My cousin and treasured fishing buddy, A. B., was unloading his SUV as we began the short walk to the pond we were getting ready to fish. A. B. is a passionate advocate for Tenkara fly-fishing, which means he typically uses a much smaller tippet than with a conventional fly-fishing rig, making the net a highly valued piece of equipment in helping to prevent break-offs. Realizing this, I noticed his net was still in the back of his Subaru Outback as he began to close the tailgate. Thinking that I was helping him out,
I said, “Aren’t you going to take your net?” He responded, “I never catch any fish when I bring my net.” I eventually persuaded him to take it, knowing that the pond we were getting ready to fish had steep banks and it would very difficult to land a fish by hand, especially with a twelve-foot rod connected to a twelve-foot line, which is how most Tenkara systems are rigged. So he brought it and got skunked for the day!
Of course, it happens to all of us. Superstitions are present in all sports. The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth, always felt the need to step on second base every time he came in from right field following the third out of every inning of every ball game all season long. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady wears the same shoulder pads that were issued to him his freshman year at Michigan. He plays with teammates who aren’t as old as his shoulder pads. And Michael 112 Tom Friedemann Jordan wore the same shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform that he wore when North Carolina won the NCAA Championship.
Others eat certain foods before games or lay out their uniforms in a certain way in the locker room as part of a pregame ritual, all designed to ensure success on the field. Fishermen are no different. My Uncle Chuck Nida, whom I’ve referred to numerous times in this book, would always take a brand-new hard-bodied fishing lure he had just purchased at the store and drop it in the dirt and step on it with his shoe, grinding all the new finish off of it before he fished it. He said bass don’t like factory smell on their prey. I also heard about a local angler who would never release a fish into the water regardless of how big or how small it was, even if he intended not to keep any for eating. He would either keep them in a fish basket or put them on a stringer and return them to the water when he left for home. His theory was that fish have developed a way to communicate with other fish about their out-of-water experience and that all the luscious-looking prey they’d noticed in the area lately were fake. And as a result of that intelligence briefing, they would put off feeding until all the fishermen left the premises. That’s some pretty heady credit for creatures with a brain the size of a pea. Before cell phones came into play, I would never take a camera with me, knowing that the fishing gods would get upset if I were to become so presumptuous as to think I was going to catch something that day worth taking a picture of. Better to have caught and released a fish that you wish you could have proven to your buddies than to have never caught one at all because she may have been a little camera shy and somehow knew you had one in your fishing vest. I’ve always wondered how those same gods allowed at-the-ready picture-taking technology to enter into the world of smartphones in the first place. Now nobody has a reason not to have proof of a catch. According to Merriam-Webster, superstition is “a notion I f I t Were E a sy, The y ’d Ca l l I t Cat chin’ 113 maintained despite evidence to the contrary.” You’d probably have had a hard time convincing A. B. that day that getting skunked wasn’t all the evidence needed to prove that having a net close by prevented him from having the kind of day out on the water he had hoped for. And while he didn’t say a thing about it, I felt a little bit guilty. And just like Michael Jordan’s shorts or Tom Brady’s shoulder pads, fishermen are notorious for having a favorite piece of their uniform. Three-time B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year, Bill Dance would never think of fishing a tournament without his signature University of Tennessee Volunteers baseball cap.
The most famous example would have to be the lure-decorated soft-brimmed fishing hat often worn by McLean Stevenson in his portrayal of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake in the hit TV comedy M*A*S*H. His hat could have filled a small tackle box. I have a favorite vest that I finally had to retire just last year. It was made by the Richard Wheatley folks, who have been making fishing gear in England since 1860. I had that vest for over thirty years, and it always contained everything I needed to be successful on the water. Just like a golfer’s caddy, it was always there to help me with the most challenging situations. Finally, after the last zipper failed to zip and holes began to appear in the bottoms of the pockets, I had to give it up and go to one of those new age fancy-type vest packs with a built-in lumbar support, built-in life vest, and, at last count, about two thousand pockets, most of which are still hidden at the time of this writing. I still haven’t found most of the pockets or the equipment I haphazardly put in them. It looks more like something you’d use to jump from an airplane than something you’d use to wade your favorite trout stream. No telling how many fish I didn’t catch because I spent far too much time looking for stuff in one of those darned pockets—time that could have been better spent keeping my line 114 Tom Friedemann wet. I’m finally beginning to get used to the new vest, but it’s taken far more effort than I had anticipated.