Several years ago I had a friend come into town from the upstate to do some King fishing. It was early in the season but weather was looking great, absolutely not a puff of breeze blowing. My buddy made the 4-hour drive on Friday night after work and he was ready to go, as a matter of fact he admitted at breakfast the following morning he was so excited he had not slept a wink.
We arrived at the James Island Yacht Club at 6-am and realized immediately we had a problem. A thick fog had rolled in over night and we could not even see the end of the pier. This was before the time of the fancy GPS chart plotters so I was pretty leery about making it out to the end of rocks in the fog. Besides finding bait in the fog would be next to impossible. Fortunately I had a few light spinning outfits on the boat. I told him we could fish around the dock for some trout and the fog should dissipate once the sun got up a little. 2-hours later, no trout and still fogged in. Fog was so thick you could not see the sun at all.
I told my buddy we would give it another ½ hour at the pier then we could just ease over to Castle Pinckney and try our luck there. Just then he pulls a banana out of his lunch sack and started eating it. No wonder we were fogged in. I quickly asked him to discard the banana and explained that bananas were bad luck on a boat. He threw the ruminants of the forbidden boat fruit into the water.
½ hour later, still fogged in, and no trout. I felt confident that I could make a straight run across the harbor to Castle Pinckney, and I had just caught some trout there the weekend before. I guesstimated a compass bearing and began the run, and I have to admit three quarters of the way there I started second guessing myself. We should be there by now? Was I making a straight run? Had we passed it already? Shortly after I was able to make out the large day marker marking the tip northern tip of the island. We stopped and fished all around the island and by now it was almost noon. Sun was out i