We all know that triple plays in baseball represent a rare, outstanding achievement. Triple plays in fishing, on the other hand, are not as rare and certainly don't elicit any cheers or applause. Why? Because as I define them, fishing triple plays signal days when your luck shifts all the way from "peg-the meter" good, to "hard to maintain focus" bad, and finishing on "butt ugly" disgusting or even possibly disastrous.
The way I try to deal with such things is through a "misery loves company" concept and by applying a principle I learned in high-school algebra: Two negatives make a positive. In other words, I look for someone else who has had a similar, or perhaps worse day than mine. Hence, the two "downer" days, taken together, then become a pick-you-upper of sorts.
Suffice it to say, however, that I appear to be somewhat of an oddball in that take, compared to other examples I already have discovered on the Internet. Accordingly, I will be sharing some of those good, bad and ugly days of other anglers in future posts.
A fella from Texas was heading to Alabama for a bass tournament in unknown waters, with people he didn't know and never had heard of. To put it rather bluntly: He was just a bit nervous.
This fella had heard about the event through a group of local guys and gals who get together and have a little tourney every two weeks. As the event drew nearer, he kept asking himself, "Why did I sign up for this? I must be nuts."
The tournament was on a river with a lot of tributaries but few flats, which the fella had grown accustomed to while living in Texas. On the first day, he found dingy water, with some cloud cover and a little wind, perfect for his go-to baits of a jig and pig, Texas-rigged craws, and some good early topwater action.
He had drawn a good partner to fish with...one who had a decent knowledge of the river and also was a jig-and-pig guy, just like him. At the end of Day 1, the fella driving the boat was in 9th place, and his partner was in 12th, so, all in all, they both were in good shape.
On Day 2, however, everything kinda turned bad. The front that had been present on Day 1 started moving out, the wind died down, and the barometric pressure went sky high, with blue-bird skies. The boater's pattern, of course, was gone; his partner for this day knew NOTHING; and the fish would not cooperate at all. Further, the motel where the boater had spent the night had advertised "free high-speed internet," which turned out only to be dial up!!!
With little to no sleep, a Day 2 partner who was a real dummy, and a total conditions change, the fella just decided to repeat his pattern from Day 1. He ended up slipping from 9th to 13th place...and NO MONEY!
Now is when things turned ugly. While heading home, disgusted, tired, and you-name-it, the boater suddenly saw a long line of stopped vehicles ahead on the Interstate, about 30 miles from home. He slammed on his Chevy's brakes and just had gotten stopped behind a big rig when BAM! another vehicle whacked him in the rear.
The tired fisherman's truck was totaled, and his boat ended up three car lengths away. Meanwhile, after having an air bag pop and getting slammed against the vehicle's door, he suffered a few broken ribs and took a good beating all over. His boat, truck, rods and laptop were all gone.
Nevertheless, he still was able to dismiss the whole thing, saying, "But, hey, I'm still kickin'...all I gotta do now is replace everything. Hope my friends never have to endure a tourney like this."
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