Fishaholics Forums

Back in September '06 my friend Erick and I were fishing off the Commercial Street Dock in Eureka for sharks and bat rays a couple times a week.  One particular night we had done fairly well with a couple smoothhounds and a couple big rays, and were enjoying the night with a few beers and good laughs.

Around 10pm or so, this tall crazy-looking guy rolls up with a tuna-stick of a pole and starts fishing next to us on the pier.  Within a few minutes he starts talkin to us about the fishing, and then gets all excited and starts bragging about his boat.  The dude was obviously drunk, so we just laughed and went along with it.  Eventually the guy says "Hey, you wanna go on my boat?  I'll go and get it and swing by this pier if you want to come along." Figuring this guy was probably going to pass out within minutes, we told him "Yeah yeah, okay, see ya," and watched him drive off in his car.

We kept fishing until about midnight, and were just starting to pack up when, lo and behold, this old, rusted Chevy pickup comes clunking down the road...with a boat trailer.  The tall crazy guy actually showed up!  He said in a gruff voice "You guys wanna go on my boat or what?" Erick and I had had a few beers that night, so I'll admit our judgment was not too keen when we both said "Yeah!"  So we walk around the marina to the boat ramp and wait for the crazy dude to launch.  Hilarity ensues.

The guy drives forward to align his boat with the ramp, then all of a sudden the right trailer tire rolls right off the axle!  We watched as the trailer tire spun down the parking lot and eventually smacked into a truck.  Keeping our laughs back was very difficult as we watched the guy jump out of his truck and chase down the runaway tire.  We felt like being Good Samaritans that day, so we helped the Crazy Dude reattach his tire and launch the boat.

We load up in the boat and cruise out of the marina into the bay, and the crazy guy puts on the throttle full speed.A couple minutes later the engine DIES.  The crazy guy can't figure out what's wrong.  So here we are, in the middle of Humboldt Bay on an outgoing tide in the middle of the night with no power.  After 15 minutes of fiddling around on the engine, Crazy Dude is able to get it running again, and instead of turning around, we kept on cruising further into the bay for a few minutes until the engine died AGAIN!

At about this time, Erick and I realized this was a terrible idea.  After 20 minutes of drifting with the strong outgoing tide towards the mouth of the bay, Crazy Dude got the engine running and cruised in front of the Coast Guard Station rocks.  According to him, this spot had "big f#&$* rockcod!"

We tried a little fishing here with swimbaits, and caught  lots of 9-10 inch brown and copper rockfish, but nothing over a foot long.  Apparently, Crazy Dude's definition of "big f#*&$ rockcod" was fish 10-12 inches long, since he got waay too excited when he caught a 12 inch black rockfish.  After an hour of fishing we headed back to the dock and thanked the Crazy Dude for taking us out, then walked to Erick's house at 3 in the morning, not believing how retarded we were to go out on some crazy drunk guy's old boat at night in the middle of Humboldt Bay.  Ah, good memories, I guess...