To do that, we had to get over a few minor technicalities, i.e. our wives for one. If we could somehow get pass them, we would be famous and rich! All we had to do now was to wait for Saturday. Saturday was Guys and mine big day. Saturday was the day we started "Project Fish Find". Saturday was going to be our start to fame and fortune, and we weren't about to let anything stop us. After immense torture waiting for the weekend, it finally came! I slept at Guys house the night before, just like I always do when we have to get up for our adventures. Our wives thought that we were going to go fishing, because we never told them of our real plans so they never had an idea of what we were up to. We got up and out of the house before they ever got up themselves. Along with the normal fishing gear we always had readily accessible, was all the list of parts we needed. First stop was Bob's Computers and Electronics. Oh, I mean the first stop after Mickey D's for breakfast. When we arrived there we were forced to wait until Bob opened up. Guy started to get a little irate having to wait and I'll admit that I was becoming a little upset myself. I swear that 5 minutes last an eternity. How can you expect to keep your customers if you're always just on time and never early? Some people have no clue at what responsibility really is. When Bob showed up, I turned to make a comment to Guy, but he was gone. I yelled to him to shut the damn door, but good ole Guy was now trapped with tunnel vision and the door to Bob's was the only thing he could see. He looked almost possessed with some evil demon that died an agonizing death. He probably died from a heart attack waiting for Bob. At least that's what I thought was going to happen to Guy. Watching really made me think, what the hell am I still doing in the car! Before I knew it I was now opening the door for Guy. We acted like little kids at Toys R' Us and could care less if both doors to the car were wide open or not. Guy headed straight to the LCD's and I headed towards Bob. Bob was in his late 70's and was a little antsy with us at first. I think he thought we were going to rip him off or something. I calmed him down almost immediately when I mentioned to him that Guy was on medication, but was really quite harmless. Guy overheard and gave me a really stupid imitation of someone that was supposedly mentally challenged, at least that what he looked like anyway. Bob saw Guy's facial expression and began getting nervous again. And once more I calmed the old man down. I simply told him that Guy was from California and he was here visiting. The old man settled down and a sigh of relief came from him. Old Bob looked at me and asked me why I didn't say so before. I just shrugged and nodded in confusion. Guy was grabbing one of everything he saw and cruising through out the store. I quickly stopped him and brought him to the side to set him straight. I told him that we would need at least 2 of everything and if he wanted to, I would just follow him through the store and share the load. He agreed. A few hours went buy and Old Bob's check out counter was stacked a mile high. "That gonna be all for ya fella's?" Bob said half laughing. We looked at each other then the pile, "Ya, do you have any Yoo Hoo's in the cooler?" We loaded up the truck with all our goodies and threw the Yoo Hoo's in the front. "Ya think this will work?" Guy asked. "Well, if it doesn't we're sleeping on the couch again.” We just spent $250.00 on parts and that Hummingbird downtown only cost $300.00!!" I replied frantically after seeing the receipt Guy hid from me. "Don't worry I know we can do it!" He said with confidence. I was really worried! We both agreed not to tell the wives until we made our fortune.

The ride back from Bob's was a quiet one. We were both nervous about our project not working and we were especially worried about the wives finding out too soon. We pulled into the driveway and knew we were in the clear because the girls went shopping. Guy and I grabbed the bags of parts and went into the garage to start our money making project. Guy started right in. He began to build the shaft and the handlebars to mount our finder on. I began building the box that would hold all the components in. About 2 hours later it was together. All we needed to do now is construct our circuit board and install the detector. Luckily for the both of us, I had a little electronics knowledge because Guy wanted to run the circuits power off an old car battery he had kicking around. I yelled at him and asked, "Are you stupid or something, do you know how much extra weight that will cause?" After Guy's attempt to use the car battery I sent him to work on the display. We designed the display with LED's. 40 LED's on a board and depending on where the fish were, a LED would light up in it's location. About the time Guy finished soldering, I had completed the circuitry. We stopped to take a break and check out the work. It looked pretty good. I told Guy that if this works we'll have to go into business. He agreed and we went back to work. Several hours had passed and it was finally together. It took us about 12 hours to build, and we were pretty proud of ourselves. We knew it would work. We cleaned up the extra parts we bought and put our Fish Finder in the back of the Scout. Guy ran to the front door of his house and I followed. He stopped me right at the door and said, "Tell the girls we had no luck this morning and drove around a bit." He opened the door and the girls were eating supper. "We're in the hell where you guys all day?!! Suppers been ready for an hour!!" I immediately said the speech "Hell, we went to Johnson's Creek and saw about 4 cars there so we went looking for another spot. We found one and we're taking the boat tomorrow." "The hell you are!!!" My wife didn't like this idea much. I pleaded my case and after promising to be back by