by DrCreek » January 4th, 2018, 10:29 am
Not really sure where else to put this thread. I have no interest in "slinging mud" so its not going in that section. Just going to tell all of you a story - an incident that occurred yesterday at Spanish Landing.
Richard, Chris and myself were fishing Spanish yesterday. It wasn't fishing as well as we had hoped, and I'm sure to some degree we were each a little bummed about that (Richard 18, Chris 4 and me 17). The session was coming to a close at around the 3 hr mark. Richard was still out dredging around the boat docks. Chris and I had crossed the channel to the beach side, maybe no more than a couple hundred feet or so east of the sand, paralleling the rocks westbound toward put-out.
So were talking - just BS'ing about articulated flies and huge Halibut, and how were gonna try and catch them during their spawn this year. While we were kicking around I kept noticing this dude walking around the rocks with no apparent direction - dressed in shorts, skateboard type tennis shoes and a dark hoodie, and he seemed to be kind of "parallelling" us as we moved along. Everything he did seemed aimless and pointless. Just weird, but that's not uncommon here in SD.
A short time later and Chris exits the water ahead of me by maybe just a few minutes. This random dude is now on the sand walking around, and getting fairly close to Chris. Chris is out and walking back toward our trucks. A few minutes later, Im beached. I get my fins off, stand up and turn around to shake the excess water off my boat. The dude is standing no more than 3 feet away from me, looking/staring right at me. I kinda just stood there. He then picks up some sand and walks away toward the parking lot, then drops the sand as he's walking. I really thought he was going to throw it at me, but he didn't.
I'm walking behind him now toward toward and into parking lot, and he's headed for Chris' truck. He stops in the middle of the cul-de-sac area seemingly for no reason, and I stop too, still twenty or so feet behind him. I just wait for him to move. He turns and looks at me. I just keep looking at him. Finally he starts walking again, and continues to walk right toward Chris, then veers away. I get to my truck which is parked by Chris' truck. We both were remarking how strange the whole thing had been so far. The dude stands there, kind of close to Chris, just looking at I'm not sure what. Chris says "Hi how you doing?" The dude stares blank at us, says nothing and walks away. But he hangs nearby and continues to walk aimlessly doing strange things - like kicking his shoe at the blue handicap logo painted on the asphalt.
Richard finally shows up on the beach and I go down to meet him there. We walk back together to his car which was more or less across from our trucks. The dude is now following us around the parking lot. I go back to my truck, finish putting my gear away, then tell Chris I gotta pee. I open my truck door and out of the center console I grab a little canister of pepper spray that I carry when I notice anything out of the ordinary. So I put it in my pocket, pee and come back. Then we see the dude walking Richards direction. Both Chris and I hustle doubletime over to Richard to kind of offer a sense of security in case he gets weird. And the dude walks away again. Poor Richard thought he was going to try and steal some of his/our gear.
So the three of us are standing and talking together, and this guy kind of circles us I think, comes back around on my left and somehow slides between Chris and myself. And the next thing I see is his arm and fist flying at Chris. Chris gets clocked in the jaw by this dude.
I'm in disbelief. I grabbed the guy from behind, wrapped my arm around his neck and got him on the ground so he couldn't move. Richard called the police and that's pretty much the end of it. Harbor PD shows up code 3, jumps out and handcuffs him for us.
Chris' jaw is totally jacked up and he's hurting. Chris doesn't complain about anything, but this one has the best of him and I know he hurts because he's pale. Fire and medics roll in to help, and Chris tells them he knows it's broken but he's going to self-transport to Kaiser. Okay, no problem (in my mind) since there was no LOC and he was AOx4. We each gave our statements to the police and that was it.
So that's our morning. It was the weirdest thing. Just another testimony as to why if you ever "feel" something's not right, it probably isn't. I've been doing my job long enough to know what feels right and what doesn't. My grabbing pepper spray isn't because I'm paranoid, it's because I want to be prepared for unfavorable potential events. I avoid people all the time when I think something's amiss - and sometimes I go so far as to write about it on here. Some of you may interpret that as me being antisocial. It's not that at all. I avoid people at times simply because we live in a completely different time/society now, and I'm not about to get caught on the short end of something that could have been avoided with common sense, foresight and preparation. It's too out of control anymore.
Horrible that Chris got nailed. We should have treated this much differently and should have been more leary of this guy simply because of his behavior, not to mention the blank stares he drove at us. But there's only so much you can do - until the bad guys makes the first move anyway.
This is sickening. So... jaw surgery for Chris this evening, and just some residual shoulder/clavicle soreness for me due to landing this dude on the asphalt at full tilt. What a nightmare.
So don't become complacent. I love the fact that fly fishermen are some of the nicest, shirt-off-their-backs guys on the planet.. but keep your common sense flowing, your eyes OPEN and scan. Unfortunately, not everyone in town is a good guy - even though some would like to believe they are. If you feel something strange about someone, keep your distance and know your "outs." I'd rather simply avoid someone that appeared "questionable" than risk an incident like today's.
"You can't keep a good Dr down." Days On The Salt in 2017 - 114
Days On The Salt in 2018 - 39![Image](http://i.imgur.com/F3XmY3C.jpg)