With the recent weather patterns that we’ve been having you need to really be prepared for about anything you can imagine when you’re going fishing on some of the larger bodies of water in our state. Conditions afloat can become somewhat extreme in a hurry and navigating by dead reckoning doesn’t work too well when you can only guess as to where you are to start with.

A few days ago a couple of us were trying our luck on winter speckled trout or redfish on the lower Pamlico River. Fishing reports from the last few days were outstanding and the weather reports sounded good. The only ominous sounding thing in the forecast was that the weatherman just mentioned that there might be some fog. That was an understatement.

When we left the dock in mid-morning and headed for some shallow creeks that had produced good fishing for trout in the past, the weather looked to be pretty normal for that time of the year. It was cool enough to wear a light windbreaker but there wasn’t any sign of ice on anything.

As we pulled away from the dock we did notice a gray, low-hanging cloud to the east of us. I remarked that that looked like a bank of fog but that it should disappear as the sun warmed things up. The subject of fog wasn’t mentioned again until later that afternoon.

Hoping that the sun would warm up the water on some shallow shores as the morning wore on we cast a variety of lures without success. Jackets were soon shed in favor of light shirts and the air temperature rose toward the low 70s. The sky was clear and the winds were light and variable. If the fish would just cooperated it promised to be a great afternoon.

No matter where we fished that morning into mid-afternoon, we didn’t catch much. Of the numerous boats we saw fishing for “specks” only angler seemed to be having any luck and he’d only caught three smallish specks. It was discouraging fishing after all the glowing reports that we’d been getting.

As we pulled out from the last creek we’d been fishing at about 4;00 everything still looked clear. The wind was negligible and the sun was shining. Our last stop for the afternoon was to be on the other side of the creek about one mile to our north.

The other shoreline should have been easily visible but there seemed to be a gray “curtain” hanging low between us and the opposite side of the creek. It looked like fog but you didn’t really think that much about it during what we were experiencing weather-wise that afternoon. As we kept on a northerly course conditions began to change---rapidly.

What we thought was maybe some light fog hanging on the water’s surface turned into some of the thickest “pea-soup” fog that I’ve ever experienced. The weather changed from clear to a very, very thick fog and this happened very suddenly. Entering the bank of fog could best be described al being like running into a “wall of fog.” Moreover, the temperature dropped like a rock from the high-sixties to the lower-forties. Just a few yards into the fog the winds picked-up and shifted to the easterly.

Luckily I’d glanced down at the sole navigational instrument we had on board (a compass) just as the visibility dropped down to maybe 30 yards so I had some idea as to what direction we were heading when we entered the fog. I also knew that by accidentally changing course by just a few degrees, we could have easily missed the point we wanted to fish and been in heavy fog in water that was open for miles in about every direction. I was depending on the course we were following before we entered the fog to be correct and hoping that we’d quickly see something familiar that would give us our known position. Since the sun’s position wasn’t seen through this fog. We had no idea where west was either.

Usually I’d have had my global positioning unit on board but due to the fact that I was very familiar with the waters where we fished, I didn’t feel that a GPS was necessary that day. I guess that I had been too lazy to hook up the larger GPS or grab my portable unit. If we’d have had either unit on board we could have easily established our position and known the way back to the dock.

With hands that were suddenly becoming numb from the colder temperatures, disappearing daylight and winds that seemed to becoming moderate and variable I figured that we had some reason to be concerned. When some marshy land showed up barely a few yards in front of the boat, it was a welcome sight.

A few casts in the spot where we’d been headed didn’t produce any results and we decided to “call it a day” as far as the fishing was concerned. We knew our position on the water now and it was a simple matter to follow the shoreline back to our home dock.

I’d have second thoughts about going out on these relatively large estuarine waters again (no matter how good the weather appears to be) without some better navigation gear than the old compass. We’ve depended on something that simple for years and made do with it but there are better navigational instruments around for the boater these days.

Global positioning units are becoming cheaper every week and, after the New Year, prices should drop even more. Even some cell phones or I-pods have navigational capabilities and its only just common sense to (as the Boy Scout Motto says) Be Prepared.