How my weekend went. First off as many know we had the You The Man Tournament Sunday. I landed 3 bass and lost the 4th one by the boat. Where is that net man when you need him..LOL No big fish were caught but 8 out of 9 guys had fish to weigh in. Rat lost a hawg that would have went around 8 lbs he said. Right after that he turned around in his boat and kicked one of his rods over that had a quantum PT reel on it. He searched for an hour but could not locate his rod so it was history. Only good news we had for him was he won BF pot with a 2.6 lb bass. No where near enough money to replace that setup but at least he had weight to put him on the board with a few bucks in his pocket. After the tournament the guys asked if I would partner up with Bryan to float the river on Monday. Well I have never done this before with these guys but it sounded like a lot of fun plus they were going to Carbonton for this float. This use to be my honey hole that I fought hard to save the dam couple years back but lost that war and they broke it so now its nothing but shallow water. Monday morning rolled in so I headed out to meet Bryan at the old boat ramp. We all met there and left a couple trucks so we had a way to get back to the other trucks up the road where we put in at. We got all the Jon boats unloaded then headed down the mountain it seemed like to put them in the water. It has to be at least a 75 foot drop from the top down to the water. Once we had everything down there we blasted off to make a day of floating this river. Junior & Rat lead the way with Ice & Lee in the middle then Bryan & I brought up the rear. We were not 200 yards from where we blasted off when Junior & Rat put their first bass in the boat. Ok the game is now on so we pounded the banks hard with no luck. Junior & Rat went on down river out of site with Ice & Lee staying near us for awhile then they put their first bass in the boat. Now Bryan & I were thinking what is going on here? We have not had one dang bite yet and these two other boats have fish already. Well it was not 5 Min's later when Lee & Ice put another one in their boat and we still have yet to have a bite so we are thinking its because we are fishing behind beat up banks so we tell them if they want to stay in front to please go on down river to give us some un-fished water. They take off about two hundred yards or better then start back fishing. Bryan & I fished on with out having bite for an hour or more then when we caught back up with Lee & Ice we ask what color are they using? They told us so we change to that color and BAM we landed our first fish. Now heres the problem the color they wanted I did not bring with me and Bryan only had like 8 of these worms so we used them until they could not be put on a hook again. If I had my big tackle bag with me then we would have had plenty of this color but floating the river we had to pack light. We fished on down landing one here and there so we were in good shape for now. Lee & Ice had left us this time and were out of site. Right before we came up on the first set of rapids Junior called to asked how we were doing and I joked with him saying we need help cause we are stuck and can't get loose. He said WHAT? We can't get back up river with all that current flowing so I told him I was joking that we were just about to the first set of rapids. He told us to go hard left by this broke off tree as the water was deep there and we could slide past the rocks. Well we hit some rocks before this tree that made us get out to pull the boat across them. We stopped for a min to fish the mouth of a creek that use to have lots of fish around it but did not land anything. Bryan & I look at the major rapid ahead where that tree was hanging and I told him what Junior said to do. Heck are feet was already wet from getting out of the boat on the other spot and we should have just got out again and drug the boat over the next one to the right but we decide we would try to go left through where that tree was. Ok here is where the fun began right when we started into the hard flow it slams us right against that tree. Now we are stuck on the tree and water was all but coming into the boat as Bryan & I are BIG guys plus being in a little 12 ft Jon boat.... Well lets just say this boat was well past its weight limit from the get go...LOL Anyway we are trying to push back off this tree to turn the front to the right so we could go through this hole. Nope this was not working as we pushed off three times to only get slammed back into it that tree. Each time we hit that tree it was harder then before then the fourth time we hit it so hard that it knocked Bryan over to the right that tipped the boat over enough that we took on water BIG TIME.... Well needless to say she went under dumping Bryan out and now it has pinned me against it hard sucking the breath out of me. The tree was on my chest bending me backwards against the boat squeezing the life out of me. I looked over to see Bryan was ok then told him here I go as I pushed down on the tree to suck me under it to get free and I was gone. The water shoved me like a rocket out the other side. Now the boat was pinned on the tree by the trolling motor head and we could here the plastic cracking on the motor so I fight my way back to the boat to push it off this sinker tree. Bryan yells I have the rope so we will not lose it when I get it freed. I push and push until she was free and there she went hauling ass in the flow. Bryan pulled it to the shallow then we drug it up on the dry rocks when he says OMG all our gear is gone. I think oh man this is a disaster. I take the battery out as it was all the way under water with the boat being full of water then we turn her over to her drain her out. While this is going on we wade out in the rapids looking for our rods. We can see our coolers just up the river jammed in a couple of tress. I see my tackle bag floating away so I go as fast as I can and grab it. Bryan sees his tackle box laying on the bottom of the river and grabs it. Now we are still searching for our rods when Bryan says here is one of yours and I look down and say here is one of yours. We put the gear on dry land then go back to see if we can find the other two. We wade on down to that set of trees to get our coolers and grab them then head back to the boat looking for the other two rods. I see one and yell here is one of them to only find it was someone else rod that had been lost. Guess we are not the only ones this has happen to. We keep looking when Bryan says here is my other one then walks a few more feet and finds my other one. Now we are back in business so we turn the boat back over, put all our gear back in then head out to see what our next adventure would be. We lost one bag of worms, the paddle, two bottles of water and two code red drinks. The paddle was something we needed as Junior told us once we got past that set of rapids the next set was the bad one? Gesh how much worse could it be then what we just had...LOL Well no paddle in site as the last time we seen it she was hauling ass down river when we went under. Now we are talking about trying to get a big stick or something to get us past this so called bad rapid we would be facing on down river. Well we can not find anything big enough to help us out so we kept floating on down to take our chance with it. Junior told us to stay in the middle where there was a big tree and we would make it past it with no problem if we stayed close to that tree. Oh god another tree we are thinking...LOL Lee & Ice were no where in site. Junior and Rat was long gone and my cell phone is shot from being full of water so if we needed help there was no one around. We keep on trucking until we hear water flowing this means rapids are coming up. Once we got to it we figure the only way we will get through it was to hammer down on the trolling motor then pull it up right before it got to shallow hitting the motor on the bottom. Can't lose the motor now or we will be in big trouble! I hammer down and here we go weeeeeee across the rocks we go and here is that tree coming up fast. Bryan sticks his foot out and kicks us off it right when we got on it this shoved us out where we needed to go so all went well on this one. We settle down then start back fishing to land some more of them green critters. We came up to one bottle of water about a mile down river then found another one about another mile down river so we had drinks once again...LOL Never did find the code reds, paddle or that bag of worms. Ran into a couple more rapids that were nothing bad to deal with other then getting out to drag the boat over them. Bryan & I landed 18 bass and two bream for our total. Ice & Lee had 23 bass and Junior & Rat had 21 bass to make 64 bass for the day. Over all it was a lot of fun out there other then sinking the boat deal but the swim was very refreshing to cool us off some...LOL Next trip we will be putting in at Carbonton then float down river to Hwy 421. This part of the river I have never been on and look forward to floating it soon. Just hope we don't sink our boat again and loose anything. Well there you have it folks is the full story of our weekend. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

Dang CB.  Sounds like a real adventure.

Sorry, I had a long day yesterday and was typing kind of late(for me). Sounds like you guys had a cool refreshing blast to say the least. Good report Crossbow! and thanks!

I was using "The sauce" when I nailed that nice spot the other day!

Later!

Buzzbait