Keep it Simple, Stupid

Despite the fact that I’ve been doing it for decades, from year to year I seem to forget a lot about fishing.

That was evident when I showed up at the lake last Friday under perfect conditions – a few days of unseasonably warm weather, a slight breeze, a few clouds. At the end of the dock at the ramp there was an empty bed, and I knew the bass would be shallow. I expected they would be active, too, even though most of the beds I saw early were either empty, or held exceptionally skittish fish. Surely a few would eat a buzzbait or a swim jig or a spinnerbait.

But by noon I’d only landed a half dozen or so bucks. They weren’t patternable, and I’m not sure that I ever had two keeper bites in one spot. I tried to power through, and the more I pushed, the less I knew.

And then I just started flicking around a Senko, a half cast offshore of where I saw beds or where I knew there were some stumps. Cast it out, let it fall, and a ridiculous number of times my line would be swimming away when I lifted up. I never saw the line twitch or felt the bite, but I’d try to pull out the slack and either my line would be off to the side or I’d be unable to catch up to a bass that was nearing the boat.

Over the rest of the afternoon, I probably caught 25 or 30 more fish. One bait – a green pumpkin Senko because I saw no reason to change. I went through a pile of them but never even thought to retie my FG leader knot because  it was so low stress.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was 4 o’clock and my friend asked if I was getting off the water. I declined that option, and stayed out until nearly dark. And over that period I started to think about almost exactly a year earlier, same lake, very similar conditions, and I dialed in the same bite in the morning. Meanwhile, my wife Hanna tried to force things to happen. She made semi-dazzling casts, placing them exactly on or next to visible targets. She tried all sorts of usually reliable power lures. She worked to figure things out. But what she didn’t do was let the fish come to her. Sometime around noon, I told her that the key was dropping that same wacky-rigged Senkos on similar banks, and not trying too hard to make things happen. I had, in effect, outsmarted myself.

The lesson, I think, is that we sometimes make things too hard. The sport and the little green fish are complicated enough on their own, you shouldn’t try to add complications or difficulty scores. Instead, when you get the easy wins, take ‘em and be glad. And be sure to always have at least 50 green pumpkin Senkos in the boat. I’m sure watermelon would’ve worked, too, but why kick a winning horse?