If Fish Could Laugh

It was a gorgeous morning as I put our new boat (Ascension Outdoors, seen exclusively on Eatel channel 4) in at the public launch in Port Vincent last Saturday. A freshly rigged 178 DLX Bass, all welded DuraCraft bateau rigged with a 90 HP Mercury Optimax courtesy of Premier Performance Marine glided smoothly off the trailer into the Amite River.

These cool mornings have been a delight after a long, very hot summer and I was anxious to make that first cast. The water was a little stained, but it was just right for me and it was falling at just the right speed. It took me about 45 minutes to weed through what they weren’t biting.

I started off with a lunker lure and nothing there; then I threw a spinner bait with the same results. Next on the menu I was offering was a red bug brush hog but the results turned out the same. So with the water cooling down and the bass maybe switching to a winter time pattern, out came the crankbait.

The tactic was to slow roll it and bump the bottom, wood or just about anything I could hit with the bait. The result was 2 decent largemouth and 3 spotted bass on the business end of that Bandit “Mistake” deep diving crankbait. A half a limit of bass that I released, a cool morning and 4 hours of very therapeutic, stress relieving, just what the doctor ordered, time spent what I enjoy doing; bass fishing! This day I came out on top, figuring out the fish and catching a few.

The next day I was sitting at the kitchen table talking with my beautiful wife, Deborah, my trip to Cabela’s that afternoon came up. She asked me what I had in the bag, so I explained my purchases. I picked up a new Bandit crankbait and a new type of plastic bait made by Netbait. I said, “Hey, it’s a new formula with pork fat impregnated in the plastic.” Her look and reply said it all; “If fish could only laugh..”

She was right. Long before a fisherman gets out on the water another type of fishing takes place. It’s the tackle manufacturers trying to get us to pick up their product and take it home with us.

My intention that afternoon when I left Lamar Dixon after our “Silencing the Cries” Bass Classic meeting that’s taking place next weekend was to stop by Cabela’s and just do some browsing. I’d been a couple of times but never got a chance to see it all. Looking, that’s all, no buying.

This summer I attended a conference that featured a seminar by Berkley’s tackle marketing department. They explained that spending hours and hours developing a new bait, then field testing it to make sure it catches fish is only a small portion of the equation. They have to package it in such a way that it will be attractive to the customer!

Their research statistics have determined if a man picks up a bait in a tackle store, he will buy it 90% of the time. So they have to package the product to get us to pick it up. Does that sound like fishing or what!

I started out walking through the salt water bait section and it took a while to get through because of the selection. Although I looked pretty closely at all the brightly colored baits, I didn’t pick any up, so I made it through unscathed.

But eventually I made it to the bass tackle section and the temptation to bite was much greater. At each turn many things caught my eye. I got close and even put my hands on a few of the packages, but I never took them off the shelf.

Then I ran into a friend that didn’t have as much willpower as I did. Alas, two handfuls of baits, a pitiful sight. As I looked around, many more helpless fishermen were falling into the trap of picking up those attractive offerings of all those bait manufacturers. One after the other, shamelessly falling victim to the seemingly unstoppable urges to buy, whether they need them or not.

There’s a catch phrase that’s very popular among bass fishing; “reaction bites.” Most good tournament anglers are very familiar with this tactic because bass will hit a bait even when they’re not hungry. They don’t need it, they just want it! The anglers that develop this skill catch the most fish because you can make them bite even when they’re not hungry.

I once caught a 5 pound bass with a 24” snake in it’s stomach. Heck, 8 inches of the snake was hanging out of the mouth because it couldn’t fit in the stomach. But it hit a broken back Darter anyway.

Sort of sounds like some fishermen doesn’t it. How so? Any bass angler worth his salt has a tackle box full of baits they don’t use. I have plenty of them that have never touched the water. They looked so good when I saw them just hanging there, I couldn’t resist the urge and gave in to a “reaction buy.”

Sounds just like a bass doesn’t it? If fish could only laugh; so until next time, have fun in the outdoors, be safe and may God truly bless you!! Oh yeah; I bought those two baits. Shucks!