What to do When the Fish Ain’t Bitin, Or HoboKen’s Super-Duper Bite-Enticing Fishing Method All anglers have those days. You know what I’m talking about. Even if you’re fortunate and have all the tackle in the local sporting goods store at your side, you just can’t solicit a bite. Perhaps you arrived at the lake with visions of immense trout dancing on the end of your fishing line, only to ascertain that three different insect hatches occurred the day before, the fish gorged themselves, and then decided to take a weeks vacation. Or, perhaps it’s August with record busting temperatures and every self respecting fish has located to the deepest, coolest, most inaccessible hole in the lake. Maybe one of them Artic air masses marched down from Canada just when spring fishing began to pick up, leaving you with snow on the ground, a challenge creating a compatible artificial microenvironment to keep fingers and toes warm, and the fishes’ metabolism so slow even a turtle could beat them in a marathon if it wasn’t buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake trying to stay warm itself. You’ve tried everything. Lambasted the water with hardware until the paint wore off them. Other fishermen complain about the pandemonium. You’re casting arm feels as though it’s about to separate at the shoulder. All those lures guaranteed on TV to catch fish, from the minuscule pan fish lure to that gargantuan designed for a Great White Shark, have failed miserably. Well, if hardware isn’t what the fish desire, perhaps they fancy bait. Malodorous bait! Am I the only person who’s noticed most prepackaged bait enticements for fish have the words “not fit for human consumption” printed on the containers? I guess if the fishing has been lousy for a couple of weeks, one is running low on food, one has lost all olfactory and common senses; one might be tempted to devour the remaining bait rather than waste it on fish who don’t know suburb food when they smell it. Far fetched, you allege? Yeah, just like them sure-fired lures on TV that you spent last week’s food budget on! And just where is it laid down as scientific fact that the more rotten, repulsive and obnoxious bait is to Homo sapiens, the more fish covet it? After all, where do most fish dwell? In polluted, tainted waters? No! You will encounter the majority of our finned cousins abiding in clear, sparkling waters. You know, the kind we humans prefer to drink and swim in. Once I was unfortunate enough to be downwind of an angler when he opened his homemade concoction of fish bait. I felt obliged to stroll around the lake and inform him of the Clean Air Act which strictly prohibits the release of toxic fumes into our atmosphere! Now the fish have rejected both lures and bait. Strike Two. Time to become sophisticated, to join the elite of our fraternity; the fly fisherman. After meticulous inspection of recent hatched insects floating on the surface of the lake, you rummage through your tackle box searching for those self-tied flies that consumed so many winter evenings. There’s one. A perfect resemblance. Chuckling to yourself - after all, you’ve eaten scads of fish, the so-called brain food - you effect a deliberate presentation. The fly lands perfectly on the surface of the lake with hardly a ripple. Pausing for a moment, you twitch the fly ever so gently, hoping to entice a strike. Abruptly the water boils as a fish rises to engulf the fly. Not your fly. The genuine fly which just landed beside it! Strike Three. You’re Out. Now hold on a moment before you commence to jumping up and down on that expensive fly fishing outfit. There is still hope. I’m going to introduce you to the secret for success. This is a sure-fire method which has performed for me time after time so pay close attention. It’s called HoboKen’s Super-Duper Bite-Enticing Fishing Method. First, tie a two foot length of 4-pound leader line to a Number 6 egg hook. Fasten the other end of the leader to a lightweight swivel. Slide a slip sinker onto your regular fishing line then tie this to the other end of the swivel. Shove the hook through two marsh mellows along with two salmon eggs - the color of which I’ll leave up to you as color doesn’t make any difference with this new method I’m teaching you. Cast as far toward the center of the lake as you can, let the bait settle to the bottom, reel in the slack line and prop your fishing pole against a forked stick which you’ve previously cut and driven into the ground. But, you exclaim, this technique is no mystery! True. The secret is to now ignore the fish that have been ignoring you. This turn of the tables will drive the fish absolutely bonkers. By now you may be a bit skeptical, however, bear with me. Anything as revolutionary as HoboKen’s Super-Duper Bite-Enticing Fishing Method takes some getting use to. Now, look at that tackle box of yours. Kinda remind you of your room when you were growing up? I’m surprised you can find anything in there. If your Mother ever noticed it you’d be grounded from fishing for a month and we don’t want that to occur. While the fishing is lax you may as well spruce it up a bit. Empty everything onto the ground beside you and head for the waters’ edge. You can wash it out while it’s empty. Deodorant and disinfectant wouldn’t harm it either. Once it’s clean, head back to your mound of tackle, sit down, and start sorting through it. See those little draws and compartments in your tackle box? Trust me. They were placed there to keep things spiffy. Rapalas in that compartment, sinkers in this one, flies sorted by species of fish go right here. That handful of treble hooks would fit nicely into that tiny drawer. Oh my! Just look at the tip of your fishing pole bouncing up and down! You’d better grab it before the fish gets loose. No! No! Not with that hand. You still have the treble hooks in it! It’s too bad that fish got away. I