Shawn and I were heaving some nice "blues" aboard the boat when total darkness and a dead battery brought a halt to our fun. I don't know what Shawn thought, but I was suddenly thinking it might be a long, cold night on upper Keystone.

We'd started the evening by fishing for sand bass along a windy, rocky bank. The sand bass had been fewer each time I'd checked the area this month, but there were still quite a few nice fish feeding in the 52 degree water. And as usual, Shawn was grinning and catching all of 'em.

When I finally caught a fish - and it certainly looked like one of my biggest sandies ever - Shawn yawned and said he wanted to go catfishing.

My boat was CLEAN. Squeaky clean. But we netted some shad, threw out the drift-net and set up some lines to drag across the 8 to 10 foot deep flats.

An hour later, I had shad-guts and catfish slime all over the boat, all over me and oozing off a still-grinning Shawn.

I had to admit, it WAS a blast!

A bunch of nice cats had been hauled aboard to slime the boat this night, many over 10 pounds, a couple of which were dropped to thrash all over the carpet floor while we busily reeled in another.

All but three were eventually released. Shawn was catfish-hungry since all he ever gets to eat are those red-meat hybrids he chases at Skiatook Lake.

The fish were still hitting when we ran out of wife-allotted time. That's when I discovered that the boat wouldn't start. And then my lights went out.

Fortunately Shawn had a cell-phone which, even slimed, threw out enough light so that we could see to switch batteries. And despite my growing fears, the trolling battery still had just enough juice to kick the motor over. Man, it sounded good!

Fun night, I'll admit again. But my wife demanded that I take another bath - second of the day - and still complained of the fish odor wafting from my side of the bed that night.

Not much I could do about me, but the very next morning Mr. Bubbles was the recipient of a few dollars spent on another fine boat wash at the Bubbletown Carwash in Sand Springs.

Sorry about the smell, Mr. Bubbles - next time it'll be crappie!