Adventure On The Dark, Provo River

Do you ever have the desire to try something new, not knowing what to fully expect?   Usually, I will venture out and do something new as long as it's safe...Well...a few of my fishing club buddies wanted to go do some night fishing.  And it was my birthday to boot!  So, it sounded like a fun time...I bought a headlamp and I thought that I was ready...Oh, yeah, I also grabbed some mice knowing that this might be the first time that I could actually catch a fish on one!  But, no!  That wasn't all I needed...as I was going to find out.  I needed a secret service agent. Or a bouncer...or, Owl Jones! Yeah, that would have been more like it. 


So, let me begin...It was a nice summer evening in August.  The sun was just starting to give way to shadows on the water.  We had caught a few fish and were having a good time.  As the darkness approached, I grabbed my headlight and adjusted it where I would need it.  One step at a time, I carefully went into a pool of water just deep enough to give me a little apprehension, but the current was slow.  I was a just a little nervous, being the first time on a pretty big river at night. The moonlight glistening on the river was quite beautiful.  This river is famous for Brown and Rainbow trout.  And the night fishing is supposed to be some of the finest that you can find.

I was quite excited about it all, until..."Splash"! "Splash"! "Splash"!  WTF(udge)!!!  Rocks were being thrown at us from up above in the trees.  The section of the Lower Provo has elevated banks that have thick brush and trees.  We couldn't see who was throwing rocks, but this was not very funny, indeed!  I really didn't want to get hit in the head.  You couldn't see what direction the rock was coming from...so a pretty helpless feeling, if you know what I mean!  We yelled back at them to stop the throwing...but, to no avail.  So, here we were in the middle of a dark river, and nowhere to go as the missles were being fired at us, so to speak!  We called the Sheriff, as we stood in the river and they said that they would come and check it out.  They were about a half hour away though.  We thought about walking out, but then thought that we were actually safer where we were.  We didn't want to get into any scuffle with them either.  So, we stayed put.  Rocks were being hurled at us and above our heads about every five minutes.  It was not fun.  I will say that.  My legs were cramping up standing in one place.  In the dark of the Provo River, I never thought that my birthday would be so adventurous!  Or scary...I just wanted to throw a few mice.  One of my friends,  yelled out that he had a BB gun and he wasn't afraid to use it! (Although, he didn't have it on him at the time)  Oh yeah, that did it. Silence...five min...ten min...were they gone?



We heard the Sheriff yell out to us that they had arrived.  They combed the area and no one was there.  So, we all waded out to meet the Sheriff and his search and rescue dogs...ha.  We gave our report and the last thing the Sheriff said to us was, "If you are going back in to fish, have a good time!"  Yeah, right!  This night was finished.  We all laugh about it now and have a code word "Splash" that we say between us when we fish on the river now.  So, I guess that you could say, that fishing with me is...well...interesting!  Adventure in every riffle...errr...pool, whatever! (And my term, "Incoming" is not related to this night in any way!!)