I have been fishing for more than sixty years. I consider myself a common sense, fairly well educated man. I'm retired from a forty year career in education, as a teacher and administrator. Most of my friends, and especially my wife, know me to be a decent problem solver and one that learns from mistakes. I am also a a guy that, on five different occasions, on five different boats, none of which were mine, threw five different anchors overboard with the end of the rope not tied to the boat. My favorite one, the one that makes me laugh the hardest, though, at the time, was not funny at all, now rests in about four hundred feet below the surface of Lake Michigan. Leaning your gear behind is funny too. Let me know when you drive three hundred miles, hike two hours and realize that your fishing with the local police chief and you forgot to get a required license. I did that hunting, not fishing, so it really doesn't count for this forum.

Wally6, just wait till next year and want to ask if you've heard of old-timer's disease? It get's worse, get used to it and adapt to the diagnosis. You lucked out by being married, I have to take a handful of aspirin along with another blood pressure pill when in this quandary. First thing I do as I'm beginning to cry over the spilled milk is to just blow it off. Just yesterday when cleaning out fishing gear after a trip, my $40 worth of Gulp lures/watertight box weren't around and I just knew they were still sitting on the public casting bank, waiting on the next one to catch a surprise and take them to the house. I found these in a first-time use of a fabric bag in the back seat of the car but haven't engrained habit for looking in this bag. Got paranoid earlier with everything you hear now about the locals and knew lures must have been stolen. On a previous outting I caught a good discount on 6 bags Gulp lures only to loose one unopened bag as I was hastily rigging my line to get one in the water. In summary, this too will pass. I maintain to keep it simple, stupid or maybe in my case, you can't fix stupid. Carry on/ give it hell/appreciate married life.

I have been fishing for more than sixty years. I consider myself a common sense, fairly well educated man. I'm retired from a forty year career in education, as a teacher and administrator. Most of my friends, and especially my wife, know me to be a decent problem solver and one that learns from mistakes. I am also a a guy that, on five different occasions, on five different boats, none of which were mine, threw five different anchors overboard with the end of the rope not tied to the boat. My favorite one, the one that makes me laugh the hardest, though, at the time, was not funny at all, now rests in about four hundred feet below the surface of Lake Michigan. Leaning your gear behind is funny too. Let me know when you drive three hundred miles, hike two hours and realize that your fishing with the local police chief and you forgot to get a required license. I did that hunting, not fishing, so it really doesn't count for this forum.

Let me start by saying that I used to have a magnetic box on my truck with a spare key for the truck in it. I boarded a 4 day fishing charter for tuna with all of my gear and the boat left the dock. We were at the bait receiver when I decided to unlock my tackle box and start rigging my rods. When I reached for my keys, I discovered I had locked them in the truck. This mistake cost me lots of dollars to purchase what tackle I could at very high prices AND I wasn't able to rig 1/3 of my rods (I had 9 rod/reel combinations on this particular trip) because the boat only carried a limited supple of tackle for sale.