Later, the sports writer caught up with the angler's amateur partner and asked him what the "real" story was. The partner replied, "He caught all his fish on jigs above a rockpile in the south end of the lake."
Face it: Secrets are just part of the fishing game. And if you fish the tournament scene, you'd better think twice before you start sharing any "honey holes" with a partner...even a "regular" partner. I have a good friend who made that mistake a few years ago, and he paid dearly for it.
Turns out my friend couldn't fish for a spell, so his non-boating partner went and joined up with another fella, who won the first tournament they fished together. My friend was at weigh-in that day and asked his former partner if he had shared any of their spots. The partner's response: "Sure did. As a matter of fact, I showed him all the spots."
To say a friendship was ruined by that incident would be an understatement. You see, my friend had been letting that partner shower and spend Friday nights before a tournament at his house as a matter of courtesy. He also had been fixing Friday evening dinner and Saturday morning breakfast for him, in addition to preparing sandwiches for him on tournament day. He further often had had to pick up part of the partner's entry fees.
It's situations like the one I just described that lend a lot of credence to that saying, "No good deed ever goes unpunished."
With that introduction, let me share some fishermen's feelings about the secrets they keep (or not), as revealed during a search of the Internet:
"I started to realize this year that expert fishermen don't tell all their secrets. I think most, if not all, hold on to the really good stuff. I don't think they should spill all. If a person puts all that work and time into this sport, they should keep the really good stuff they find from others. What it seems like they do is kinda point you in the right direction, and then you have to work hard to solve the mysteries. And to be honest, I like it that way."
"I'm no expert, and if I kept secrets, nobody would be hurting. The one thing I shut up about is small ponds that easily can be ruined if they receive too much fishing pressure, especially from meat fishermen. If someone else shows up and asks how I've been doing, I'll tell the truth unless I have caught some good ones, in which case, I just say I've caught a couple of small ones."
"I don't mind telling absolutely anything I know about techniques, lures, or patterns on a particular body of water. Growth comes from knowledge, and if no knowledge is passed on, it eventually will die."
"I agree that fishermen love to be crafty and secretive. Ever noticed how some guys always put their rods out of sight if you approach them so that you can't see what bait they're fishing? In some cases, you ask them what they're catching fish on, and they'll tell you topwaters, even while you can see their line is dragging across the bottom."
"Maybe I'm too dumb to know better, but I get a kick out of helping others catch fish. More than once, I've had anglers see me catching fish and ask what I'm doing. I always tell them. A couple times this happened, I was fishing small grubs on light jig heads and line. I once gave the young guys a few grubs, and another time I gave away some Roadrunners. I've been on the receiving end, too. Many years ago while fishing a local lake, I watched two guys catching fish one after the other on a bank I just had fished without catching a single thing. When I asked what they were using, they gave me a couple of jigs, a half bag of grubs, and showed me how to use them. I caught fish the rest of the day...and hundreds since because of their willingness to help me. For me, that's a part of what fishing is about."
"The two most important secrets of bass fishing are: (1) The largemouth is the largest member of the sunfish family. This makes the bass a schooling fish. So, if you find one, you have found a bunch. (2) Once you have found fish, don't leave them to find more. 'Aha! you say. That's simple enough.' Yet, on any given day, I watch boatload after boatload of people bypassing fish. The trolling motor is running, and the fisherman is intent on finding that next location. In the meantime, we leave the lake day after day with both numbers and size, because when we fish, we live by nos. 1 and 2."
"My belief is just because someone lets out a secret doesn't mean the person who hears or reads it will use it. For instance, I was fishing with a buddy last summer, and I was having a far better day than him. He was using all my equipment and standing right next to me but just wasn't having any luck. Well, he wanted the rod and bait I was using...that had to be the answer, he thought. He insisted, so I finally agreed to switch rods. Well, guess what. On the next cast, I landed a 4-pounder, and he was ready to go home."
Just about everyone knows fishermen can be secretive and less than truthful about the size of fish they catch and how they catch them. This has been going on for ages. Tournament fishermen are a perfect example. They not only guard the secret places where they catch their fish, but they also jealously guard the type of lures they use to catch those fish.
The story is often told about a well-known tournament fisherman in bygone days who never would go into a local tackle shop as long as other customers were in there. He instead would wait until the store was empty, then go in to do his shopping.
Tournament anglers are known for putting different lures on their rods before weighing in to fool their competitors. Many years ago, I fished with a guy who always removed the lures from all but one rod, to which he then attached one of the ugliest multi-colored spinnerbaits I ever had seen. Finally, one day I asked him if he ever had fished that lure, and he said "no." I then challenged him to give it a try, and don't you know he boated a 6-plus-pound largemouth on the first cast. I'm still not sure which one of us was more surprised. In any case, it helped us take 1st place and big-fish honors that day.
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