Rich Landers: When all else fails, read directions

Today I will offer outdoorsmen four time-tested words of advice that could save your life, or at least insure your reputation against terminal embarrassment.

My father suggested this pearl of wisdom during my developing years back in the Stone Age, but the guidance is even more relevant in this Age of Technology.

The words will ring true to any sportsman who has seen a valuable championship field trial dog run over the horizon for the entire pheasant season wearing a brand new electronic collar that doesn’t seem to work.

The phrase will hit home with anyone who’s:

“Been lost in the woods for several miserable nights with a new GPS unit in his pocket.

“Snapped 20 totally black images of an ivory-billed woodpecker that posed on a snag for five minutes 20 feet from the canoe during the first outing with the new digital camera.

“Misinterpreted the digital readout on the new avalanche transceiver after a slide has left a friend buried somewhere under the snow.

Are you ready? Memorize this sage advice and share it with someone you love:

Read the directions first.

One of the most gut-wrenching cases in point was presented last week in the following summary of a story reported by Allen Thomas, outdoor writer for the Vancouver Columbian.

Ed Iman, a walleye guide based in The Dalles, was fishing the John Day pool of the mid-Columbia River out of Umatilla, Ore., on April 11. Also aboard his boat were Terry Sheely, a writer from Western Washington, and Jason Morrow of Cabela’s Outfitter Journal.

The group was fishing the prespawn bite, which is prime time for catching the Columbia’s trophy walleye. The Oregon state record 19.15-pound walleye was taken in the Umatilla area in 1990. The Washington record 19.3-pound walleye was caught last February just upstream a few miles near the mouth of the Walla Walla River.

(For perspective, the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame lists the world record walleye at 22 pounds, 11 ounces, caught in Arkansas in 1982. The International Game Fish Association lists a 25-pounder from Tennessee, but it’s being disputed.)

Anyway, “knowing he was fishing in big-walleye water at the big-fish time of year, Iman brought along a new battery-powered digital fish scale, precalibrated for accuracy – just in case,” Thomas said.

Indeed, it was Iman, the local expert, who hooked a big fish.

“It’s a teener – a high, high teener,” Iman said as the fish was netted. “Maybe bigger.”

According to Thomas, the digital scale was ripped out of packing box, turned on and attached to the walleye’s lower lip.

The readout said “11.5.”

“This fish has got to be bigger than 11.5,” Iman said, according to Thomas’ story. The veteran guide jiggled the scale. The read-out jumped to “13,” then fell back solidly to “11.5.”

Iman has been fishing for walleyes since shortly after the Ice Age Floods. He has netted and released a bazillion walleyes. But, as the adage goes, scales don’t lie.

Since this was an egg-ripe female, the anglers wanted to get it back into the water.

So Iman lowered the walleye into the river as Morrow captured the moment on video. When the fish stabilized, he let the monster swim away.

We can only imagine that Iman must have been reconsidering the size of everything from his boat to his ego in the next hour or so until another fishing guide motored over to his boat with a client who had just boated a walleye that was weighed at 15 pounds.

Everyone on Iman’s boat quickly observed that the 15-pounder was much smaller than the 11.5-pounder Iman had released. “A whole lot smaller,” Morrow told Thomas.

That’s when Morrow grabbed Iman’s new scale and cupped his hand to shade the digital read-out.

The exact words uttered in the next few seconds have not been officially recorded.

“It came out of the box preset in kilograms,” Iman said.

The scale had a mode feature that was easy to switch to pounds, a detail he would have learned had he read the directions – first.

The fishermen did some basic math on the boat. To convert kilograms to pounds, multiply kilos by 2.2:

Duh, 11.5 kilograms equals 25.3 pounds.

“If we didn’t just release the new world record, we came within a scale of it,” Sheely said.

They named the walleye “Metric Momma” and Iman has grown philosophical about a world-record mistake that likely cost him endorsements, magazine covers, bookings and financial security beyond the dreams of most guides.

“She’s still out there,” he said.