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Like most who fish, I’ve set the hook on a lot of sticks and jumped to the conclusion that
Like most who fish, I’ve set the hook on a lot of sticks and jumped to the conclusion that they were big fish.
Fighting sticks is fishing’s version of “gotcha!” It’s a practical joke that nature delivers in a cruel twist of irony. We feel our lure encounter resistance, instinctively pull back and drive the hook into the limb of a long-fallen oak.
Who can blame us for permitting that fleeting moment of supreme hope to overpower our grasp of reality? When our baits stop, our minds recognize that as a “bite.” And we anglers live for that moment when effort is rewarded by a fish mouthing our lure.
We are the ultimate optimists. One hundred, then 200 and more casts go untouched. But we fire the next one confident that it will be the one that gets a 3-pound bass, a 20-inch walleye or a pie-plate-size crappie.
Those are the kinds of fish that churn sideways on the hookset. They do not come to the boat readily. They pull away as hard as you are pulling them toward you. They pull kind of like a waterlogged branch that aquaplanes in a direction that is contrary to the pull of the hook and line.
I swear I’ve hooked fish that somehow were transformed into pieces of wood. That’s how real some sticks “fight.”
Faux fish fights aren’t limited to the remnants of fallen trees.
I have mistaken 2-pound rocks for stubborn smallmouth bass. I have reeled in long-lost beach towels that resisted as vigorously as a fat channel cat.
A silt-laden T-shirt had me convinced I’d picked off the biggest crappie in the lake. Legendary are the catches of coffee cans and other detritus dredged off the bottom.
Such encounters always are good for a laugh or two.
But sometimes they wreak havoc. And once that havoc turned into catastrophe.
“Fish on!” my friend exclaimed during a bass tournament 20 years ago.
In competitive fishing, that’s the signal to drop everything and get ready with the net. There’s no time for deliberation. Grab the net and get in position to scoop the prize.
But this particular “fish on” moment came at a time when a treble hook-festooned crankbait was reeled tight to a rod tip protruding a few inches beyond the lip of the front deck. When I jumped to action with the net, the Bomber crankbait went with me, its hook firmly embedded in the flesh of my left calf.
Ouch.
Worse than the plug stuck to the back of my leg was the fact that my friend’s “fish” was a piece of warped plank. I had a treble hook pushed deep past its barb into the meat of my leg and I was dragging the rod.
I’ll save the story of the hook extraction for another Saturday. I’ll just say it wasn’t easy – or painless.
What it was, of course, is another example of the excitement that ensues when an angler has reached the tipping point that happens when a cast gets a tug.
Whether it’s “fish on” or “stick on,” that moment is the reason we fire every cast with optimism – even when the previous 199 have failed to deliver.