Making the most out of lemons
Necessity indeed is the mother of invention, I learned Saturday as I was dealt one serious mother of a dilemma while bass fishing on Shenango Reservoir.
The bass were biting in the skinny water, so I’d been poking around any sort of tree trunk or branch stump I could find in places with a foot or so of water. I exhausted the cover on one stretch of the bank and idled across a shallow flat to a fresh bank.
It was the kind of trek I’d made 1,000 times or more in the years since 1977, when I bought our first boat. This time, however, I hit a bit of a snag, figuratively speaking.
I keyed off the Mercury and the BassCat glided to a stop while I deployed the electric trolling motor. The clank and click that are the audibles associated with dropping the electric motor prompts a Pavlovian response in my brain. I immediately need to pitch a lure to a fishy-looking target.
But when I stepped on the pedal to put juice to the motor and steer toward a nearby stump, I felt no movement. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
That’s not good.
To a fisherman on the bow of a bass boat, the electric motor is as essential as a lure. I can hardly fathom how bassers fished before trolling motors became so widely used. They deliver stealth and nimbleness, two essential attributes in a sport where the angler needs every advantage possible.
But now my trolling motor was broken. It was only 10:30 in a tournament morning that allowed us to fish until 3 that afternoon. I was still short of my limit and now I was pretty much dead in the water.
Or so I thought.
I’m not a big believer in the motivational power of proverbial sayings such as “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” but I was looking for any port in this storm.
I was fishing in a competition. I wanted to win. I had had a bit of success already, but needed to seal the deal. I was standing over an equipment malfunction. And fixing it, I determined, was out of the question.
Options? I could go to the ramp and pout. Or I could fish on.
I elected the latter, albeit in manner that my grandfather might have employed. I dredged the anchor out of the under-deck compartment. Anchors are seldom-used by bass boat drivers, so mine was clean as a whistle with a length of rope that looked as though it had never been wet. Indeed, it hadn’t.
My new tactical approach was to drive with the gas engine to each tree that looked good. I’d anchor in the brisk wind and play out a length of rope that set the boat in a position that afforded good access to the sweet spots in each piece of cover.
This proved to be even more cumbersome than I’d imagined. The wind would shift. The anchor would drag. The rope would go taut before the boat settled in range of the tree. All of this grew pretty old after a couple dozen sets of lifting and dropping the anchor, starting the engine and idling to the next tree.
But it paid off. I added the day’s two biggest bass during the fishing time I extended by my old-school approach.
I also found a fishing lesson in my misfortune. Because moving the boat was pretty inconvenient, I slowed down and made more than the normal amount of pitches at each tree and stump. The more meticulous approach proved to be decisive for me, as the extra casts netted bonus bass.
I’d turned a bag of lemons into lemonade.
Nevertheless, I’m getting the trolling motor fixed. I may not have enough sugar for another pitcher of lemon.