You might think a grown man in a fishing competition with two very young adults might take his foot off the gas, maybe coast around the corners — you know, pull a punch or two to let the youngsters stay in the game and feel like they have a chance.

But those thoughts have never crossed my mind in any fishing competition with my son, Joel, and his longtime buddy, Connor McNeil. These young men are excellent anglers, so there’s no reason to give less than 100 percent. Besides that, they’re both brutal and relentless. When they beat me on the boat, I hear about it for months.

So I REALLY didn’t want to lose last week when we set out on our most recent fishing competition. The rules of this one were among my favorite of any one-boat contest we’ve ever had. Each angler could weigh in one redfish, one bass and one other, and his cumulative total would determine his standing. But there was a caveat. A HUGE one.

The angler had to proclaim whether he’d weigh the fish as soon as he caught it, and once he weighed a fish, he couldn’t enter another in that category. It made for some difficult, spur-of-the-moment decisions on the boat that would determine who would get to be lazy the rest of the day.

The second-place finisher would get to pick whether he wanted to clean the fish or the boat, while the loser had to accomplish the leftover chore. The winner, however, could spend the time comfortably seated in a chair, surfing the internet and visiting social-media sites.

But more importantly, he’d earn bragging rights.

I really wanted that to be me. To find out if it turned out to be, check out the video below.

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