Fishing With Uncle Bob Part IV by jihadgene

Hello readers! Please go read Fishing With Uncle Bob Parts I ,II, & III, before you read this post for the full bodied flavor of my mostly-true story. Note*** the photo may look like two US Navy Fast Boats, and they ARE! These fast-boats actually trained in the Suisun Slough Area in the 60's and 1970's. This photo was taken around 1978. This is a photograph of them in Suisun Slough! In places...it's wider....in places it's narrower. See those reeds on shore? Those are called tulies (pronounced two-lee's). The crap (soil?) on the shore they grow in is just about that.....CRAP! When the tide goes out, all that icky, gooey, muck is exposed. When you walk in it, it will suck the shoes and socks off your feet. Inland you will only be knee deep in this slime, as you get closer to the waters edge, the deeper you sink. It is hard to rinse off and you will look like a victim of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. What I'm saying is, the shit's nasty and you don't even want to be trampin' around in it ! I think US NAVY SEALS bury the guy's there, in that shit, who don't quite make it through SEAL Training.

Now, where we last left off in Part III, of our wonderful fishing adventure with Uncle Bob, it was early summer, in the year of our Lord (my Mom's Jehovah Witness God) Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Six (1966). 1966... that was when my Uncle Bob received his first shoreline standing ovation! He was applauded for successfully launching/propelling us (my Dad- who was getting drunk. Me-JihadGene(age 11). And my brother Joe-Bob(age13) -who said little, if any, and often smiled nervously) sideways off the boat's trailer and into the water. We hung on, and despite the odds against us, landed right-side-up in Uncle Bob's light blue over white fiberglass 16' boat, that seats 4 back-to-back, and powered with a mighty 60HP Evinrude outboard motor, capable of reaching ungodly speeds, when operated by a drunk, in the Suisun Slough! Uncle Bob parked his Bob-Mobile, a 1965 or '66 Chevy-Corvair-Monza-Spider, with the boat trailer still somehow attached. Uncle Bob walked down to us at the dock carrying his empty Hills Brothers 5 lbs coffee can to piss in while captaining his trusty boat. Being the good Captain that he was...he made sure, this time, unlike at Lake Berryessa, that the anchor was now INSIDE the boat. And off we went....

Like I said, we were now after sturgeon. These fish can go from a couple of feet long to well over 10 feet and weigh hundreds of pounds! I'm talking a big honkin' prehistoric fish! We only had light tackle and some worms but I figured Uncle Bob knew what he was doing and would just use the worms for chum and use me and my brother for some serious bait, if need be. I sat back to back with my brother Joe-Bob, who was facing forward, as my Dad sat back to back with Uncle Bob, the Pilot of our boat. I never knew that a 60HP outboard Evinrude could reach speeds of over 100MPH but when Uncle Bob was drinkin, and he was always drinkin, anything was possible. We were swerving in and out of boat traffic! Man, those cabin cruisers horns were really blaring!!! Uncle Bob just laughed and downed more beer. My Father downed more beer, My brother Joe-Bob continued to smile nervously/mysteriously. I wanted to go the hell home.

Uncle Bob was now all over the waterway, as he was now trying to piss in that coffee can of his, while steering the boat at over 100MPH. Now having "Drained the Main Vein", Uncle Bob is lookin back at me and yell's "Get me a SODIE, boy"! I'm scared cause Uncle Bob ain't watching where the boat's going and I panic! I handed him a "God-Forbid" Dr Pepper! Now Uncle Bob, who should be steering this fiberglass bullet-of-a-boat, is just looking at me and yellin' "Don't you know what the hell a SODIE is, boy"? I say loudly, "Sorry" and hand him a Miller High Life. My Dad chuckles, and now my brother Joe-Bob finally begins to "speak for the first time", since this fishin' trip started out....softly at first... and then I hear his immortal words, rapidly increasing in volume...oh no. Oh. No. Oh NO!!!NO-NO-NO-No-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!!!

Next thing I know, I hear a big old WHUMPFFF, kind of a sound! Then the boat starts to shake-n-shudder, and act like it is on some kind'a oil-slicked roadway! The mighty 60HP Evinrude outboard engine suddenly bucks upward like it wants to sit in the back of Uncle Bob's boat with me and my Dad! Now I notice there are these tulies (reeds) shootin by us at speeds that must be exceeding 120MPH, on both sides of the boat! I could reach out and touch them. They make a rapid-fire Whap-WHAPPING sound, as we plow through them! We're slowing down now, and stop, after about 100 yards. Yes. It's. True.
We are now beached in the mucky slime of Suisun Slough......(to be painfully CONTINUED) JG