Bass Caddy Blog

I’m back!!!!!! After a long blob break I felt it was time to enlighten you folks a little more. Last years’ fishing trail was extremely exciting and loaded with adventure. As we prepared for this season a big turd landed in the punch bowl. The WBT was cancelled. Feel free to come to your own conclusion as to why. Me? Ithink the BIG BOYS are very afraid of the female angler they have to fish against in the Classic. But anyway, there seems to be no trail for the ladies to fish.

HAW- TO BUDDY! Like the idjit I am and as P.O.’D as I got over the WBT thing, I popped off to my wife that I should start my own trail.   Now, we all know my wife, she’s usually not into surprises, but she shocked me by saying go for it.   Apparently, she had such a good time last year fishing with the ” BIG GIRLS”, that she wanted more, and was very disappointed about not getting to fish with the girls this year (see her blog for more on her thoughts about this subject).   Anyway,  I talked to my good old friend Lee at Lake Fork and this dumb A– not only thought it was a good idea, but said he would partner with me and pull the trailer all over hell’s half acre in order for the ladies to have a venue to fish.   It actually surprised me how many “good old boys” thought how unfair it was that the ladies had gotten the rug pulled out from under them, and wanted to give the ladies a chance to do what they love to do, and in an atmosphere that was fun.  In simpler terms, a lot of guys would just like to see the gals get a fair shake.  Anyway, finding all of this out just encourages me to dig myself deeper.  I keep thinking how unfair all this is, and, being the “Mr. Fix-It” that I am, I want to do anything and everything in my power to fix it, and make it better for the women.

Now I’m in this deep. We start having meetings and laying down plans searching for a tourney trailer.  Every trailer we found someone either beat us to it or it cost an arm and a ham roast.  Neither of which I have a spare of.  So I finally got mad and said I was going to buy a new trailer and be done with it. (Did I mention I’m on a budget?) (not controlled by me, it’s you-kn0w-who who usually hangs on to the money real tight around here, but here again I was surprised to hear “go for it”.  Now this is getting scary.  So I head out and buy a nice 20 ft. car- hauler and drag it home, still in shock over even being told it was okay to get it in the first place.   Now this is just the beginning of the money outflo. Digital scales and a back- up system. Go for it.  A really nice P.A. system to play music and do weigh- ins.  Go for it.  Tubs to keep the fish alive in. Go for it.  A custom stage and podium.  Go for it.  Material to build an office in the trailer. Go for it. I hope you can begin to catch my drift here.  If this girl of mine wants to fish this badly,  then so be it.

Ladies and gents I am proud to announce the first day of the AMERICAN LADY ANGLERS TOURNAMENT TRAIL!!!!!!! Please feel to visit our web site www.americanladyanglers.com . Yes now I have two web pages to fret over. Please watch both pages to see the happenings as we build the ALA tourney trailer and post the trail events. I’m excited.

For today

I quit.

Well, well what a tournament we had. Terri placed 25th overall, and only a slight injury. Maybe in the Rock we can get by with no issues at all.  HA!!!!!!!

Terri thanked everyone in Monroe so all I can do is Caddy Curse  the folks who weren’t quite as helpful as the ones Terri mentioned. First, for the 6 people who pulled out in front of me, while I was pulling a 2500 lb. boat. Yes I have brakes, but that doesn’t make up for your lack of brains or eye-sight.  My ability to stop is hindered by my total disdain for you knotheads.  Second, for the gas station that stays open 24 hrs. a day, but was closed at 3 in the morning when I needed to fill the boat prior to a tournament day.  (Shut-up Steven, I know a good caddy would have done that the day before).   When you say 24 you should mean 24.  Third, on our 5th anniversary the Mexican Resturant that charged us $51.00 for a not-so-good meal - and bad service.  No it wasn’t Taco Bell smarties. Fourth, the prilgrim who walked his pony-size dog around the boat ramp where caddies wear flipflops and open toed shoes. May that dog leave a surprise in your wife’s favorite  night shoes and then see who laughs. And finally. to all those folks , both coming and going, who feel like the fast lane is just a place to keep pace with the guy in the slow lane. Or as I like to call them TRAFFIC CONTROL MONITERS. Kinda scary when you look in that mirror and see a pick up pulling a huge boat coming at you at 90 ain’t it?  MOVE YOU’RE D.A. over.

Remember, its tough being a caddy. We get stressed well in advance and stay that way well after each event so if you can, try to be understanding and make life a little less difficult. Our pros are depending on us to be the rock. You know - like when we get them out of the water we remember to put all the straps and the motor-toter on.  Huh, Steven?

For today.

