The Joker

By Phil Kelley

Bass-club fishermen normally are pretty thin-skinned when it comes to their ability to catch fish. When things are working, you are full of confidence, but when things don't go your way, it can be a real blow to your ego.

Years ago, I was a member of one of the oldest bass clubs in Florida. This was back in the '60s, when tournaments were just getting started. This club I belonged to was like most bass clubs of the era. It had a wide cross-section of members, including a few professional people, some businessmen, and mostly just regular guys. The competition was fierce, and bragging rights were held in high regard.

One member was a real character. He loved to pull practical jokes and, basically, just get people stirred up. To make matters worse, he was one of the best bass fishermen in the club, so when you were the blunt of one of his jokes, it was especially bad.

One weekend we had a tournament on West Lake Toho. The fishing wasn't especially good, and everyone was running around the lake, trying to find a few fish. About 11 a.m., the joker came around the bend at Brown's Point and found one of the younger guys sitting on his fishing hole. The joker and his partner pulled up about 50 yards from the young guy and began to fish. They sat there fishing for about a half-hour, with nothing much happening. The tension was pretty high because fishing next to someone is not against the rules, but it is not usually done...out of courtesy.

When the younger fisherman wasn't looking, the joker quietly sneaked a bass that he had caught earlier out of his livewell, hooked it on his line, and slipped it over the side. After the bass swam off about 50 feet, the joker stood up and set the hook with a loud yell, fighting the bass back to the boat with a lot of noise, just to make sure the younger fisherman saw everything. After 10 minutes, he repeated the process and landed another bass.

By this time, the younger angler was going crazy, trying to figure out how the joker was catching fish when he hadn't had a bite. It eventually got the best of him, so he fired up his big engine and left in a cloud of spray.

After the young fisherman left, the joker and his partner could hardly contain themselves, laughing out loud about catching the livewell bass over and over again. Now here's the funny part. As they settled down and continued fishing, they both felt the bump-bump of a bass bite. It seems that all the commotion of the livewell bass fighting and splashing had turned on the other fish in the area. The two anglers fished in astonishment as they culled out their limit and won the tournament with ease.

This is a true story--I know because I was the victim of the joker that day long ago. It still makes me laugh today.

About the author: Tavares, FL resident Phil Kelly has been an avid bass fisherman since age 21. For nearly 40 years, he fished hundreds of tournaments throughout Florida. So when he moved to Lake County in 1996, he felt like he had landed in paradise. "I refer to Lake County as the center of the earth for bass fishing," said Phil, who owned a computer-services company for 30 years. "In fact, the Harris Chain is where I've caught some of the biggest bass in my life."