A stout stick or suicidal tendencies by John C. Street 

I get to fish on occasion with one of the most adventuresome white water waders I’ve ever known.  Trying to follow him through raging water brings on a pucker factor of about 9 or 10 and usually requires either a stout stick – giving me the stability of a tripod – or suicidal tendencies.  Typically, I rely on the former while the later fits him to a T. 

Just like some people are susceptible to being struck by lighting (like the guy I watched on the science channel who had been struck five times), I seem to attract fishing companions who do crazy things in – or on - the water.  It’s a phenomenon that’s been going on for as long as I can remember so if there’s anyone interested in doing a television show about this, I’m the person to see.

One of my very first best friends and I once put together a small make-shift raft (replete with fishing pole holders that looked remarkably similar to metal roof truss hangers), and covered several miles on a rain swollen rill before being fortuitously beached on the flooded lawn of an elderly gentleman who was kind enough to take us back home.  For the record, it was my friend’s idea to build that raft and the materials – what we reasoned were scraps since his father didn’t have them locked up – would probably have studded up and covered a fair sized wall so it wasn’t like we didn’t have a sea worthy craft.  By the fuss his dad made, however, you’d think we single handedly put the kibosh on the garage he was in the process of building.  And to add insult to injury (which we both got in spades from two sets of upset parents), we didn’t catch a danged thing all day. 

A few more years later, another friend (see how I attract these people?) and I tested the advertising slogan for an automobile that was all the rage about the time I turned sixteen.   My parents had one of those Volkswagen beetles back then and if you’re old enough to remember the original model, you’ll recall the television commercial that showed the little car floating.

Anyway, the Army Corps of Engineers was beginning to flood what is now the lake behind the Kinzua Dam but hadn’t blocked off all the old roads that ran down into the valley.  We looked at these old roads as makeshift boat – or in our case, car - launches.  And yes, just in case you’re wondering, Volkswagens do float, just not as long as we had hoped. 

Fortunately, since we were more interested in the novelty of actually fishing out of a car window than seeing how much lake we could cover, we hadn’t drifted too far before water started to trickle in around our feet.  However, by the time we decided someone needed to crawl out a window and push us back to shore, there was an element of urgency creeping into the situation. 

Because I still bump into him on occasion, I probably shouldn’t give too much detail about another friend that introduced me to canoes.  He was crazier than a loon and thought nothing of taking his smallish – and not very stable - pointy ended boat into places that would have given a seasoned white water rafter the willies. 

We were both interested in hooking northern pike on fly rods back then and had discovered a nifty little meandering stream that emptied a fair sized swamp.  When the weather cooperated – in other words, when we’d had enough rain to cause flooding – and that stream bellied out into the surrounding lowlands, the northerns went on the hunt in the flooded grass, probably looking for small rodents and frogs clinging precariously to the water logged vegetation. 

The course of that stream cut through several heavily timbered areas and the limbs from some of these trees grew well out over the water.  When the stream was at normal flow, a canoe and its passengers could pass under these obstructions without incident.  In flood conditions, squeezing a boat under them became something of an adventure.

On a sunny Saturday following a week of heavy rain, we launched his canoe on what we thought would be the fishing trip of a lifetime. The water level was about two feet higher than normal and to say that it was just marginally navigable would be a monumental understatement.  Still, we floated without incident for several hours, taking a few nice fish when we found a backwater bayou that offered a feeding ground for the northerns and respite from the current for us. 

My friend had a habit of sitting on the little triangular shaped piece of metal that covers the stern of a canoe, the slightly higher elevation making it easier for him to cast even though it brought out the tipsy characteristics of his boat.  Though I was short in the experience department at the time, I was able to counter his high profile by staying low in the bow and fishing off the opposite side. 

We’d just come out of a smallish backwater and into the heavy flow again when we hit the first stretch of trees growing along the stream.  My friend was busy throwing one last cast back into the slow water when I looked up in time to see a huge tree limb completely blocking the stream.  At best there was only about eighteen inches of clearance, maybe enough to squeeze the canoe under, so I hollered a warning and dove for the bottom of the boat. 

I can remember as clearly as though it happened yesterday that my friend had just lit a cigarette and tilted his hat to the side to block the sun.  And the last thing I saw before ducking my head was my friend being swept off the back of the canoe.  When I looked up again, however, there he was, perched on his seat in the stern, a water soaked cigarette dangling from his mouth, his hat dripping water and his fly rod still in his hand.

How he got back into the boat so quickly I’ll never be sure because the water was probably seven or eight feet deep right there.  As far as I could tell, he’d pushed off the bottom, came up beside the boat on the far side of that limb and shear adrenaline propelled him back into the boat. 

As you can see, a stout stick doesn’t get me out of many of the predicaments I find myself in during the course of a normal day’s fishing although I suppose it might be more useful if I used it to beat some sense into my crazy friends.  Regardless of what you might think, however, and despite the circumstances I’ve just related, I really don’t have suicidal tendencies.