A Northern Territory fisherman is weighing his cash against his karma after a bunch of bad luck culminated in the sinking of his boat.

George Vlazny told the ABC's Tales From The Tinny that the whole rotten scenario started about two years ago when he and a co-conspirator sabotaged a friend's day of competition fishing.

"We were just mucking around and we found some banana lollies, and we put them in his boat," Mr Vlazny said.

"He poo-pooed the idea, started eating the bananas and he had the worst day ever — he ran aground, broke things, lost sunnies."

For the uninitiated, superstition portends that bananas are bad luck for fishing and could mean disaster for a trip.

So perhaps justly, Mr Vlazny said his sabotaged friend sought vengeance and there began the year-long game of putting bananas on each others' boats, tit for tat.

"At the next year's competition, we thought we'd bring it to a head and finish it," he said.

"We got some banana suits and while everyone else was in the meeting for the competition we had another friend take photos of us in every boat dressed as bananas.

"The problem was that the next morning it was my boat that cut out."

Karma's curse

After spending $1,000 trying to fix the boat's problems, which ended up being nothing more than a blown fuse, Mr Vlazny said he hoped his karma might have evened out.

But he was wrong.

First, he lost his electric motor off the front of his boat.

Four months later he had to replace the prop shaft and gearbox in his outboard.

Then after spending $4,000 on a GPS/sonar system, he chopped the transducer off the bottom of his boat with his own outboard.

Adding insult to his growing list of injuries, Mr Vlazny then managed to superglue his own foot to the floor of his house while tying flies for an upcoming fishing expedition.

"The phone was nowhere in sight, I had no acetone anywhere near so I had to rip my foot off the floor."

George Vlazny says he now keeps a bottle of nail polish remover close at hand when tying flies. ( Supplied: George Vlazny )

That sinking feeling

Fast forward another few weeks and Mr Vlazny, with a little less skin on his feet, embarked on a weekend fishing trip to Melville Island, north of Darwin.

After a hard day's fishing, he moored his boat in the same manner he'd done hundreds of times before, not realising he had parked it on a steep section of the creek bank.

"We went to bed fairly early and Macca snored all night so I had plenty of opportunity to check on the boat," he said.

"Every time I checked, the light was still bobbing around so everything was good and I went back to bed."

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Mr Vlazny said he last checked the boat some time around 3:30am.

"When I woke up about 7:00am I couldn't see an anchor light and at first it didn't sink in.

"I looked at it and then realised it's upside down — how the hell did that happen?"

After rescuing the boat, having it towed back to relative safety and collecting what gear he could from the incoming tide, Mr Vlazny said he had decided to stay in one place for a while, lest lady luck wreak any more havoc upon him.

"Since then I haven't moved. I've wrapped myself in cotton wool because I'm too scared to do anything or go anywhere."