Oops! There goes the net.

A few years ago my son got me a nice fishing net with rubber netting and a telescoping pole. The longer pole is nice since our boat has a pretty decent freeboard.

Anyway, I'm bringing this fish in near the stern and he gets out the net. It's one of those where you push in a button on the pole to extend the handle, then when the button gets near the end of the pole it locks back in position. Thing is, he somehow pulled the handle out past the point where the button locks and when he dunked the unit into the water to net the fish, the net and upper part of the handle came off! He's left standing there with only the lower part of the handle that has the button on it.

As soon as the fish was on, I had adjusted the trolling motor on the bow down to a slower speed to keep us into the wind, so the boat was moving away from the part of the net that had just found its freedom. We could only stand there and say goodbye to the net as we moved farther away and it sank beneath the surface in 13' of water. I managed to hoist the small mouth onto the top of the transom with my pole.

Needless to say, my son felt pretty bad about losing the net. I picked up a new one this afternoon, one that telescopes by turning the handle and has a stop limiter on it so the handle won't come all of the way out.

Just a little twist on the "One that got away" tale. -Ken

Re: Oops! There goes the net.

I once lost a pole over the side of the boat trying to "save" my infant son (that's another story). What I did was take another pole and tied on a rattle trap (has dual treble hooks) and a couple of egg sinkers. Took me less than 5 minutes to retrieve my lost rod and reel. I bet that would have worked for the net.

Re: Oops! There goes the net.

After my wife dropped not one but two telescoping shove poles overboard where they sank in deep water, when I got my third, I pulled it apart and stuffed styrofoam (from packing) into the handle, then reassembled it. I haven't float tested it yet (figure she will eventually) but it should at least slow down the sinking so I can grab it.