a storm on lake travis, but that was not nearly as harrowing as the offshore experience.

[nisurodoc]

fishing at nighthawk in my old skiff opening day of dove season few years ago planning a cast and blast, into the reds thick, they were everywhere, every cast would catch one. huge storm blew in and it got real dark. next thing I know got 2 fish on but lightning bolts start smacking the water all arround us, we cut em off and crank the motor, finally starts run across the ditch in now 40 mile an hour wind and run the boat up on the island at pure oil, jump out and run under the deck of a cabin as baseball sized hail starts hitting the ground, got a few other tales but this one was one of the scarriest
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You should have been here yesterday, they were tearin' 'em up.

[Skillzzz9]

Not sure if this qualifies, but. I went out on a kayak on a clear calm day about 3.5 miles from the beach with my wife and kiddos watching me. As soon as I get to the rig and tie off I notice some dark clouds over Aransas Pass and say to myself hmmm... That doesn't look good. As soon as I said it about a 20 mile wind picks up out of the northwest (I believe it was a downdraft from the storm) and continues to blow for about 2 hours while I sit tied up to the rig waiting it out. The seas build to about 2.5 to 3 feet and then had to kayak back into a 15mph wind the whole way. Wasn't too concerned for safety but the paddle back in was TOUGH.
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[Ol Sanch]

So I take from these posts two things: (1) make sure you have a bucket to bail water (2) do your best to make sure your engine will start. Oh, and take plenty of beer.

Cool stories.
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Do you even fish, Bro?

[crhfish]

Went on a business trip (invited) out of Matagorda about 10 years ago. The guide decides to take us in some back bay secret hole. We get back there and fish all afternoon without to much luck, caught about half a limit of smallish trout. Fish right up till sunset and start back. After about 15 minutes its obvious that the guide is lost and can't find his way out of this place. After running around looking for this narrow inlet to this place we finally get stuck, real stuck. The tide was out and we were sitting in mud. Long story short we spent all night on this guides boat in a marsh. We had a few beers with us but nobody's cell at the time could get a signal and the guy did not have a VHF, its was broken.

My lesson learned, don't go out with a guide you don't know or at least have some good refs on. Lucky for us it was a nice night and we had some off. I never heard so many &*^% stories in my life as i did that night. We got in around 9 the next morning.

[kingtender]

Mouth of Mississippi river when the perfect storm hit. One scary long ride back to Venice Marina. Once we were offshore and got surrounded by about 10 waterspouts. Got a tad bit hairy that day too.

[Mad Dog]

Many, many, many years ago I was maybe 6 or 7, my family had a cabin cruiser, a Garwood hull (think old, heavy, wooden boat), that was converted from and in-board to an outboard after the hull was severly damaged in an early 60's hurricane. My dad shortened the hull to about 19' an mounted couple 35 hp Evinrude twins with cable steering. We were cruising the Victoria Barge Canal late one afternoon with 4 adults and a few kids aboard. The boat was on plane not too far off the shoreline to our starboard. Beautiful afternoon, calm water. Most of us were in the cabin, dad at the helm behind the cabin. Out of nowhere the boat makes an abrupt turn to starboard at full throttle, dad is cought off guard and tossed to the port side stern. Those of us in the cabin are tossed about a bit but no injuries. Before dad can recover, the boat hits the edge of the channel and is driven up onto the tidal flats and out of the water, with engines throwing stinky mud everywhere. If you know the area its all muddy spoils along the channel. Once the engines are shut down dad figures out that the one of the cable clamps failed allowing the engines to torque over. No one was hurt thankfully but the story about how we got the boat off the mud bank is interesting but too long to tell.

MD
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Ego piscor, ergo sum

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[Drunkswimmer]

Late August 1998 Cape Hatteras NC. My friends and I rent an 18' Carolina skiff for a day of fishing. We putz around and have a blast getting drunk and catching fish at the ripe old age of 20 (we did have a designated non drinking adult). We were fishing a drop off by the ferry channel that runs from Hatteras to Oakacroke (famous for being Blackbeard's hideout). Anyway we finish up at the end of the day and pull our anchor befor starting the engine.... bad move! No joy on the engine (plugs were gooped up with oil) and the tide had shifted and we couldnt reset our anchor. We called the CG as we started drifiting into the ferry channel. Those ferries are about 3-4 times larger that the Port A ferries and those boats won't turn... loaded with people and a narrow channel, we didnt really expect them to. But the do put off a pretty big wake.

About 2 months before i head off to USCG boot camp i have the joy of getting rescued and towed in by Station Cape Hatteras.. this would be the first time they rescured me, there was a second but that was in the line of duty and a much longer story.

Now i have 12' Inflatble that i use at the rigs for spearfishing so it is only a matter of time before I get my next story. I do have 100% confidence in my ability to swim back to shore up to 3 miles out... assuming i can see where i am going.... but that should never be an issue because i have a RADIO, EPIRB and I ALWAYS HAVE A FLOATPLAN! I would just have to suffer the rest of my carrer getting gaffed.

