Short story: I lost my favorite combo, then retrieved it after 3 hours…

I always laughed at pole floats and tethers, well now I know why people use those.

Let me set the scene- on the water at 5am, about 30min before sunrise. Foggy calm morning, and had the water to myself the entire morning. Smashing top water, and pearl / bone jerkbaits and swimbaits. It doesn’t get better than this.

Coming up on about my last hour of fishing- it’s about 11am and was only doing a half day. Pull up on a high percentage area, grab my shallow diving pearl jerkbait. Cloudy raining day with dirty water from recent storms. A nice 17” smashes the jerk bait just a couple twitches after it hits the water.

Taking out the trebles and thinking this will be a good fish to end the day. Release the fish and get the jerkbait untangled from the net. Standard procedure. Then as I toss my lure in the water… and don’t see my rod… my favorite combo in my lineup.

I paddle over to the lure… thank God she’s a floater I was thinking. Grab the lure and think- Okay, this could be worse. I’ll just pull up my rod from the line. I start pulling and realize I had the release open on my baitcaster. Again, I think, it could be worse- I’ll just pull out all the line until I get to the spool and I’ll be able to get it up.

I hit the end of the line and I feel the tension. I start to slowly pull up… a little more tension and then nothing. Just loose line. Heart sank. I knew exactly what happened and at that exact moment, I learned a very important fishing life lesson- always tie your line to your spool with a secure knot.

I quickly drop a waypoint on my fish finder. And then another heart sinking moment… I’m at about 11 feet. I start looking at my surroundings to try to get a good feel of where the rod should be. I was really thinking / hoping I was under 5 feet because worst case, I jump out of the yak and feel around with my feet.

At 11 feet, retrieval would be difficult on a sunny day with even slightly clear water. I’m in the rain with murky, 1-2 foot visibility water. I first think that worst case scenario, if I don’t find it, I’ll have to come back when the water clears up, on a sunny day, with some swim goggles. I could manage that.

So that was kind of my plan. I still had about 45min of fishing so I figured a big fish will fix the blunder. I go on to fish for about 10min but I just couldn’t stop thinking about my combo. My favorite combo. Thinking how it would just be sitting submerged for at least a couple weeks until I could attempt the rescue.

So that was it, I look through my cases of lures searching for the biggest treble hooks I have. I ended up with a big Yellow Red Diamonds Dardevle Spoon. I had this one for some spring pike fishing. I grab the spoon along with a heavy 1.5 oz tungsten punching weight.

I tie on this ridiculous looking bullet weight / spoon combination and start casting where I think my rod went overboard. I have somewhat of a 25 foot section where I think it might lay.

I keep casting and it becomes a bit of a fixation. To make it even better, this is quite a weedy area and I have to unhook massive amount of weeds in this area. I’m jokingly thinking to myself that I’m completely changing the ecological habitat in this area.

Well this goes on for over two hours. Cast, bring up about a pound of weeds, toss the weeds in the water, make a hopeless cast, and drag the Dardevle on the bottom hoping for some contact. I hit some branches that gave me some serious false hope a couple times.

Approaching hour three and I’m hopeless, defeated, and ready to paddle back. In my signal of defeat, now that I’m at about an hour after when I should be home, I call my wife to tell her about my debacle of a fishing day. This was my sign of defeat- I told my wife I’m giving up and paddling back in. I hang up with my head hung in defeat. As I’m getting ready to latch my spoon / bullet weight combo, I make one last hail marry cast. You know- the actual last cast after you’ve said “last cast” about 5 other times.

I’m slowly dragging the spoon across the bottom. Ripping it through a couple of weeds and then I feel a little “tink”. I’ve felt this before with the lone branches I’ve found. There no way I thought. I keep reeling, keeping tension on what I’m almost certain is a branch. My kayak drifting closer to my “catch” because of the weight. And just a few feet from my kayak, my favorite combo rises from the water. Literally in shock at what I’m looking at. There is no way. On my (actual) last cast. I get my big catch in the boat and just stare at it in disbelief. Weeds and muck hanging off it in all her glory. I dunk the combo back in the water to wash her off, thinking- a little more water can’t hurt. Bare and without any line, shining like she never shined before, I put the rod back in the holder and I’ve never been happier to paddle back to launch.

I call my wife to tell her the good news. My moods sounds about 10x better than from approximately 3 minutes ago when we were last on the phone. I tell her of the miracle, and she goes- See, you should have called me earlier… you just needed me to pray for you. Well, praise Jesus and tight lines.