Bass Caddy Blog

I’ve been off the pooter for a couple of days because someone changed a password. Not me. I think it was the adult on the site as punishment. “What for,” you ask?  Well, I think it’s because she’s coming down with something. Cause I get to go fishing this next week  to pre-fish our first tourney.Now I won’t say she gets upset when I go by myself but I have experienced the painful silence and a glimpse of not-well-hidden quivering lower lip and the I’ll-be-brave tears as she waves me off of a morning when I’m leaving without her.  I can’t seem to get her to understand her physical condition.  Okay that was B.S. , she does understand - she just doesn’t want to give in to it.  She works really hard to just be able to fish once in a while. But the time has arrived for us to get after it. Our first team tournament is on February 14, 2009, at Lake Richland Chambers.  The Bass Champs North Texas Team Trail 2009 fishing season begins. The honey thinks it’s really appropriate that we are fishing together as a team on Valentine’s Day. How sweet. I do kinda feel sorry for the other guys going out to fish that day without their sweeties.  I imagine it’ll take ‘em until next Valentine’s Day to make it up. I am often told how lucky I am that my sweetie wants to fish with me.  By her.  Actually that was one thing I was smart enough to figure out on my own.  I know I’m lucky.  In many ways, but especially with the wanting-to-fish thing. Poor baby is afflicted with an age-old disease known to anglers everywhere - Fish Envy. That can be either the type of illness brought on when you want to go fishing everytime someone else does and you don’t get to go.  Interesting is that there is another form of the disease that makes you sick everytime someone else either catches a fish and you don’t, or catches a bigger fish than you do.  It is a wide-spread disease, with a peak-occurance in the spring, with many variations of the illness.  In my wife’s case, it always comes on quick-like.  She’s pretty much fine until it’s time for me to walk out the door, then it hits her, and she comes down with a severe acute case of the Fish Envy.

Acting like I’m oblivious to the coming trauma (drama?), I’ve spent the whole day re-rigging our reels.  Like any good fisherman, I pulled off all the old line, cleaned and serviced them all over the off-season.  Sitting out in the garage, spooling reel after reel with line, my mind starts to wander, as it often does. Thinking along the lines of fishing lines, I have often wondered -  why there are so many lines? You know - Braid, Mono, Flouro, Hybrid, Thin, Thick, Green, Yellow, Red, Blue, Neon, and my personal favorite - Moss Green.  Who came up with all this stuff ? When I was a kid there was one type of line.  STRING!! You fished for fish with it.  It was so simple then.  I’d get fish to fry and eat.  Having something to eat made it so I could go to work to buy more string to catch more fish to eat.  Simple. Now you have a certain type of line to catch a specific fish.  I don’t dare get caught using mono to catch a catfish or carp.  I’m not sure why I can’t do that, except I guess the other fishermen would laugh at me.  Or worse, someone will turn you in and you loose your ability to purchase more. It’s part of the fine print on your fishing license.  I think there’s a federal department over even the state Fish and Game guys to crack down on offenders. Should you screw up and catch a perch on braid there is a chance of prison time.  Ignorance is no excuse. This is serious business.  They skip right past the fining and go straight for the jailing - or hanging if you live in Texas.  You must be extremely careful to catch the right fish for the line design.

Now that I’m an official published blobber, I worry about my readers.  Hate mail used to be called poison pen letters. I don’t know what the equivalent sent from a computer keyboard over the Internet is called.  It’s probably some form of keyboard karma, where if I get enough negative comments I get shocked by my keyboard when I try to reply to the reader’s rage.  My fellow anglers are really going to be suprised this year, however, with our new secret-weapon line.  No more worries for me about either computer torture or downright death from using the wrong type of line for the wrong conditions.  Terri and I will have an easier time this year cause we will have a new secret line that does it all.  With this super-special line you are able to catch any and all types of fish.  On a single line!  With no worries about federal marshalls coming and confiscating it and locking you up or anything. We got smart (and lucky) enough to get hooked up with a sponsor importing this incredible new line that’s absolutely magic. It’s so much in demand they can’t even keep it on their own shelves because the Big Boys’ Big Toys Store is buying them out by the case.  As soon as it’s safe, we’ll tell you what it is.  We wouldn’t want to be responsible for any injuries - like those stampeding women at Christmas buying the latest toys for their kids. Fisherpeople are better than that. I’ve never seen a bunch of anglers rushing through a bait shop trampling over each other to get the latest swim bait or jig.  We do the right thing and cut it off our buddy’s line when they’re not looking.  Just kidding.  No angler would ever steal to get a new lure. It’s part of the Angler’s Code of Conduct. It’s right there after never lying about the size or number of fish caught. Since stampeding and stealing are out, anglers conduct their business by trolling the Internet to find what they want before anybody else can get it.  Funny how bragging rights have changed to who found the latest, greatest fishing invention cheapest on the Internet.  I heard it’s another newly-discovered strain of Fish Envy.  It’s apparently the first known computer-to-human transmission of a computer virus.  Apparently the longer you spend either shopping for fishing stuff, or just playing around on the pooter you are more susceptible to transmission of the virus.  I don’t know why it afflicts anglers and not everyone else, but I suspect it has something to do with using the Net.

For today I quit.