The Single Ramp Story

 

The Single Ramp

Spring had sprung and it was time to get the fishing boat out of the garage for a test run.  My son and I chose to take it to the Eno River to do some white bass fishing.  It’s about a 30-mile drive and the weather was perfect.  My son warned me that the place we were going to launch had only one ramp.  It could get crowded, he said, especially with the abundance of kayakers that go to this spot.  When we arrived, there were lots of cars and empty trailers in the small lot.  The ramp, however, was available and we dropped the boat into the water without delay.  The motor fired right up and purred in a soft hum as we slowly made our way up the river.  My son was aware of the fishermen already in their spots casting their lines.  He would slow down to minimize our wake when passing them then speed up in between along the curvy waterway.  After traveling a few miles, we stopped and started to cast our rods toward the bank, drifting along.  We tried three or four spots without any luck.

 At some point, my son suggested we go downstream, below the ramp site and give it a try there.  We passed the ramp and went around the bend where water was shallow.  There were many people fishing from the bank.  A fallen tree lay out over the water and rocks were piled up along the shore.  This was our spot.  I caught a stick, then a leaf, then a sweet gum ball.  No joke, there was a gumball on my hook!  My son cast into the right spot and proceeded to catch the largest white bass of his life.  It was a female full of eggs and probably weighed 4 lbs.  He was delighted as his rod bent nearly in two during the landing.  I took the appropriate photos to document the big catch before releasing the fish.  We could go home now, knowing we had accomplished our goal.  But before we left, I proceeded to get hung up in a tree limb and lost my lure.  That was my last cast.  In fact, I got hung several times on this trip but managed to get out of it most of the time.  I did manage to catch one small fish. 

We proceeded back to the boat ramp. My son pulled up to the dock, and I was instructed to hold the boat so it would not drift into the shallow.  He went to get the trailer, leaving the boat to idle.  In the meantime, a guide with his clients pulled up to the shoreline next to me.  Also, a pontoon boat came in and was idling behind me.  The river is narrow at this point, and it was becoming quite crowded.  Then it happened, a pick-up truck with 2 kayaks in the bed backed down the ramp.   An elderly man and his wife got slowly out of the vehicle and proceeded to slide their kayaks off the truck.  The wife was dressed head to toe in a black wetsuit.  No disrespect but she looked like a walking seal.  The man got back into the truck and proceeded to move the truck while leaving the two kayaks and his wife standing on the ramp at water’s edge.  By now, probably five or six of us boats were waiting.  Of course, the man had to find parking then walk gingerly back down the steep slope.  My son was proceeding to back our trailer down, not realizing that someone was there.  I motioned to him to stop.  The elderly man proceeded to leisurely take his shirt off, sit down on the dock and put on his water shoes.  At this time, the man in the pontoon yelled out “Take your time, we’ve got all day!” in a sarcastic voice.  The old man replied, “We sure will”.  He then began to push his kayaks into the water, whistling while he worked.  The pontoon driver yelled “If the game warden was here, he would write your ass a ticket” to which the whistling man replied, “I don’t think you can get a ticket for being an asshole”.  He helped his wife into the kayak, and they slowly but surely got on their way.  My son continued to back down and we loaded up.  The pontoon driver shook his head at me in disbelief of the entire situation.  He commented on how quiet our boat motor was.  My son replied he would not have left it running had he known how long it would take.  The highlight of our fishing trip was the large white bass, but the story of the boat ramp was a close second!

Tammy Harvey

4/18/2026