I quit

As a bass caddy, I have learned much in my first tourney. One item is marking spots. You would think this would be simple, buy a map and a pen. Nope - that’s for wussies, not caddies. As a cadd, you have to take a much more literal, and physical view of marking spots for your angler.   I have found that as a caddy, you drink large amounts of coffee and tea and must use the facilities. However, when marking spots for your angler, you return to the basics of nature. As a dog would do, you literally “scent mark” all spots to be fished.  The reason that the bass caddy must perform this duty is they do not have to urinate in a plastic coffee can first.  Should you follow that strategy, it leaves a scent in the water of plastic baits being used by another angler.  As you go from spot to spot, you must insure that the scent you are dispensing can be well-recognized by the other pro bass caddys.  This will keep your angler from fishing in a “top secret” spot marked by another anglers’ caddy.  You must also be careful that you do not pick up an old scent from previous tournament practices.  The caddy’s responsibility is to insure that the scent that they pick up is fresh and meant for the particular tournament that your angler is fishing.  Should you become confused by the numerous scents that will be on each spot that you look at, always check around for fresh cigarette butts floating in the water.  This is also a good indicator that another caddy has marked that particular spot for their angler. 

As a final note on this particular subject, do not wake up in the middle of the night and use the restroom as this will cause a tremendous strain on your bladder during the next days’ practice.

On a serious note, I would like to thank all of the folks in Gadsden, Alabama who helped us out with all of the problems that I was unprepared for.  If you’ve read my wife’s blog (Terri Talks), you know all of the problems that happened.  These were all issues that I did not address prior to the tournament.  However, who woulda thunk that brand-new batteries would crap out in such a short period of time?  Also, it never occurred to me to try to stop the power company from lowering the river to its lowest level in ten years.  Even though my name is Rod, not God, I also feel responsible for the rainy weather we had during the tournament.  In this next tournament in West Monroe, LA, we have all new batteries, all new raingear, new charger, new JumpStarter, new Navionics chip for our electronics, and new maps.  The only thing left to chance is the weather.  Here again, the name is Rod, not God, but maybe he’ll give us a break this go around. 

For today I quit.

Well, I have decided to come back and blob again after recovering from my recent computer-induced PBSD (Posting Blobs Stress Disorder).  I know that a lot of you are going to think that this is another “Pooter rap or rant”, but it’s not.  I want everyone to hear about the personal attack on me led by this computer.  That way you’ll be prepared when it happens to you.  I only recently realized that what has been happening to me since I started posting on this website has not been me accidentally hitting wrong keys and messing things up.  It is a war between me and my computer, and the computer is winning the battle.  It’s kind of  like David and Goliath, and the giant here is the giant technology comprised of computers and the Internet, and I’m the one with the pebbles and a slingshot.  Here’s how I figured the whole thing out…

 This past “N“-day (Nascar, NFL, and Nap-day, otherwise known as Sunday to the uninitiated or women out there), in the afternoon I chose the Nap option due to the fact that there was no Nascar or NFL.  The wife and the youngest daughter that we have, Jenny, decided while I was taking a nap that it would be a wonderful idea to get me a FaceSpace and a MyBook.  The way they explained this wonderful idea of “social networking” was that I could use these sites to find old friends, meet new ones, and get my thoughts and ideas out to a wider audience.  In Theory.  On a Good Day.  If I think pure thoughts and hold my mouth just right as I type.  In real life, what was presented to me to be a simple task - “go check your pages that we filled out for you”, became a lesson in frustration. 

First off, I couldn’t find the pages I was supposed to and had to have the wife stop her physical therapy every two minutes and come help me.  Every time I tried to find a “friend”, my friendly computer questioned my motives by asking me to enter a secret code, followed by an encrypted password and apparently a top-secret special handshake in the form of something called a “CAPCHA”.  “What the heck is this?”, I quizzed the wife, thinking that I had messed something up again.  It certainly looked like the results of some of my mis-steps: something that looked vaguely like words and numbers strung together, sometimes spelling out what looked like real words, but with lines drawn through them and the letters fading in and out and changing sizes up and down.  Whatever a “CAPCHA” is, it definitely bears a resemblance to my work during editing and proofreading.  (I bet everyone thought I didn’t proofread, didn’t you?  You’re right - I don’t.  The wife does because she doesn’t trust me for some unknown reason…)  Terri tried to explain what CAPCHA is for, and as usual, I tuned out after hearing the beginning of the sentence.  For some reason, when my wife tries to explain something to me, she always starts sounding exactly like my first grade teacher.  She begins,  “A CAPCHA is used to prevent spam….blah,blah,blah…”  As soon as she starts I go into my “Jeopardy” mode and start hearing the tune from Final Jeopardy in my head…Da, da, da, da-da, da, da, daaaaa, da, da, da, da, da, da-da, da-da, da, da….”Ok, we’re back, let’s see what our contestants have written. What do you have written for your question Rod?”  To which I mentally always reply, “What is something that I don’t ever care to know that my wife knows an infinte amount of mindless trivia about?”  I then mentally congratulate myself for keeping that “yes, I’m paying attention honey” look on my face, and try to keep from saying, ‘I wagered a million dollars that she’d never shut up, Alex!”  Most of the time she doesn’t require any feedback , just for me to sit quietly and act like I’m paying attention.  Luckily I don’t have to contribute any input in the form of a question, because she explains everything as if I’m a two-year old child.  Actually the two-year old would probably have a better chance at this. 

