Never take your eyes off the ocean they say, and for that matter your line. Jordan Mathews was texting away on his phone when a snapper took not just the hook but around $1000 worth of tackle.

“No, my Poison Adrena,” Mathews struggles to say as not only the spinning rod, but his Shimano Stella spinning reel slipped out of his kayak. It all happened in an instant. When you spend so much of your time fishing without a bite, you never expect one will actually come along during a few moments of smartphone distraction, but this wasn’t a slow day on the water for Mathews.

“Should have known better on such a hot snapper bite,” Mathews mentioned in the comments of his video. “But that’s just how things go.”

Letting that kind of setup slip away is heartbreaking enough, but to rub saltwater in the wound, Mathews caught some predictable flak from the comments section of his humorous moment of misfortune. In his video comment though, Mathews also took a moment to address the scenario that led to the mishap.

“This was on a week day when I had a day off, my phone was in the dry bag where it stays permanently. A client had called me four times in five minutes and was desperate for information, so I put the rod down in that holder for less than two minutes to provide the info he needed and this is what happened,” Mathews explained.

Hey, we get it. Slack notifications are constantly pinging through on our phones while we are trying to get a few peaceful hours of lunch break fishing in. There is a plot twist to this short we didn’t get to see on screen however, Mathews’ valuable setup didn’t sink into the abyss.

“I managed to get the outfit back for anyone wondering, so thankfully it wasn’t a complete loss,” the angler added in his comment. Knowing that, we can breathe easier for Mathews and appreciate a vicarious lesson learned—we’ll be setting the phone to emergency notifications only when the snapper are biting.

Featured Image: Jordan Mathews | YouTube