Economics

[gramps50]

Went over to the Meramec in Valley Park yesterday to fish just west of the Hwy 141 bridge. Decided to go up into the creek that comes in there to fish. Had my $2.54 Rooster Tail on my spinning rod. Was casting around. Saw some tree limbs laying in the water on the same side of the creek as me. That might be a good place for fish I tell myself so I start casting in that direction. On about the 3rd or 4th cast I missed my target and the Rooster Tail landed over the top of the tree limbs.

Don't panic, let it settle down and then snatch it over and back into the water. Wrong that didn't work, before it came loose the rear treble hook grabbed onto a limp. Flipping or any other tactic wasn't working. I hate to loose lures, I'm cheap, so I started looking at ways to retrieve my $2.54 lure. It was only about 3 ft from the shore so maybe if I go over there I can knock it loose with a stick or something. When I got over to where the limbs were in the water and my $2.54 lure was stuck.

Well the tree limb was rotten and would not support my weight so climbing out on it was out of the question. The diameter of the limbs wasn't that big and I discovered that I could break it off and pull it to me. So that is what I preceded to do. Looked over and as I pulled my rod and reel were sliding down the back towards the water, this won't turn out good. Back over to where the rod was and let out some more line and move it further up the bank.

Back to the tree limb, pull snap, crackle & pop and I could reach my $2.54 Rooster Tail and free it from the tree limbs. No way to carry it back with me to many weeds between me and the rod. Cut the lure off and carry it didn't even cross my mind so I threw it out into the water, all should be good, go back and reel it on, right?

Walked back over to where the rod & reel were located and proceeded to reel in the excess line. Somehow the line got into the space below the spool, okay take the spool off and get it out. Well crap it's down below that, I pulled and tried to unwrap it to no avail. I cut the line and pulled in the line with the $2.54 Rooster Tail on the other end. Got it back to shore and cut it off the line, in hind sight I should have cut the $2.54 Rooster Tail when I freed it from the tree limbs.

The line that is wrapped inside the reel isn't going to be any good to much chance of it being nicked or kinked so all the line from there out has to go, now there isn't enough line left on the spool to be real useful so off it comes too. I had just respooled this reel last week so it was still pretty full. Pull it all off and start over.

1 roll of Sufix Elite 6# $9.29 I can fill the spool twice with this so that's $4.65 per spool

1 Rooster Tail 1/8 oz lure $2.54

Bottom line (no pun intended) I spent $4.65 to save $2.54 maybe I should become a politician.

[Justin Spencer]

Good story, I'll vote for ya!

[Mitch f]

That was so painful to read