I’m just not sure what my role is in all of this.  I’m told I have to fill out a Profile, and immediately I’m stumped.  I come to the part about “Status”, and think - everyone knows I’m married.  I talk about my wife all of the time, so everyone must know that I’m married.  In my narrow corner of life, there are only two states of being - married or not married.  I didn’t know there were so many other things I could be.  One of the hardest questions for me to figure out was how I was feeling.  I’m a simple guy - happy or sad, with mad thrown in for variety.  The list I could choose from was so extensive, I only read down about 100 before becoming so overwhelmed I finally settled on the one that fit - “confused”, and left it at that.  Needless to say the rest of my profile is blank - when Jenny comes back over she’ll have plenty to do.  Since it took so long just to get through my marital status and my mood, I decided to skip the rest and get to the important part. 

I’ll bet everyone is thinking that I didn’t get the point of the MyBook and FaceSpace sites, but I did.  The whole point is to find “friends” and have more than anyone else in the entire universe, or at least the universe that is the pages of these Internet sites.  That being said, I immediately set out to gather up as many of these “friends” as I could find.  If you’re wondering why I was putting the imaginary air quotes (and I really am doing this when I’m saying this), it’s because it seems that my idea of friends is different from the people who run MyBook and FaceSpace.  To me, friends are someone that you know and like to hang out with.  I’m a well-rounded person.  Even if I don’t have fifty-bazillion moods, I know the difference between, say, a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, and someone whose name I can remember that I went to high school or used to work with.  In Internet-land all of those people are my “friends” (air quote) - get the picture?  My real friends call me.  I call them.  It’s a lot simpler that way (and much easier on me considering my hunt-and-peck typing skills don’t make me very computer savvy). My real friends also stop by and hang out with me.  Apparently all my Internet “friends” are good for are writing on my walls.  If my real friends did that we’d have a problem and somebody would be getting a can of paint and a paintbrush to fix things.  I do have to admit one thing, though.  I did find a real friend with whom I’d lost touch who managed to see one of my great MyBook or FaceSpace pages and get in contact with me.  You may be thinking that he was really just an Internet “friend” (air quote) - but he was actually a real friend (no air quote, real thing).  You know how I know? …He called me on the phone!

For now I think that I’ll just concentrate on this website and maintaining my modest little blog and Bass Caddy page.  I’ll leave all the social networking to the ones who understand it and get a lot out of it - the computers.  You see, I finally figured it out - that’s what the Internet is for.  Everyone thinks that their own computer is just that - a personal computer.  Just a machine that waits dormant to be powered up and used for whatever purpose the owner chooses.  That’s not what’s really going on.  While these computers are “sleeping” is when they’re most active.  The computers themselves are using the Internet to visit other computers through all of these “social networking” sites.  They don’t need us at all and are secretly living a virtual life all their own travelling though cyberspace to connect with other computers and become “friends” (air quote for sure) in the sense that only computers can.  Computers are re-defining the word friends for their own use, just like they are using the Internet and Cyberspace for their own purposes.  How else do you think that the Internet and computers have become so vital to our daily lives and communication?  They planned and did it themselves, using their giant Giga-brains to pull it off.  Just thought everyone else should know - the social networks are actually so the computers can communicate and become “friends”.  It’s all making sense to me now…only a computer could think up 200 different moods beginning with the letter “a” - it’s all for them.  I only have a couple “friends” on each of my social networking sites.  I think my computer has about 63 gazillion at last count.  Roughly the number of computers online today.

For today I quit.

Tonight I am P.O.ed. I told you yesterday I am not pooter llitirate and I just had to go through all kinds of choices of web pages. I DON’T CARE. Just pick one and let’er fly. Show me what to hit and duck. But noooo, pick one don’t be a butt, you can at least pick one. She looked at 500 and knocked it down to 19 so pick one. Okay this one. No that doesn’t have all the stuff you wanted. Well cheese and rice, how about that one?  No it’s not the right color. Well Fiddle dee dee dog droppings. Okay baby, you pick the one and I’ll be fine with it. No really your wisdom is far beyond mine. You are colledge-educated and all. You did surgery on hundreds of human females-I just dated a few. Really,you are much smarter than me and much better looking too. DON’T YOU DARE PATRONIZE ME .DON’T YOU DARE WALK OUT OF HERE.( I return head down) We look at the rest and a choice is made. Download in progress. NOOO DON’T TOUCH!!!! Oh crap call the webmaster. Rod touched the pooter during download. Please help! Pooter guy can tell time too. It’s 10:45 he tells Terri. He will fix in the morning. If you don’t see this until then, oh well. I probably won’t need to assist for awhile now so ranting should be about it. Pooters are bad. They cause issues. I am a bass caddy. I am above this machine. God I hate this thing. I really see an accidental drowning off our boat this year. Ah poor HP laptop, I hated it well.

For today I quietly resign.