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I thought I was going crazy...

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ToiletDuck

Ninja
Joined
Apr 23, 2005
Posts
598
So it was Friday around 1:30pm and I'm on the gulf coast wade fishing for some speckled trout. It was me, my father, and a bud. They dropped me off to work one area of shoreline while they went somewhere else. After wading in knee deep beautiful clear water I hear a slowly growing roar. I have no idea what it is at first. I thought maybe a tanker or oilrig making it's way up the innercoastal canal but it kept growing. Then it would fade... nothing in site.

So I see a pocket marshy like area that's so shallow I can see the dorsal fins of the redfish running around in it. I wade up in there and start working a topwater broken-back minnow when all the sudden the fish strikes. He hits hard and I'm fighting him. Very beautiful in the shallow water it was a great display of what being outdoors is all about. I finally reel him in and bend over to grab him when all the sudden over the crisp sound of wind rolling over grass the dominating roar starts to come back. It keeps getting louder till I realize there are several roars. Right then I quickly turn in time to see a B-17 Flying Fortress flying about 800ft off the water coming strait at me!!! Never in my life did I ever have the privilage of seeing one up close let alone flying right at me!

I was the only fisherman for a couple miles in any direction so I was hoping he'd notice me. I gave him a quick wave and sure enough he dipped his wing at me as he gracefully flew by. It was a beautiful sight to see that bird fly off into the sun. I take a minute to think about what's just happened and then I realize that I dropped my redfish! I decided it was time to get him back so I started fishing again. About 2 min later I barely hear the roaring again to turn around and have the sneaky B-17 dropping in altitude and purring by to buzz me. The sound of the engines and the sight of the aircraft just left me in awe. All togehter he made 3 passes. The third wasn't very close to me.

So then today I'm at our local airports EAA fly-in talking with some guys and I'm telling them about what I saw and they are basicallying thinking I'm full of it when all the sudden one of the pilots said "Yea, I saw they had the plane scheduled out for that flight, they were doing some VIP flight". Everyone just gawked and wished they had seen it. The gentleman who verified it said it was from a museum in galveston where they fly warplanes. He personally could fly all of their fighters. I thought it was a cool getting to meet this guy.

Anyway the blunt of it is I was out wadefishing on a beautiful day and had a B-17, which I had never seen before in person, give me two flyby's!

Looks like their server is down but you can probably see the plane at the museum's website. http://www.lsfm.org/
 
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Awsome!

In todays era of Americans afraid of their own shadow, they are lucky they got the right fisherman...had it been somebody else, CNN would have been doing another "pilots arrested for terrorizing the public" story.

I wish I was fishing with you today, that would have been an awesome sight!
 
You lucky dog!! I would have probably dropped my pole! :D
 
Thats a cool story. I had the pleasure of seeing a B17 up in Green Bay do a low approach to 18 when we were #1 to t/o a few years back. It was a pleasant surprise so I sort of know how you feel. Wish I was fishing like you instead of working though.
 
Any of you guys fish Michigan? The Kings are in full force. Fall Steelhead are coming up. Can't wait.
 
My home base gets a 17 and a B-25 in here every year for a fly in and airshow.

God....they're beautiful.
 
One of the coolest things I've ever seen was on a lay-over in YIP. (mich.) They had a fly in and there were 5 B-17's parked in a row on the ramp. What an amazing sight. Evidently, there were several more war birds coming in that day. I would have loved to stick around but the company wanted us home. Turns out that fly in had the largest collection of WWII aircraft since WWII.
 
This is how big of a looser I am. Today I was waiting in the runup pad for a plane to land. I was in a 182 loaded with skydivers and they were all commenting on how long the landing was going to be for this plane on final.

It goes by and I see that it looks like a Varga with a US Navy paint job, so I key the mike and ask if it was Varga and he replied that it was.

Later on in the day while I was waiting to taxi away from the fuel pump, he was taxiing out and I waved to him and he waved back. I didn't have the balls to tell him that when I taxied in and saw him talking to his friend on the ramp that he had his master on and strobes flashing...what was the point? It was a beautifull day out and we were all out enjoying it. Pilots, sky divers and airplanes. What a great way to spend a Sunday in the middle of October.

Relevance? Varga was in military colors! :D
 

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