imagine when you dropped the pole you gave it enough slack to spit out the hook. Rule No. 1 of HoboKen’s Super-Duper Bite-Enticing Fishing Method is always empty your hand when lunging for your fishing pole. You’re fortunate none of those hooks impaled themselves in your hand but as you can see this science of Bite-Enticing really works. Another approach to Bite-Enticing involves beginning the day drinking copious amounts of coffee, tea, pop, or other liquids of your personal preference. By the time you’ve cleaned your tackle box an urgent hankering to find the closest restroom should be taking effect. There are, nevertheless, two factors which must be taken into consideration before employing this very productive procedure. Invariably, a restroom or a clump of bushes large enough to hide an angler is a minimum of 50 yards away. So the first one involves matters of the law. Washington State regulations state it is against the law to leave a fishing pole unattended. Unfortunately, they are not very specific as to what constitutes an unattended pole. For example, does the pole become unattended when you remove your hands from it; or when you retreat so many yards away; or perchance, does it constitute not attended when your mind is far away contemplating such weighty arguments as : should one reel in one’s fishing line before going in search of a restroom, thereby strictly adhering to the letter of the law, or perhaps, become a branded, life-long criminal by exercising one’s right of civil disobedience by leaving it in the water while obeying the increasingly insistent nature of one’s bodily functions? “Surely our learned Legislators envisioned every possible scenario before enacting such provocative legislation?” I often think to myself while squirming like a night crawler impaled upon a hook, preoccupied by such lofty matters as freedom of speech, love of liberty, pursuit of fish, fishing pole unattendance, and the need to find a restroom. The second factor to consider in this radical new method of angling is what I describe as the turning-your-back-on-the-fish routine. Should you decide to leave your pole unattended while in a desperate search for a suitable area to relieve yourself, in which case I advise you to consult a competent lawyer specializing in angling law, you will discover it absolutely infuriates the fish. To turn your back completely upon a fishing pole and saunter away indicates you have achieved the pinnacle of HoboKen’s Super-Duper, Bite-Enticing Fishing Method, and must be prepared to endure the full blown consequences of your actions. For the largest, meanest, evil-tempered fish will choose this exact moment to seize your offering and run, determined to drag bait, line, fishing pole, everything into the lake. As you hustle on your journey back from the restroom, fumbling with the buckle of your trousers, it will then spit out the hook, leap magnificently above the surface and flip its’ tail wickedly; leaving you in thigh deep water groping blindly for pole and reel now critically in need of a lube job! I wish to leave you with one final technique of my Bite-Enticing Fishing Method which I discovered quite by accident. I’ve christened it the Writing-About-Fishing-Syndrome. Although it’s very effective, it also is fraught with perils which must be considered before implementing. After rigging your fishing pole with the essentials of HoboKen’s Super-Duper, Bite-Enticing Fishing Method, position yourself in a sitting posture with one leg astraddle each side of the fishing pole. Next, place a notebook in one hand and pen in the other. Preferably, you’ve brought these two items in sufficient quantity as they are as prone to vanish as tackle in a stump infested lake. Proceed to ignore all fish while you compose a fishing story. Once you are preoccupied in thought, busy weaving words together in some resemblance of a coherent tale, one of the perils of this approach will become obvious. As a fish snatches your bait and hightails for the bottom of the lake, the laws of gravity and physics take over. If you have positioned yourself properly, the tip of the fishing pole will go down, while the butt of it will rise straight up at super sonic speed whacking you painfully under the lower mandible, thereby interrupting your writing and warning you that a fish is frolicking with the bait. You will discover, with practice, your hands are quite capable of lightning fast reflexive execution when attempting to block the painful arc of a rising fishing pole butt. However, a strong lower jaw, sound teeth as opposed to false or partials, and an adequate supply of bandages and aspirin are recommended until you have mastered the art of stopping a violently osculating pole butt! The second hazard inherent to this method of Bite-Enticing incorporates the use of Rule No. 1; always empty your hands when lunging for your pole. If you’ve practiced this maxim faithfully, it’s become as automatic as breathing. Some of my finest stories now lie at the bottom of lakes being nibbled on, rearranged and shortened by hordes of aquatic insects, rather than on some magazine editors’ desk where they rightfully belong! Although the techniques employed by HoboKen’s Super-Duper, Bite-Enticing Fishing Method may be a bit unorthodox, I have managed to catch a fish or two by using them, thereby reassuring myself of the truly remarkable effectiveness of this new method of angling. But further study is required. If you would like to assist in my continuing investigation of “What to do When the Fish Ain’t Bitin” please fell free to email any contributions to me at HoboKenMack@gmail - or just search for me at one of the hundreds of Washington State lakes where further research is under way. HoboKenMack@gmail HobosAcre
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:33:36 +0000
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