One of those days…

Have you ever had “one of those days”?  Was it a remarkably great day that you’ll never forget?  Or, was it one of those incredibly bad days that you can’t forget soon enough?  Well, hopefully, you’ve had more of the previous than the latter.  I can tell you from my 25 years of fishing experiences that I’ve had plenty of both!  One particular day, however, is one that started out rough and finished with a “you shoulda been here” kind of fishing day!

It started one weekend when we were all prepping hard for the annual halibut opener off the coast of Washington.  This is about a 5 hour trek for us as we have to catch a ferry to get over to the coast.  I had a brother flying in from the east coast for this trip, and we’d planning and preparing for months.  What to use, where to stay, prep the RV, prep the boat, prep the trailer, plan the ferry, watch the weather, find the freshest intel… you know, all the regular stuff.  So, my brother flies in, the rest of team shows up, we hit the road, make the ferry, hit the road again, and about an hour into the journey with 2 hours to the final destination, I happen to notice in the mirror something go flying off one of the trailer wheels and I can see smoke coming from the wheel.  Ohhh, this isn’t good!  I get the truck, boat and trailer limped into a vacant bank parking for the inspection.  Yep, smoked the bearings, cooked the brakes, bent the axle and we were grounded!  No chaining up the axle to make it on 3 wheels anywhere, we were two miles from the nearest boat launch and standing there scratching our heads on how we’re going to get Mr. Happy to the coast for some serious halibut and ling cod harvest.

Well, great minds never stop working and our optimism is always on auto-pilot, so the ideas were flying and the plan was starting to unfold.  As luck would have it, one of our buddy boat partners (and Saltwater Pimp Pro Staff Capt. Ross) was just returning to town with his empty 26′ trailer since he launched his vessel for the weekend.  I give him a call and ask him to meet us for some dinner and, of course, he says I can borrow his trailer to haul Mr. Happy to the coast.  Next problem, Mr. Happy is sitting on his broken ride in a vacant bank parking lot and unable to transport!  And as all good minds do, Capt. Ross says he’s got a buddy in town with a mobile crane that could be swayed in to coming to give us a hand!  Now, you talk about having a horseshoe up your behind!  This guy shows up with his mobile crane, straps up Mr. Happy and lifts him several feet in the air, I haul out the broken trailer from underneath, and Capt. Ross backs his new trailer right underneath, and Mr. Happy is landed gently on his new ride!  Of course, the smiles and high fives are abundant as we are back on the road and ready to harvest!  As the weekend turned out, Mother Ocean was plenty calm and generous as she offered up a plethora of limits of pacific halibut, ling cod and black sea bass!  Three days of fishing and we had well over 100 lbs. of fillets for the team!

“One of those days” can mean a lot of things.  Some good and some not so good.  I always say “good begets good” and “what you think about, comes about”.  We could have thrown in the towel and pissed and moaned all weekend about how our trip was ruined by a broken trailer, but we did not.  We kept our eye on the prize, devised a plan and made it happen!  So, the next time your day starts out with a challenge and you think to yourself “uh-oh, this is going to be one of those days”, just take a step back, breathe, and think about how you can turn things around, and you’ll soon find yourself at the end of a better day!