Brock Mosley’s reason to run up the Flint River wasn’t about the fish.
If you have ever been around B.A.S.S. pros, you quickly learn that they are wired to think about catching fish at all times. One evening last month during the St. Johns tournament, I hung out with Russ Lane and Matt Herren at the motel, talking fishing. A Skeeter boats rep was also there, and when the discussion came around to Matt and a minor thing he had forgotten to do that morning, she asked, “Don’t you have a check list? What are you thinking when you forget something like that?”
The reply that Matt, Russ, and I gave couldn’t have been better timed if we had a choir director give us a signal. “Catching fish,” we all said in unison.
I guarantee the idea that we would make a 45-mile run to do something other than catch green fish never crossed Mosley’s mind, even as his foot went to sleep holding the Hot Foot to the stop to push his Phoenix as fast as his Mercury could manage. I had taken a video coming up the river and joked that we were going looking for Troy from the Swamp People show. The area was practically deserted.
I was trying to remember Troy’s name when we spotted Mr. Godsey holding onto a log and his small boat.
I don’t think either of us thought he was in trouble at first. I thought he might have been trapping or something, and was purposely wading. Mosley slowed so as not to wash him with his wake, and the fellow waived us over.
As it turned out, Mr. Godsey had fallen out of the small tippy boat attempting to get from the bow to the stern. He had struggled to get his gear and boat to the bank, and the exertion had winded him to the point he was unable to climb the bank. The narrow tippy boat was impossible for him to climb back in.
Mosley pulled his boat alongside the opposite side of the small craft. Mr. Godsey told us he weighed 253 pounds and would be the biggest thing we caught all day. Mosley and I steadied our side of the boat as we tried to pull Mr. Godsey in over the other side of the boat.
Our first attempt was a failure, but we repositioned a little bit and on the second try — with Mosley holding one arm and me grabbing Mr. Godsey’s belt — we managed to haul him into his boat.
On occasion there is friction between local anglers and pros on the water. Not so with Mosley and Mr. Godsey. Godsey thanked Mosley and I, and said he had almost given up being rescued and had thought he would drown before he heard us come up the river.
Later as we came back down river we ran across Mr. Godsey’s son, who was dragging the river in an attempt to recover his father’s gear. We asked how Mr. Godsey was doing, and he told us his father was fine.
In over three hours of hard fishing, Brock Mosley had only put one keeper in the boat. Late in his efforts to catch fish in that river, Mosley said, “I made the right call and someone is alive today because of it.”