Wintertime fish story #2

When I was around 15 or so we used to fish and camp a lot on the Ohio river. This was back in the day when you could take a boat right up to the big dams like Meldahl, even to the point of tying off in a gate they weren't letting water out of. Some of catfish fishing was incredible. We would pitch a big tent on the rock bar and camp, fishing the dam by day and out in front of camp by night. I remember dad had a mepps spinner that he fixed up with a skirt of frayed nylon rope. He would spend hours chasing gar with this thing. The trick was they would get all those teeth tangled in the rope and you could land them. I remember it worked better in theory than in practice though it did work sometimes. I do think that this kind of fishing where you are trying to catch whatever is biting,be it white bass, catfish, gar or bass or carp, is just about the best way you can ever learn how to fish. I know I wouldn't trade all those times on the river growing up for anything. Well one time my dad and were heading out to the river and it was hot. Really hot. Well instead of setting up on the rock bar below the dam and broiling like a lobster in the sun we decided we would be smart and we set up camp in this huge concrete culvert or tunnel that funneled a dry creek bed under the railroad. Man it was awesome a concrete patio out front to fish off of and back inside the tunnel it felt like air conditioning, it had to have been 10 or 15 degrees cooler than outside. We even found an old barrel that we set up as a table. Life was good. Then like the second or third night you could hear lightning off in the distance. Lots and lots of lighting. To this day I sill don't think I've ever seen a more severe thunderstorm than the one that hit about dark. There were hundreds and hundreds of lighting strikes and no way we were getting out of that tunnel. Along one side a tiny trickle of water began to run. Just an inch or two wide at first. We were perched up on cots snug as a bug in a rug and enjoying the show. The problem was it wasn't letting up. Pretty soon the trickle was a couple feet wide and an inch deep and we were really paying attention. In a bit things like pieces of styrofoam cups and other trash was washing down the culvert and it was a couple inches deep on the one side and stretched most of the way across the tunnel including under our cots. It looked pretty eerie in the light of the old gas lantern. And the storm was just as severe as ever. I remember dad saying now don't zip up your sleeping bag and we had a life jacket lying on each cot. I think we could both picture a couple feet of water flooding down the culvert and washing us both out into the river. I remember seeing at least one crayfish crawling along and sometime during the night we saw a small snake slithering along between our cots. Long story short it never did get over a couple inches deep at it's deepest but that's plenty deep enough when it' running under your cot. After a long sleepless night we packed up first thing and moved back to the rock bar!