Have you ever been too drunk to fish?

I believe that this is a comedy line from Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck" that took the world by storm about 20 years ago or so.

Drinking and going fishing are two things that go hand in hand and while I am normally a very sensible drinker this past weekend me and my pals who go fishing regularly had a real laugh at the fact that a combination of not eating enough, getting a bit too eager to get on the beers pretty early in the morning, and just bad timing resulted in me being incapable of doing the more intricate parts of fishing towards the end of the day.

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I'm not trying to make excuses here, I readily will admit to the fact that I was drunk, but it does in fact take a great deal of hand-eye coordination and some pretty dang steady hands to string a lure though the tiny attachments on them. Go ahead and try it one day when you are butt sober, but I want you to do it outdoors, on a boat that is rocking up and down with the swells, in sunlight that is messing with your ability to see what is going on in front of you.

I have successfully done this task hundreds of times in the past, but I guess the Miller Lite got to me a bit earlier than expected and no matter how many times I tried I just kept missing the hole. In one particularly funny incident i was already tying the lock-knot off (the bit to the right of the lure that holds the string in place) thinking that I finally finished this task, only to pick up the string to prepare to cast and the lure just dropped on the ground because the line wasn't actually through the hole and I had just tied a knot to nothing.

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The boys with me laughed a lot at that one and eventually one of them tied it off for me.

The thing is, I didn't really do anything different on this day than I would normally do when we go fishin' but I guess the suds just hit me differently than they normally would. I still cast and caught 2 more but after pulling in the last one and breaking the line in the process, I just proclaimed "that's it! I'm done!" and went and sat down in one of the captain's chairs.

Just so people don't think I am a menace to society, one of the wives picks us up when we get back and one of the people on board is the captain and is the only person that drives the boat. We alternate who this person is and they abstain from most of the drinking of the day. I'm not going to lie and say that this man stays sober, he does drink, just not very much. We are not out there to endanger anyone and never have and we play it safe.

I would imagine that the boys are going to be picking on me for a while with this one but they are entitled to do so. This once-a-month or so outing of ours is something that me and a select group of family and friends have been doing for many years, and I hope we never stop doing it since all of us look forward to it so much.

But it finally happened to me and it's funny because as a bigger guy, this is something that happens to other folks, not to me. I wasn't legless or falling down, but mine fine motor skills such as the extreme dexterity that it takes to tie a non-slip loop knot on a lure, all of those were out the window.

The day began at 7am and ended at 5pm but no, we were not drinking the entire time. This is one of the joys of fishing, it isn't a party but you have a beer near your hand the entire time and we just sip. none of my friends are grizzled alcoholics or people who lose their cool when they have too much to drink. We are just a bunch of good ol' boys who have known one another just about our entire lives and get along like gangbusters.

We will go out again in a couple of weeks and because of my hilarity I have been designated the captain for the next run as a form of "punishment." I gladly take on this duty and look forward to one of the others attempting to steal my thunder by perhaps repeating this accidental situation.

Everyone was safe, we don't drunk drive, don't worry. It was all good fun and now we have some fun stories to tell at my expense.