noon, she saw it my way. Neither one of the ladies liked it, but we got our way. I got off easy; Guy has to take his wife out for supper tomorrow night. Guy and I ate and the girls wanted to play Pictionary after. All through the game, Guy and I gave each other that "WE ARE GONNA CATCH SOME FISH TOMORROW!!!!" look. About half way through the game Nancy, Guy's wife, said "What were you guys doing at Bob's this morning?" Guy looked at me for help. "Oh, we needed a fuse for the Scout. The dash lights went out and we needed to fix it." I felt pretty good about that one. Pretty quick of me, huh? "It takes 2 hours to get a fuse? We drove by this morning and saw the truck, and again a couple of hours later." My wife is too damn nosy sometimes! "Old Bob started talking to us about his old Scout he had. He really got into the conversation and wouldn't let us leave." Guy was pretty quick sometimes, too. Nancy said with a little relief in her voice, "We thought you guys were up to some crazy hair-balled invention again." We looked at each other and didn't say a thing. Guy and I were up at 04:30am and ready to go. We packed the truck and headed to Tim's Pond for the trial run of our Fish Finder. Guy backed the truck up to the water and I hopped out to guide him in. It took a whole 5 minutes to get the boat in the water and park the truck. We were off to the center off the pond to test the Fish Finder. Guy stopped the boat about dead center of the pond and dropped the anchor. I grabbed the finder and Guy grabbed the car battery. "Hey, I thought I said NO to the car battery?!!" Guy defended himself quite well. "I thought with more power we could see more fish." I agreed and we set everything up. All we needed to do is turn it on. We looked at each other and nodded to one another with confidence. Guy reached over to turn on the power and I crossed my fingers. A couple of seconds went by and nothing happened. I started to get disappointed when all of a sudden, the LED's started blinking and flashing. The display went blank and almost a milli-second later a couple of the LED's came on. Guy and I started yelling with excitement. "It works! It works!" We were really proud. Guy went to grab his rod when I yelled to him. The fish finder started smoking really bad and a small flame came out of it. We both went to neutral sides of the boat to get away and then it started to spark and make popping sounds! You could hear a low pitch hum echoing out of the water were the detector was and then Guy quickly thinking, grabbed an oar and shoved the Fish Finder over board. As it descended to the abyss, we watched with tears, as the display blinked intermittently and bubbles came up. The Fish Finder went down about 4 feet when Guy got up from his seat and threw the battery over with it. The Finder slowly disappeared and we sat in the boat in silence. It was as if we had just lost a loved one, or our line broke as we were hauling in a record size lake trout.

Guy finally looked up from his weeping and said he didn't feel so well and wanted to go home. I too, felt that way. I reached over and grabbed the rope to the anchor. As I was pulling it up, I saw a fish floating on the water. I reeled in the anchor and looked around the boat. "GUY!!!" I yelled, "LOOK!" Guy looked around and saw the same thing I did. There was about 70 fish floating on the water. Guy looked at me and said, "Well, at least we caught some fish." Just as Guy finished his sentence, a Game Warden truck drove by on shore. Guy and I almost defecated right there. Guy cranked over the boats engine and nothing happened. He frantically kept pulling the starter cord. I pushed him aside and pulled it once, after turning the throttle into the "ON" position. We headed straight for the Scout. Guy had that little boat pushing its limits. I tried to yell to him, but it was to late. He drove the boat right on to the shore about 15 feet. We jumped out grabbed the boat and threw it on the trailer. 2 seconds later we were gone! Guy had the Scout doing about 45 Mph's when we hit the main road. He never stopped to look for traffic, and it's a good thing that those trailer trucks have good brakes! He almost hit us. 10 miles down the road, I looked back and saw nothing. Which was a good thing. "Hey, you can slow down now." I told Guy. He slowed down and we were in the clear. We finally arrived at Guy's house. That had to be one of the longest rides home I have ever had. Guy parked the Scout and we went inside. The girls were surprised to see us so early, it was only 1pm. They asked how the fishing went and we just said it was the usual fishing trip. They didn't seem surprised for some reason. Guy grabbed a couple of beers and gave me one. We sat on the couch and just vegged there in silence. Supper came and we ate, still in silence until all hell broke loose. My wife asked me for the checkbook and Nancy asked Guy for theirs. Not thinking we gave it to them and that's when objects started flying. We dove over the bar in the kitchen and low crawled to the far side of the couch in the living room. Protected from the missiles being launched, we looked at each other and just shook our heads with humiliation. Just as the density of the objects started to thin out, the news came on the television. You could hear the announcer better once the firing stopped. Apparently, a game warden found a bunch of dead fish at Tim's Pond and now there's a full investigation of what happened. They said they interviewed a truck driver that saw a couple of guys near the pond. He said it was an orange Scout, and they nearly killed him coming out of the access road. Guy and I laughed and a bit of relief fell through us. About that same time, the girls ran into the living room and started to peg us with everything they could find. I'm glad Guy was in between the lynching mob, and me 'cause it could have been me that got the concussion from the microwave.