Fishing and Pot, (Weed) Don’t Mix Ha Ha

A picture of me with my best fishing buddy Bob Nickel while we were yellow perch fishing on the Maryland eastern shore back around 1979. A bunch of yellow perch are laying out on the ground, a Coleman stove and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. A great combination! We made these weekend trips with my camper-van and often after fishing we would have a streamside fish fry. Bob and I, and other fiends had plenty of good fishing trips back then.

I remember one of these fishing trips when Bob and I took our friend Kenny (Last name unnecessary) along with us. It was mid-march on a cool and overcast morning. We had hiked along a stream deep into the woods, marsh, cattails and thicket. By thicket I mean REAL thicket. Low hanging tree branches, brush and sticker bushes. We practically had to crawl into this spot. The stream was only a few feet wide and a few feet deep. It was during the peak of the spawning run and there must have been hundreds of yellow perch holed-up here. It was very tight fishing with no casting space and little or no overhead. We were literally angling our rods through openings between the brush and dipping our baits, while hanging a foot or two off the rod tip, into the stream. We started catching perch one after another and then Kenny decides to fill a pipe with some real good pot, (Weed to you younger folks) and pass it around ha ha… BIG MISTAKE!… as far as the fishing was concerned anyway.

In just a very few short minutes all three of us had our lines all tangled-up in the bushes and the fishing became very difficult if not impossible. The sun had come out. It had become a warm and beautiful day and we were all high as a kite, giggling and having a great time although putting perch on the stringers had slowed down considerably.

It’s funny what a person remembers sometimes I guess and this fishing trip is one I will never forget.

Check out my other fish stories:

THE YELLOW PERCH STORY

THE 5 1/4 POUND BASS STORY

THE CHANNEL CATFISH STORY

THE MISSING DOLLAR STORY

EMAIL ME YOUR FISH STORIES… and I might post them on my FISH TALES section here on my website.