Wanna Know What Angry Fishermen Do?

In some cases, like the one involving the young fella at left in this photo and the accompanying video link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJfRQICPFL0), he very well may throw the object of his consternation as far as he can send it. Of course, he later may have second thoughts about pulling such a stunt, especially if, as in this case, he had paid $170 for the baitcaster. That logic led to this disgruntled angler and his fishin' buddy returning to the area where the reel had been tossed and salvaging it.

For the benefit of those who would like to know why the young fella was so frustrated in the first place, there are a couple of pertinent factors to be considered. For openers, there was a matter of operator error. Seems the young man accidentally had jammed the reel's side plate on so hard it was hampering the spool's operation. As a result, he couldn't make a cast longer than about 20 yards.

Further exacerbating the situation was the fact that, during the 30 minutes he had been trying to resolve the reel's problem, his buddy had been having a heckuva time with one smallmouth after another blowing up on his topwater bait. In short, the combination of these factors was just a bit more than the one young fella could stand. With a single motion, he saw a way to make quick work of one of the two things that really were annoying the crap out of him at the moment.

I have to admit I truly am enjoying this picture and the accompanying short video, but I shouldn't laugh too much, because I'm reminded of an occasion many moons ago when I, too, found myself in a funk and subsequently flung a baitcaster off the bow of my own boat. I have to say, however, I at least gave the reel three chances to start cooperating. And I even paused for a moment before the third attempt to make a successful cast and "admonished" the reel that this was its last chance. It failed, and being a man of my word, I didn't hesitate to unmount the reel and give it the old heave ho. Therein, however, the similarities end, 'cause I didn't pay $170 for the reel and therefore made no effort to retrieve it.

All levity aside, I should continue with my story by noting that not all fishermen behave as the young one just discussed or yours truly have been known to do. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred in some instances.

Take, for example, the 15-year-old California lad Braeden Steveson (pictured right). In late March, as reported in the latest issue of Jay Kumar's BassBlaster, he was fishing one of the Santee Lakes in east San Diego County after baseball practice and wasn't having much luck. As a result, he just had taken an "angry" cast over the fact he couldn't get bit.

Suddenly, though, it felt like he had hooked a log. That "log," as luck would have it, turned out to be this 15.12-lb. largemouth, which reportedly set a new lake record for the species. He caught his new "personal best" on a Rat-L-Trap rigged on 6-lb. test line.

The smile on this boy's face says it all. In the moment of this photo, he was in "hawg heaven."