 Recently,
a good friend of mine, Murray Fasken, and I went out to
Richland-Chambers for an evening of fishing. We arrived
at Clearview Marina around 6:30 pm., bought some ice and
launched the boat. It had been a couple of weeks since
I had been fishing, and I was looking forward to some
quality time on the water. As we idled out of the marina’s
no wake zone, I noticed the level of the water was down
considerably. Once past the no wake zone buoys, we got
the boat up on plane and took off for our first fishing
hole.
I have been fishing Richland-Chambers since it first
opened. I am somewhat familiar with the areas of the
lake that I frequently fish. I feel like I know where
it is safe to run my boat wide open and where it is
not, at least I thought I did.
As I made the turn out of the marina, I noticed a few
unfamiliar stumps popping their heads up out of the
water; stumps that are capable of removing the lower
unit from your boat motor or literally tearing the transom
out of your boat or worse.
Many of today’s boats are made to run at speeds
in excess of 55 miles per hour. With the lake level
dropping, this can pose a serious hazard. More and more
unknown underwater obstacles are appearing. The one’s
that really scare me are those that still are not visible,
but lying just under the surface of the water waiting
for a fast moving bass boat or ski boat to come along.
I was made aware of a recent fatal boat accident on
Lake Fork. A bass fisherman hit a large stump at a high
rate of speed. His boat flipped over, throwing him from
the boat, killing him. What a waste. Could it have been
prevented? I don’t know. What I do know is that
our lakes are becoming more dangerous by the day. Until
we get some rain to bring the lake levels back up to
normal, all of us are at a greater risk of running over
something in the water, causing damage to our boats
and possibly to ourselves.
I would encourage anyone that operates a boat to use
extra caution while operating them on our lakes and
rivers during our ongoing drought. Always wear a properly
fitted life preserver and a kill switch when operating
your big engine. Try slowing down a little bit. No one
enjoys the rush of racing across the water more than
I do, but throttling back a little bit might give you
just enough time to spot that unfamiliar obstacle in
the water.
As for my fishing trip with Murray, we caught a few
sand bass schooling over by Oak Cove Marina just before
dark on topwater baits. The evening bass bite was off.
I think Murray finally caught one bass before we left.
Please, be careful on the water.
Until next time, enjoy the Texas outdoors.
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