Bait
I use a lot of fishing analogies because I spent a significant portion of my life fishing.
Also: author of Fishing Guide to the Stars.
The story, and the details are muddled with age, but the recollections are quite clear. Off the dock, in front of the old trailer park along the shores of Town Lake in old Austin.
One warm winter’s eve, nominally spring in Texas, I hit upon a nesting bass, and I caught the same fish a full half-dozen times in a single week, using the same bait, over and over.
It was a trick plastic worm, about so long, a color that does not occur in nature, and all I had to do? Drop that and drag it right in front of the big mama bass, and she’d take it. Or he, I’m not sure, one of those. But it was same fish, over and over. Not quite every day, but until the spawn was finished, yes, caught same fish several times. Six times in a week, maybe ten days.
Laughed and wrote about it, used it as a reminder of what to do, or what not to do, in certain settings.
Came up again, and there was Virgo guy I need to write this for.
- Do. Not. Take. The. Bait.
It’s a plastic worm clearly not a natural element at all, and as it swims in front of you, if you stick it in your mouth? There is a number 2 hook. You will be hauled up to the shoreline, unceremoniously photographed, and then set free again, with a sore jaw.
I wonder how much piercings cost in Austin? Tha fish might owe me.
Anyway, the deal is, if you take the bait, you will be caught, and this doesn’t end well.
I like bass fishing because the fish are tough, sporting, and none-too-bright. What that lack in brains, though, they make up for in bad bass attitude. Fun fish. Fun fish to catch, chase, and otherwise get engaged with. But gratefully, none too smart.
Ask yourself, same bait, same position, same setting as the previous day, are you still going to bite? Stick that plastic lure in your mouth? You are caught, and it’s that free ride into the fish sky. Picture on a website, and for that one fish, six times in a ten day period? If that fish had feelings? Feel pretty stupid for repeating the same mistake, over and over. Not once, not twice. Six times.
“No, man, I meant to do that.”
Really? How’s that jaw feel? Ready for jewelry for that piercing?
When someone, not me, sails a bait across your bow, tosses it out right front of you?
Don’t take the bait. Really simple.
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