Sunday, July 12, 2015

Fishing tournament?

About 7 p.m. yesterday, several recreational boats came out of the mouth of the Big Sandy River and into the Ohio like bats out of you know where. Seeing all those boats at once helped me understand something.



Earlier in the day, my family took our favorite Marine to the airport so he could catch a flight back to North Carolina and Camp Lejuene. Afterward those of us who remained in Huntington needed to decompress. Two of us slept, one went to spend time with a friend and I decided to go to Kenova to see if there was anything. There was. More on that later. As I was leaving Virginia Point Park on a curvy narrow road with steep banks on each side and no guardrails, I encountered several pickup trucks pulling boats on trailers. In one case, only a few inches separated my car from the trailer as it went by.

That was about 6 p.m. I spent the next hour or so getting pictures of the Elizabeth D, the Chris Arden, the James E. Anderson and the Kentucky, with a long-distance. shot of the Reliant thrown in. About 7 p.m., all those boats came out of the Big Sandy.





As near as I can figure, the guys (and women) in the boats must have belonged to a fishing club that has tournaments in a specific pool of the Ohio at a specific time. I ran into such a club at a boat ramp farther up the Greenup pool on a Saturday evening several years ago, where a guy explained the rules, most of which I have long since forgotten.

When I was younger, several people tried to get me interested in fishing. I never got the appeal of it. I was more interested in the rocks and dirt and plants beside the river, plus the dams in the river, the boats on the river and the bridges over the river than to be curious about the process of catching and releasing those stinking fish.

To each his own. If you like it, great. I don't care for fishing, but I seem to enjoy watching people going through the process of catching fish. Someday I might understand that part, but that epiphany has not come to me yet.