Is there a statute of limitations on secrets?
I know we all try to give the impression we're squeaky clean, but I'm sure we have all committed sins we look back upon and would rather not make public. I hope none of you pull a "mightier than thou" attitude and pile on, but I'm gonna rat TW out here and hope all of you can see the humor in it. This happened on one of our fishing trips up to Lesser Slave Lake. I can't even remember which trip it was (they all run together in my memory banks) or who persactly was there, but we had checked into the motel in Slave Lake and of course, there was some HEAVY drinking going on. As the night wore on, people were passing ou .... no, I mean, "falling asleep" one by one, until the only two left standing were TW and myownfineself.
As we sat in the room looking out over the sea of lifeless bodies, I looked over at T-Dub and he had that shit-eatin' grin I'd seen so many times before. I KNEW at that point, there was "trouble" on the horizon! I hesitated, but just HAD to ask, "WTF are you thinkin' Dubber?" He glanced over at me with that, "What? Who? Me?? look he was so famous (infamous?) for ... and the same one I'd fallen for a few times previous. He whispered, "Ya' wanna go catch some fish?" Even though it was about 1:00-2:00 am and the whole group of us were to hit the lake at the crack of dawn, I didn't even question him, stood up, grabbed my hat and said, "Let's go!"
We quietly snuck (sneaked?) out of the room and our first stop was the ice machine down the hall. You see, we had a large can of Dubbers home grown earthworms, from his personal worm farm, discretely buried under a pile of ice in the hotel ice machine! I have a pic (on floppy disc) someplace around here of a highly inebriated T-Dub on his hands and knees in front of the ice machine, sorting through the can of worms, picking out the winning worms that ANY 10-12 lb. Walleye would not be able to resist. We then carefully stashed the remaining worms back under the ice in the ice machine.
We quietly exited the back door of the hotel, hopped in his Jeep and started out for the lake. All of a sudden I yelled, "Dubber, STOP!!!" I remembered (just in the nick of time), we had the charger for the boat batteries plugged into the outlet at the rear of the parking space. I jumped out, snatched the cord out of the receptacle, threw it over the gunwale and off we went. Now, here's my feeble disclaimer and admission to long ago crimes. As we pulled out of the hotel parking lot, Dubber made me swear on a stack of Bibles not to tell anyone about this adventure as he was definitely in no condition to drive. BUT ... the little town of Slave Lake Alberta had a population of about 6000 at that time and the sidewalks were rolled up and put away around 9:00 pm every night. The road to the lake was 100% deserted. Once we hit the section of road that was about as dark as the inside of a goat, ol' Dub made a slow turn. I asked him where TF he was going and he replied, "The boat ramp is right down here!" I told the drunk-assed Canuck we were headed into someone's frigging DRIVEWAY! That's when he swore me to secrecy the SECOND time and I was to tell NOONE about this. So now we're trying to back his boat out of a pitch black driveway onto a pitch black street!
We made the exit with no disasters and finally found our way to the boat ramp. Luckily there was a lone street lamp illuminating the ramp itself and by some miracle, I was able to back the trailer down with TW at the helm of the boat. After jerking the trailer out from under his boat, I pulled the rig up into the empty lot and it was an EASY parking job with no obstacles to get in the way. As I got out of the Jeep, I could no longer see the Dubber OR the boat, but heard plenty of cussing emanating from the darkness of the little canal that heads out onto the lake! "Dubber!! Where are you??"" All I heard was, "Grab the G....mn keys to the boat from the console of the Jeep! Crap! Now I'm double-timing it back to the Jeep, grab the keys and haul ass down the canal to find T-Dub and the boat! I run toward his voice in the dark and when I find him, he's luckily close enough to throw me the bow rope! Well, he was "close enough" ... just not quite sober enough! We finally connected, I pulled the rig toward shore and climbed aboard. It was just a very short ride to the open lake, but there are shallows just past the canal entrance, so we had to rely on sonar to remain floating. Once we got out onto the lake I realized the fog was so thick we couldn't even see our hands in front of our faces! Luckily, he had his GPS marked and we headed out for a good spot to catch our monster.
Now for the results of the big, secret fishing expedition? I have no clue whether or not we caught anything, but I'm about 99.9999% sure we never got so much as a nibble! One thing I AM 100% sure about though, is by time we snuck (sneaked? ;) ) back into the hotel parking lot, our sides were aching from laughing so hard for the past few hours. Problem is, by time we'd snuck (sneaked?) back to the rooms, the rest of the crew was just waking up, starting to stir around and get ready to go fishing. I'm not sure Dubber and I did any fishing once we got back onto the lake ... I believe we were napping the whole time.
Until today, I don't believe anyone here who was along for that trip, ever heard the details of our secret fishing expedition during those early morning hours. I'm sorry for breaking my promise to you Dubber. I really do hope you forgive me and you're looking down at this post with that little shit-eatin' grin on your face. For some reason, I think that you are.
