Is
it just me or do the rest of you have the same experiences when it
comes to using a guide to help you go fishing? As I wrote last
week, we had gone down to Cabo San Lucas in Baja, Mexico to spend
a week doing some off shore fishing.
Now, I’ve been off shore on fishing trips many times in my life
and they seem to have certain common elements. For example, the
person putting the trips together always appears to be setting you
up for the big let down. By this I mean, he starts in early by
preparing you to accept the reality that there just may not be any
fish for you to catch.
The routine litany goes like something like this…”Well, it kind of
looks like it might be too…..’cold’ or too ‘hot’ for the big ones
to be biting.” “The water temperature isn’t correct for this time
of the year.” “The moon isn’t in the right phase for optimum
fishing conditions.”
“There seems to be a shortage of attractive bait.” “The water
looks a little too ‘rough’ or a little too ’calm’ for us today.”
And of course there is the classic of all times…..”It was really
terrific the day before you got here and is predicted to be the
best day ever on the day after you leave.”
Now, I may have been born sometime back, but it wasn’t yesterday
for sure. How can anyone predict with any sense of accuracy what
fish are going to do at any one given time? How can a fishing
guide tell me with a straight face that the fishing is going to be
‘really good’ on whatever date of the month I happen to pick
months in advance? I don’t think they can. I’ve hired guides to
take me fishing on lakes, streams, bays and oceans and they all
seem to have graduated from the same school. We get up early, why?
Because that’s when the fish bite.
So what are we doing out here at one o’clock in the afternoon?
Because the fish weren’t biting early so they must be feeding
later on in the day. I suspect that fishing is very much a hit and
miss type of industry. Why not just be honest and tell us, that
you’re going to try your best to get us something, anything and
let it go at that? If no one has caught any fish before noon on
any given day in the past week, why wake me up at four thirty in
the morning to get up and get dressed so I can spend a miserable
six hours waiting on a boat freezing or burning up when conditions
aren’t right? I don’t think fish have any set schedule that they
must follow or else, do they? I mean the way I see it they pretty
much do what they want to do. They swim around and eat whenever
they feel like it. It isn’t like they have to be somewhere at any
certain time or anything like that. I have never seen a fish with
a wristwatch.
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I know there are a lot of
conditions, which have to be in the correct position to catch
fish. Proper equipment, good bait or lures, correct water and
weather and probably the moon has something to do with it as well.
I’m sure there are some premier guides around who know when all of
these factors are in sync and can catch out the wazoo when
everything works, as it should. I just don’t know that I have ever
met one. When these conditions are met and the fish are out there
to be taken in by the boatloads are when the photo opportunities
are fast and furious. No one ever takes a picture of some poor
smuck standing there holding an rod and reel with no fish. People
will even go to the extremes of ‘borrowing’ fish they didn’t
catch. Watch what happens around some fishing place when a big
catch is brought in for photographs.
See if someone doesn’t just happen to go over and have his or her
picture made with all of those fish. Also notice that the innocent
‘person’ will just happen to have a rod in their hand at the time
the picture is taken of someone else’s catch. I could go on and on
and regal you with fishing story after fishing story, but alas I
am running out of room and it will suffice to say that we didn’t
catch anything, but we had a lot of fun anyway. Besides as the
guides always tell you when you don’t catch anything….”You’d just
have to clean them anyway.”
