Over gentle conversations between grandfolks and grandkids, the lore of decades is imparted in the minds of eager young kids. Some becomes vital years later in the pursuit of fish, while some provides fodder for superstitions.
We all see superstitions for what they really are: beliefs based on irrational assumptions. Within a sport or hobby, though, these superstitions help to link generations that have few, if any, other connections. For many families, it is the superstitions that are the best remembered and the last forgotten.
In any family that fishes, the superstitions of fishing often play a central role in the connection of family members, even if the lore is not readily remembered. Dad's favorite fishing hat, for example, ratty as it may be, can bring about nostalgia for the carefree days of a youth spent at the family cabin. It may not be remembered immediately that the reason the hat was favored was because Dad was wearing it the day he caught the biggest bass of his life and had considered it lucky forever afterward. In that way, superstitions also play a role in capturing a moment, preserving it forever, without the need for camera or words.
Another popular fishing superstition is the "first-cast curse," or the belief that, if you catch a fish on the first cast, you are doomed not to catch another one for the rest of the day. For this reason, a lot of anglers use a "throwaway" cast the moment they get to the water, in order to purposely avoid hooking a fish at the start of the day.
However, I also read about an old-timer who saw the matter of a day's first cast in an altogether different light. He once asked a fishing buddy, "Have you ever wondered why, when you catch a fish on the first cast, you never get another bite on that lure?" The buddy acknowledged this phenomenon had happened to him several times over the years but that he never had thought anything about it.
The old-timer said he had a theory about why it happens. "Because the lure is laying on the deck, it gets very hot," he explained. "Bass are cold-blooded, just like a rattlesnake, and are constantly seeking prey that has a different body temperature than their own. A worm or spinnerbait, for example, thrown in the shallows is several degrees warmer than the water and represents a critter that has been in a bush or on a rock sunning before it enters the water. More often than not, it gets eaten immediately as it enters the water.
"I had noticed that the blades were hot from laying in the sun, and if I was on fish, I usually could catch a fish on the first cast. But then I wouldn't catch another fish until I picked up a different spinnerbait. I subsequently developed a 6-cell flashlight that could be plugged into a cigarette-lighter receptacle. I lined the inside with cork and aluminum foil to hold the heat and used the tail light of an old car flipped over and shining inside to heat up the blades of the baits.
"I kept a dozen spinnerbaits tied on and hanging inside this homemade 'hot box.' It was somewhat time-consuming to unscrew the lens cover, take one out, and replace the one just used, but it worked. It produced 12 keeper fish on 12 consecutive casts to win both tournaments. I did this at the beginning of February on one lake and at the end of February on the other lake, which gave me the confidence to know my theory was working.
The only downfall, noted the old-timer, was that the blades always were cold by the time he retrieved a spinnerbait back to the boat after only one cast. "If I wasn't on fish, I worked my azz off and lost interest pretty quickly," he said.
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