Folks I spent the holidays with my family which inluded 2 of my 3 brothers plus one of my best friends and my brothernlaw. After a couple of drinks the topic turned to our storied fishing past. We started talking about all of hilarious moments we have had while fishing together over the years. Now there are hundreds of stories we could pick from but the one that takes the prize happened on opening day in 1985. We historically fished upstream of the general store in long valley just below the mill on the South Branch. The water comes over the mill in what could be called a mini waterfall. On one side is the mill and the other side is a mix of downed trees. After that the water fans out in a good sized pool. There would typically be anywhere from 5 to 10 people fishing from the mill to the tail end of the pool. Where the water comes over is fairly rough when the river is high. Now normally after a couple of hours of fishing people start to move around to try some other spots. On this day my brother decided to wade up the side of the river that the mill is on and fish above the small waterfall. Typically you would do this on the other side and that year the water was up a bit and the water was fairly cold. My brother in his infinite wisdom decided to climb up the wall of the mill and then move laterally upstream to get above the mini waterfall. I wont even comment on this stupidity of his thought process. He had to be a good 6 feet above the river when he reached up to grab the next handheld when the stone he grabbed came loose. Right at that time I was looking upstream trying to figure out where he went when my eyes drifted up and caught my brother in mid air with a pole in one hand and a big piece of millstone in his other hand suspended for the briefest of moments (although it seemed as if I could have snapped a photo at the time). I will never forget the perplexed look on his face as he plummeted ass first into the cold south branch of the raritan river. After he floated downs stream about 10 feet we fished him out of the river relatively undamaged save for his pole and his ego. He turned purple and spent the next 2 hours buck naked in the car warming up before I remembered I had bought a change of clothes (yes we were evil in that way). It has to be one of the funniest moments i can recall in all fishing experiences.

So there has to be some good ones on this board. Let me know if you can top it and yes I have the stone my brother had in his hand. The idiot never dropped but did manage to lose his fishing rod. Classic!!!!