Undaunted by their lack of enthusiasm, I drove on down to JR's in the dark and parked in front of his door step. At about 6:00 am he opened the store - a ham sandwich, some coffee and Gulp baits and I was off to the ramp. I ran into Rick Bruchard and Jim Chalkley Sr. at the ramp, then headed down river. Actually - only about a mile or so down river. My trusty old Merc Jet foot sputtered a couple of times then shut off and would not crank again. I push-poled over to the sawgrass, where Rick and Jim stopped to check on me. I was pretty sure I could get it to crank again and told them to go ahead and go fishing.
I was able to determine that I had water in my fuel by disconnecting the fuel line from the motor and putting some gas in a empty water bottle. Figuring that my water separator was full, I cut the fuel line on the tank side and was going to bypass the water separator. A quick check of the fuel coming into the separator revealed that the water was also in the gas tank. Deciding not to risk further damage to the outboard, I began to push-pole my way back up river along the West bank (using my trusty Skinny Water Products push pole
). Four or five boats passed by me not slowing to help or looking my way, so I decided to pull the cowling off the motor, to indicate I had engine problems. A few more boats passed, then a couple guys in a 24' Carolina Skiff turned around to offer help. By now, I had push poled a couple hundred yards back up river against the tide, so I apologized for cutting into their fishing time and gladly accepted their help. My rescue crew, Donnie and Andrew, were both from up in Georgia. We chatted about the fishing on the slow trip back to the ramp, then they talked amongst themselves a little just before we arrived at the ramp. Sipping my coffee and being towed behind their outboard, I couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but I sort of figured they were revising their fishing plans since I had cut into the couple of cool morning hours they would have to fish. Instead, they offered to wait on me until I put my boat back on the trailer if I wanted to come fish with them….Wow!
We swapped my gear and lunch over to their boat and headed back down river. After we cleared the river mouth, we were greeted by large mats of floating grass. Even a couple miles out on the flats the grass was still with us making it hard to use a topwater or really, any type of plug with treble hooks. We fished water from 4’ to 6’ deep with limited success, then tried both deeper and shallower. With the wind and the tide at nearly a stand-still, it was difficult to get the trout to cooperate. At about 2:00 when we heard the folks on the radio fishing around Keaton Beach discussing heavy thunder and lightning, we decided to head back in. We managed a couple limits of good sized trout and one undersized redfish. All the keeper fish were donated to a church fish fry that Donnie and Andrew were cooking for.
Donnie and Andrew – You guys renewed my faith in my fellow man. I sincerely appreciate you helping out and then taking me fishing with you. You two were a really blessing in what would have been a bad day.
Good Fishin’ – Steve Stinson
Where do you think the water came from? 
