Fightin’ Through A Fog
Two Spokane fishermen, hopelessly lost in a dense fog, recently rowed their car-top boat for more than an hour around Waitts Lake before they finally got near enough to shore to recognize landmarks.
They had rowed the boat around in circles.
Who would ever think that fishermen could get lost on a lake as small as Waitts? Hunters and fishermen who have had similar experiences will tell you that anyone can become disoriented in a fog.
It’s not unusual for a hunter or fisherman to panic after failing to recognize landmarks in a fog. Yet, there are a couple of relatively simple ways to navigate in such conditions. The simplest is a compass. The other is a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. But few hunters and fishermen carry compasses or GPS units.
Like others who have fished and hunted late in the year, I’ve been lost in fogs several times.
One cold December day several years ago, two fisheries biologists and I loaded a boat with decoys, guns and a dog at one of the public access areas at the Potholes Reservoir and headed for the West Side sand dune islands. The 9-1/2-horsepower engine slowly pushed the heavily loaded boat against a slight breeze.
The fog wasn’t thick when we left, but by the time we approached the islands, we could see no more than 30 to 40 feet. None of us had a compass, and GPS units were not yet available to the public.
We knew we wouldn’t be able to navigate around the islands to the spot where the biologists had had good shooting a few days before. The biologists decided to beach the boat on a small island and wait until the fog lifted.
We sat on that tiny sand island for five hours. The fog began to dissipate about 11 a.m. and ducks started flying. At first, we couldn’t see them. Then, as the fog thinned, we began shooting at the low-flying ducks.
We never did get to where the biologists wanted to hunt. But we did kill a dozen mallards.
Last December, the late Al Stier and I hunted a big, shallow lake in Stevens County. The lake was blanketed by fog when we arrived, so we couldn’t locate the blind where we were to hunt. Finally, we launched his flat-bottomed boat, rowed for 20 minutes or so, parked the boat among tules, rigged our camouflage netting and waited.
After sitting in the boat for an hour or so, we decided to move. We took down the netting, and Stier began rowing. We bumped into tule patches periodically and soon realized we were lost, so we parked among the tules and waited for the fog to lift.
The fog thinned several hours after we had arrived so that we could see landmarks. Only a few geese flew off the water, and we went home without firing a shot.
After that experience, I put compasses in my basic hunting and fishing equipment.
GPS units have become popular the last few years, especially now that manufacturers are producing units that fit in a shirt pocket and are priced low enough for most sportsmen to afford. Earlier units were big, heavy, expensive and not at all user-friendly.
Even this year’s units require users to sometimes study bewildering owner’s manuals or view videos before they can become proficient at using them.
And GPS units have their drawbacks. For example, my GPS unit wouldn’t have helped Stier and me unless I had stored information in the unit before we tried to find the spot where we were to hunt, or unless I had logged in waypoints on the way out to where we parked the boat.
Fishermen store information on hot fishing spots at lakes and big streams, as well as the ocean off the Coast. Hunters record spots where they’ve seen deer, elk and other big game animals so they can go back to the same spots year after year.
A hunter can even punch in the location of an animal he’s shot too late in a day to get the animal back to camp. He knows he can return to the spot the next day by using his GPS unit to guide him back to the animal.
Like other fishermen and hunters, I know that sometime during the next few years I’ll get disoriented in a fog and that I won’t have either a compass or my GPS unit. I’ll just have to wait until the fog dissipates.