Anglers falling out of boats and drowning has become all to common anymore. Even though the majority of the PFD focus is aimed at guys wearing them and kill switches behind the helm, just as many drownings occur while the Outboard isn't even running. It's way to easy to end up in the water, tripping over a rod handle on a hookset, or flying over the bow when you run into a stump while cruising along with the trolling motor, a very common occurrence for Crappie anglers with as much time as we spend in the stump fields by the way.
For most of us, being an angler in this day and age is great. We have so many things we can spend our money on to improve our game and protect us from the elements, and spend it we do, to the tune of about two hundred billion a year worldwide. Three hundred for that custom rod,....Two Please ! Thousand or better for a trolling motor,... several thousand on electronics, without even blinking. Don't even get started on the boats, tens, if not hundreds of thousands for some of you on the glitter rocket itself, why not ? Nothing a second mortgage can't fix, but you draw the line at spending a hundred on a PFD don't you ? Figured as much, Why ? The one thing you can legitimately justify spending money on as an actual thing you NEED, instead of just something else you want, but nope, you buy the new graph or rod & reel that is getting your buddy all the Facebook likes instead, like the Earth will spin off it's axis and crash into the Sun or something for spending money on something that is actually useful.
Accidents are called accidents for a reason. They can happen so fast, literally in the blink of an eye, to all of us, regardless of experience. Sometimes it's the more experienced guys that are at the greatest risk, spending so much time out that the odds of something bad happening turns into a mathematical equation, and in doing so, the more you go out, the more the odds stack against you. Living in an era of internet and cellphones has lulled us all into a false sense of security. Everything seems so on demand and readily available these days, and for the most part, it is, until you are in trouble anyway. After you go in and that phone is soaked, all of that readily available "stuff ",.. may as well be on another planet.
Mother nature is still as unforgiving now as she has always been. Give that hateful bitch a chance, and she's gonna kill you on the spot, so stop taking chances and making excuses. Let me guess,... you can swim. Congratulations I guess, but don't run across the room feeling all special just yet because so can most of the other people that will drown this year. Another excuse I hear all the time, .. it's to hot to wear a PFD all day.... No,.. It isn't. Although I will give it to you, they don't help keep you cool either. I did two years in Baghdad, Iraq with the Army where Summer temps reach over a hundred and thirty degrees. If we were able to make it wearing long pants, long sleeves, boots, gloves, helmets, while running around with eighty to a hundred pounds of crap strapped to us, I am fairly certain you can manage wearing a PFD sitting on your butt in a boat seat and not die, let's just be honest about it. Wear the damn PFD's |
AuthorJoe Bragg Archives
December 2019
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