Remember when you would go fishing or hunting come hell or high water !
Those were the days when everybody said your nuts but you still went !
Time to roll out a few old crazy memories.............so add a few too !
 
We drove up to the Niagara River in February to fish on a river charter my buddy won on a football pool.
Like a dummy I said I'd go along....what a mistake. We got there at 7 am. at a reading of 15 degrees with a north wind blowing! We all had on hunting outfits and layers of extra clothes......wouldn't help !
 He took off down river at about 45 MPH and I was so cold I couldn't feel my face for a half hour !
We fished the mouth for hours and nothing, so it's back up river for another freeze session ride.
Lines were freezing , reels were freezing, we were freezing !
After 6 hours of ice cold misery we called it quits...............never again !     LOL  now ! 

I started fishing for steelhead in the tribs in the fall of 2002, and went every chance I could.  I couldn't get enough of it.  With 2 young kids and a very understanding wife who only worked about 15 hours a week, suicide runs became a common thing for me twice a month from October through ice up.  I'd often leave for the 2 hour drive at about 9 or 10 PM; hit Poor Richards which was open 24 hours a day at the peak of the run; fish for a few hours; grab a few hours of sleep in the back of my Suburban for a few hours at the Walmart by the Erie airport and be back on the water at sunrise and fish all day long.  
 
I believe it was January or February of 2004, and a cold snap was forecast but I wanted to get one last trip in to tide me over for however long I'd have to wait.  Temps were forecast to be in the mid to upper 20's and snow on the way.  A lake effect snow warning had been issued for the Erie area, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.  
 
Couldn't leave till around 8 AM, and as I got closer to Erie, the temperature stayed in the upper teens and the snow was flying.  I walked into Poor Richards East to get some bait, and the guy said I was the only person there that day to get bait and he laughed at me.  Most areas I checked had at least edge ice and chunks were flowing down every stream.  I got water down my waders trying to bust up ice on one east side stream.  Line froze almost immediately and stayed frozen.  
 
As the day wore on, the snow got heavier.  I 90 closed down for a time, so I crawled my way over to a couple stops along Walnut with the thought of heading home.  Between Erie and Grove City, I witnessed 4 different vehicles going off the road, and saw the results of many more wrecks.  The normal 2 hour drive took me close to 4 1/2.  

Went bass and walleye fishing on the Mon out of Fredericktown during what must have been monsoon season. After  couple hours fishing having little luck we see an entire oak tree, roots, trunk and branches intact just rolling along branches over roots. When the branches came out of the water we got a look at how big the tree really was at about 30 TO 40 tall. We decided that my 19 foot boat was no match for something like that and went back in. 

Last year in May we tried to hit Pymie.  Drug the pontoon up there and started drifting but it was COLD and windy... toughed it out for a few hours taking waves over the bow when we had to motor back to start a new drift.  Wife and SIL were buried in multiple hoodies and the Ohio fish wardens snuck up on us.  They were in full-body deer hunting style winter gear!  
 
About that time we packed it in and it took three people all they were worth to hold the toon still at the launch to get it trailered again.  Pretty much every time I hit Pymie it is a greek tragedy of weather.  

Ok, here we go.  Had to be March in the mid 1960s.  Fishing with my Dad out of Linesville.  Rented the boat and went out between the islands.  Can't remember how cold it was, just that it was COLD and steady rain.  Pretty much got skunked til just near the end when I had a tremendous hit and fought a very large Walleye up to the side of the boat (How Large, hell I was was maybe 10 years old, at that age EVERY walleye looked huge.)
Anyway, had him at the side of the boat and my Dad was ready to scoop under him with the net, when I couldn't hold the thumb press down on my Zebco 606 anymore cause I couldn't feel my hands!  Out went the slack and off went the fish.  All these years later I remember that like it was yesterday. 
Not much after that episode we headed in to the docks.  We were wearing heavy nylon/rubber rain ponchos. Not the cheap ones made today, but the kind with real sleeves, hood and reached all the way down to our ankles. (Courtesy Sambaugh Thompson's).  Trouble was the nylon zipper and not being able to loosen them because of the cold.
Pretty sure it was Lou Stefan who ran the livery back then.  He had us come in the boat house to warm up and he undid the zippers so we could get out of the ponchos.  Wish I was that age again...

When I was about 18 years old a friend and I headed for Canada with my younger brother (~13 yr old) and his friend same age. Could you imagine crossing the border today like that. These were the years my brother and I guided and worked in Canada without even thinking we were doing anything wrong.
  Well on this particular trip we camped on an island about 7 miles south of a little town on Georgian Bay. Fishing was fantastic and we hadn't A CARE IN THE WORLD. We brought beans, potatoes, and onions to compliment the fish. Life was good.
  Enter Hurricane Agness, and three days confined to the inside of the tent. Horizontal rain and sleet, and wind that wanted our tent. We were in a great spot and never got water under our tent and we anchored the tent well. We spend much of our time for those two days of intense storm lying in our sleeping bags and betting on which fly would cross a sew seam first. Of course the fly's were as lethargic as us and races lasted hours. Jimmy the Greek would have been proud of us.   

Ahhh, hurricane Agnes.  Fished Orangeville at the waterfalls with my then girlfriend (now wife) for three straight days.  Water backed way up from the lake cause of all the rain.  Threw softies and hellgramites and we both limited out on Largemouth all three days..and not one under three pounds.  A few pushing five and better!
 
 

We would make spring time trips to Put in Bay over in Ohio for the walleyes. This was probably 20 years ago when we would just drift the Erie Dearie and crawlers. On morning with great weather for that perfect drift we were quite a few miles off the island and out of nowhere this very dense fog rolls in. Talk about spooky imagine a pack of boats all around you and you couldn't see them I mean you couldn't see 3 feet in front of your face. We could hear people talking on the other boats it was just a real spooky feeling. Took us hours to get back to the island.

We would make spring time trips to Put in Bay over in Ohio for the walleyes. This was probably 20 years ago when we would just drift the Erie Dearie and crawlers. On morning with great weather for that perfect drift we were quite a few miles off the island and out of nowhere this very dense fog rolls in. Talk about spooky imagine a pack of boats all around you and you couldn't see them I mean you couldn't see 3 feet in front of your face. We could hear people talking on the other boats it was just a real spooky feeling. Took us hours to get back to the island.

Sorry for the double post