[Johninaustin]

Two times.

First time, boat fire. Never knew how is started, but we un-assed onto another boat and our 24' Sea Ray cabin cruiser burned till it sank. (Which did not take long at all.)

Remember kiddies, a boat is nothing more than a floating gas tank.

Second time,

We went out of PA headed for the rocks. Flat calm day in August. Weather started to build so we aborted but got surrounded FAST. I've never seen so much lightning. The lines off the rods was floating in the air from the static discharge and you would get zapped if you touched the handrail.

Didn't lose the boat but I threw out the sea anchor and we huddled in the cabin getting thrown around by the weather while waiting to get electrocuted. Luckily, that never happened. Made it back to PA after dark, 7 hours past our expected return time. My ears rang for days from the thunder.

I also have played musical chairs with waterspouts.

[larry meinert]

I have 2 stories worth mentioning.

A friend buys a try hull sailboat in Florida. On their way to Corpus, they get into rough seas and start taking on water. The Coast Guard Cutter shows up and puts 4 pumps on board and starts towing them to New Orleans wide open. After the third call to the Cost guard to slow down, they cut the tow line because it was tearing up their boat.
By the time the helicopter shows, they are in some pretty rough seas. It was a challenge to get them off the boat. But when they did, the Coast Guard circled around and peppered their boat with a 50 cal until it sank. My friend said he will never forget the look on that guys face while his new boat was getting blasted.
Fortunately, my friend owned another boat and his insurance took care of the 50K Coast Guard bill.

The other story starts while I am trailering a fat 21 foot boat with an in and out and a v8. I take off from the light and hear what I thought was a really bad motorcycle screaming next to me. Turns out it was the cable on the winch. Yes, I launched that sucker right in the middle of the intersection.Thanks for a roller trailer and an electric wench. Disconnected the trailer from the truck and sucked that trailer right back under that boat. Went to the lake skiing and drinking only later to find the case between the motor and out-drive was cracked and it's a wonder the whole lower unit didn't fall off.

[SaltyCuda]

[mechdave]

Not really scary but we spun a rod bearing 30 miles out and had to come in on the kicker motor at 3 miles an hour. That was a looong day.
Scary we were out 5 miles and got caught in a thunder storm. We laid the outriggers down and hot tailed it to a rig and tied up. It was raining so hard the bilge pump was running nearly continuous.
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Live like you're dying

[Archer]

Kalamazoo river delta marsh in MI circa 1985. We have 2 teams entered in a 36 hour bowfishing tournament and around 3pm we see the sky darkening. When the lightening starts my step-brother and I decide that standing up in an aluminum john boat in the middle of a 1000+ acre marsh is a bad idea so we haul @$$ back to the landing. We get the boat tied up and are heading for the truck when we look up and see a tornado buzz the landing and touch down about 1/4 mile out in the marsh, Lilly pads and trees flying everywhere and we can't find our other team, the one consisting of my step dad and another brother. Hours later they make it back and tell us they tied up under a bridge to wait out the storm. They never even saw the tornado and didn't know why we were so worried!

Round 2 in Puget Sound around 1995 a couple of us soldiers rented a 16' trihull to do some salmon fishing. We tucked into the lee side of an island and had a great day of fishing but never noticed the NW wind pick up to around 20mph until we started back. We came around the island into the mouth of a long deep bay (running NW of course) and ran smack into 4-6' rollers. Our choices at that point were to cut across the sound to the E shoreline and run it down with the wind pushing the waves into us from the starboard side, or somehow get across the mouth of the bay and run in the lee of the sound for the 10 miles back to our landing and hop our way across to the landing using some conveniently placed islands to break the wind and waves up. I told my buddy to hang on tight and quartered away from the waves and surfed them about 2/3 of the way across then swung the bow around and pounded our way back toward shore for the last 1/3 until we were back in the lee of the western shoreline. Cleaned out our drawers when we got back and cleaned up the boat to return the next day, we strategically failed to mention our little adventure to the MWR.

[nofish2day]

We were tied up to a rig about 35 miles out of Port Fourchon when the weather turned crappy. Decided to try and make a run for home in our 24 foot Sea Ox, bad idea.
Waves got up to around 10 feet, we couldn't make much headway, water coming in over the transom got in the fish boxes and we topped a big wave and flipped, 10 miles offshore. We lost some nice fish and gear that day.
Luckily a shrimp boat had been keeping an eye on us for a while and they came and rescued us, we had to swim over to them and they pulled us up onboard.
Coast Guard came and got us from the shrimp boat, they hooked on the bow ring and tried to flip the boat back over, but just yanked the ring right out and called it a day.
A few days later we got a call from a salvage company, they found our boat floating upside down 200 miles offshore.