Don’t Ignore the Obvious Like I Did

Some of you may not be old enough to recall that before The Inside Line became an online publication, it was actually a glossy, full-color magazine, and before that it was a professional-style newsletter. Heck, some of you may not be old enough to remember what magazines or printed newsletters were, but that’s neither here not there. When I think back to the late 90s, I recall how hungry I was for information, and as a beginning tournament angler I was particularly hungry for information that few people here in Virginia held. I couldn’t beat them when it came to on-the-water experience, and as far as I know there was no YouTube, so I had to take advantage of any market inefficiencies that I could find. My brother was living in Japan at the time, so he couldn’t help me, so I turned to the next best thing when it came to exoticism – the small burgh of Page, Arizona.

While I already knew about the Hula Grub at that point, at least anecdotally, the rest of the western U.S. canon was foreign to me. I didn’t know about doodling or split shotting, and had no idea what they meant by your “meter,” but I still tried to soak it all in, and hoped that one day my break would come.

It came.

And I missed it.

One year the renewal package for The Inside Line included a sample pack of their newest lure, the Senko. I think I’d read a little bit about them, but really didn’t have a sense of how to fish them, but I knew that they were supposed to be productive and innovative. It didn’t help that they were a Blue Pearl color (possibly #239, “Blue Pearl with Large Black and Hologram”), which for some reason led me to believe that they were a fluke-style bait that needed manipulation rather than a bait that typically worked best when worked least.

My next tournament was on Conowingo Reservoir, an impoundment of the Susquehanna River that spans the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. In the middle of a slow day of practice, I got out the Senkos, walked the dog a few times, did not get bit and put them away -- and then they didn’t get pulled out of storage again until a few years later when others started kicking my butt with them fished correctly. What made me mad was thinking about how many fish I’d gone past in the ensuing time period with jigs or spinnerbaits or some other lure when a Senko would’ve caught ‘em. I left tournament winnings, minor league glory, and a lot of sore thumbs on the table.

So here’s the point, to the extent that there is one. Well, first, I can be an idiot. Since then I’ve also slept way too long on the swim jig and the dropshot. I shudder when I think how many more fish I would’ve caught with those two plus the Senko. On top of that, though, there’s a matter of timing and gullibility. If you fall for every Banjo Minnow and Hoverlure that comes along, and give them too much time, you look like a gullible fool, but if you totally ignore the new stuff, you’re gonna get smoked at some point. It’s like going long or short on a stock – not only do you need to know that the price is going to crash or skyrocket, but you need to know when. I’m probably more of a Doubting Thomas now than I was back in the late 90s, hardened by years of tackle purchases that haven’t paid off, but like most of you I remain open to the idea that something special will come along. There are no such things as magic lures, but there are better tools.