My luck with one pair of sunglasses is really good or really bad. The Monday after the snowstorm I was sitting on my dock fishing. When I caught a small bluegill it fell off and landed on the dock and I reached down to pick it up. My sunglasses fell off my face, hit the dock and bounced into the water. This was the same pair of prescription bifocal sunglasses I lost a few weeks ago and found in the edge of the pond.

The water was cold and about six feet deep so I didn’t try to get them back. On Tuesday I started a siphon to pull the water down. I use a four inch pipe and it drops the water about an inch an hour at first, dropping faster as the size of the pond decreases.

By Friday morning the water had dropped about seven feet and I could see the ears of the glasses sticking straight up. When I picked them up there was about an inch of mud on the lens but there was no damage. I washed them off and they are fine.

The pond will take several weeks to fill back up since the stream coming in is much smaller than the amount of water the four inch pipe could pull out. I don’t think it will bother the fish since the water is still cool and can hold more oxygen.

I wonder what will happen next with those sunglasses!

I learned another expensive lesson after the Bartlett’s Ferry tournament three weeks ago. In that tournament I hung my bait on a shallow brush pile and while trying to get it loose I reeled down and pulled – and pulled the tip off the rod. No problem, Berry’s will replace rod tips.

I decided I wanted to keep using that reel and the line on it so I took it off, slipped the tipless rod under the strap that holds them down and put the reel on another rod. I caught several bass on that outfit.

When I got home that afternoon I went to the boat to get the rod so I could take it to town the next day. It was gone. I guess it worked out from under the strap since there was no reel to hold it down and then blew out of the boat on the way home.

It was one of my favorite rods, a St. Croix that lists for $170. That is an expensive lesson to learn. Make sure your rods are secure before transporting them!