Rise and Shine with The Morning Scout
Guide Stories
By Willy Lyon
The Stories from a Guide section offers some insight into the day to day life of a fishing guide. Some of the stories shared here may be funny stories about clients who will remain unknown, or some life lessons through a day of fishing with clients, friends, and family.
Elderly man needs to go now!
Everyone can appreciate a good shit story, especially when it relates to the outdoors. For the sake of this man I’ll keep his name out of it. It was August and I was guiding a grandpa, his daughter and son in law, and their son. I had grandpa and grandson in my boat, and the other two were in a different boat. The first morning the daughter (in her early 50s) brought down a 5 gallon bucket to my boat with a toilet seat on it and some garbage bags. I asked what they were for and she said when her dad has to go, he has to go. I shrugged and took the bucket and stashed it away.
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The first day everything went smooth until shore lunch. The grandpa had to go as soon as he was done with his last bite. He couldn’t make it to the outhouse at the shorelunch spot so we grabbed the bucket and he took a seat behind a tree. He tied up his bag and off we went to fish the rest of the day. The second day is where it got a little dicey. I was realizing grandpas health wasn’t the greatest and I didn’t want to take him too far down the lake where we did well the day before. So I made a decision to stay close to the lodge (within 10-15 minutes) in case something happened. Fishing was slow and the man asked if we could go down the lake where we were yesterday and caught all those fish. I said that’s a long way to go and it’s going to get windy but he insisted we go down there. So we took the ride, about 30 more minutes from where we were. We got on a spot and the fish were biting as quick as you could get your bait down to the bottom. It was awesome and grandpa and grandson were having a blast. Until grandpa looked at me and said “damnit, where’s that bucket”. I told him shore was close and we could make it to an outhouse in a few minutes and he explained that he didn’t have a few minutes. So I grabbed the bucket, put a bag in it and set it in the middle of my boat. Before I set it down he was standing up, pants at his ankles, shirt unbuttoned, ready to go.
I went to the bow of the boat and his grandson went to the back of the boat while he did his business. And that’s just what he did. The only problem was that after I stood in the bow and held in my laughs and plugged my nose from being directly down wind, I noticed he had stood up and what I saw was not pretty. The whole back of his nice button down shirt was covered in shit. And the whole toilet seat was equally covered in shit. None of it made it into the bucket. He tucked in his shirt and before I could mention the shit on it he had his pants up over it and his belt tightened down. I had to put the bucket in another garbage bag so I didn’t have to touch the mess and double bag it to not have to smell it the rest of the day. Shortly after he sat back down he caught his biggest walleye ever, it was 29 inches. We snapped a picture and he quickly became short of breath and couldn’t make words. I asked if he was okay and he looked nervously at me and shook his head. I made the decision We needed to get back. We packed up and I took off into the wind and waves. I kept checking on him and he wouldn’t make words but his eyes were watering and he was starting to not look that great. When he did make words he looked at me and said “why’d we go all this way down the damn lake”. I put the throttle down and got him back to the lodge. Me and his grandson carried him to a bench where he was helped to his room. I saw him the next morning and he was feeling a little better. A couple weeks later I had found out that he had salmonella poisoning the whole time.
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There’s a little backside to this story that I’ll briefly explain. The other guide on this trip has fished with this man in the past and the story goes like this. Many years ago, maybe 10-20, this guy used to come up with friends and work customers. The other guide would cater to them and cook shore lunch for them on their trips. Well one trip after a shore lunch, one guy had a heart attack and died in the boat. A few short years later another guy from the same trip went up to his room before dinner after a day of fishing and shore lunch and never returned to the dining room for dinner. He had also died of a heart attack in his room. So needless to say I was pretty scared to cook shore lunch in the first place for this group, let alone the taking a dump in the boat and the boat ride back to the lodge shenanigans..