BAINBRIDGE, Ga. — Shortly after takeoff Thursday, Ray Hanselman Jr. and his 20-foot Skeeter boat were on the bank at Lake Seminole. Brandon Lester was the second man on the scene.
“I came around a corner, and I see a boat up in the woods,” Lester said. “It was pretty freaky to see a 20-foot boat sitting up in the woods.”
The freakiest thing of all was to see how quickly and easily Hanselman and several of his Elite Series friends had that boat back in the water where Hanselman could compete on Day 1 of the Gamakatsu Bassmaster Elite at Lake Seminole.
“That meant a lot,” Hanselman said. “I can’t thank them enough. It shows you what kind of people we have. Almost everybody who came by stopped to help.”
Jacob Foutz was one of the key people, since he had a 40-foot tow rope in his boat. “I have it just in case,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve had to use it.”
With the tow rope hooked to Hanselman’s bow and eight or 10 anglers pushing – no one is certain who all was there – they swung the bow toward the water and slid the boat back in the lake.
“I only missed about 15 minutes of fishing time,” said Hanselman, who added with a laugh, “but I was reeling my bait a little too fast for a while after that.”
Adrenaline will do that to you.
In addition to Foutz and Lester, others who came to Hanselman’s aid included Buddy Gross, Stetson Blaylock, Jacob Powroznik and John Cox.
As to how Hanselman’s boat got there in the first place, that’s another story. He was boat No. 28 at the 7:30 a.m. takeoff out of Earle May Boat Basin Park. Hanselman doesn’t know who was driving the boat in front of him, but he made a sharp right turn without realizing Hanselman was to his right, slightly behind him.
“He didn’t look back,” Hanselman said. “I didn’t have time to do much other than keep from hitting him and hang on for the ride.”
While there were some small bushes and saplings where Hanselman’s boat hit the shore, the ground was mostly sand. “It was like putting it on the trailer,” he said. “It just slid right up there.”
There was no damage to the hull or the (outboard engine) skeg, Hanselman noted. The only blemish was a bent light pole where a branch caught it.
Hanselman ended his day in the three-way tie for 38th place with a five-bass limit weighing 14 pounds, 12 ounces. It was just another day at the office, after a spine-tingling start.
