Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
There’s a rubber rat that’s been sitting on the dash of my boat for more than 25 years. In all that time we’ve had a lot of fun with “Lucky” the rat, particularly when the action was slow and we’d tell kids to squeak the rat for good luck and then sometimes someone would catch a fish. “See that”! We’d say, “Never under estimate the power of the rat”! After a while I found myself religiously squeaking the rat a couple times before locking up the boat for the night – just a little assurance for good fishing tomorrow. Besides the rat, there was also a coffee mug I had determined to be good luck because one morning I drank from it and that day we had an exceptional catch, then the next day I used the same mug and we had similar results. “It must be the mug” I thought, so I began drinking from it every morning before I went fishing.
For at least a couple years I continued my daily rituals of drinking from the same mug and squeaking the rat, and of course, in that time we had our share of good days as well as bad days of fishing. I expect that any rational person (which would include anyone on the planet who doesn’t wear my shoes) would conclude that the rat and the mug have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not we would catch fish on any given day, and the mere suggestion that there might be any correlation between the two is beyond absurd. But it was so easy to reach up on the dash and squeak the rat each evening and to choose my lucky mug off the shelf instead of any other in the morning that I was going on the “what can it hurt?” principal as I preformed my superstitious rituals each day. If there was anything at all to the power of the rat and mug I didn’t want to miss out on having a good day on the water over it.
To those of you reading this right now, “yes”, I do know how ridiculous that all sounds. While I know that over the years I’ve many times written a lot of stuff that not everyone has agreed with, I’m pretty certain that I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would disagree that a rubber rat and coffee mug cannot alter the outcome of a fishing trip. If I had burned the rubber rat over a hot fire and smashed the mug into a million pieces, our successes and failures on the boat would not have changed one bit. You don’t have to be an Einstein to figure that one out. And with that thought, my fellow boaters and fishermen, let me now take a long overdue and much needed dive headfirst into the topic of “BANANAS ON BOATS”!
While there are a few different stories about how bananas became symbols of bad luck on boats, the one that seems to be most prevalent is about how, back in much earlier days of shipping, when vessels took-on bananas as cargo, they would sometimes find that they had also been loaded with stowaways in the form of tarantulas and other unwanted critters that lived among the fruit. Obviously, such an infestation could create more than just a little havoc on a boat, so even though the bananas themselves where harmless, crews anticipated bad things to come when they saw the yellow cargo coming aboard.
How that story morphed into the current and widely held “stupid-stition” about bananas on fishing boats I don’t know, but at least in the fishing community, it has by far surpassed people’s concerns for walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, or having black cats cross their paths. Some fishermen take the superstition so much to heart that they have “No Bananas” signs posted on their boats, their brochures, their websites, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone somewhere doesn’t have it tattooed to their forehead! I’ve met people who have paid thousands of dollars to go fishing on a charter boat, only to have the captain and mate literally cuss them out because part-way through the day they pull a banana out of their lunch cooler! Obviously, that’s a captain who is not concerned about having return customers.
OK folks, there’s nothing at all wrong with having fun with a superstition; wear the lucky fishing hat, always make your first cast off the port side of the boat, eat PB&J’s for lunch, squeak the rat, whatever. And if you want to tease someone about bringing bananas, then have some laughs with it. But if you’re one of those fishermen who takes the superstition about bananas so seriously that you would actually become angry with, or insult someone for bringing them aboard a boat, then I say to you without reservation that buddy you’ve got a problem! IT’S A FRUIT - IT HAS NO MORE MYSTICAL POWER THAN A COFFEE MUG OR A RUBBER RAT - GET REAL!
OK, I know, right now some of you are remembering a time or two when you were out fishing with friends and where having a horrible day until someone found a banana on the boat, you threw it overboard and suddenly (miraculously!) everyone started catching fish after fish! And you’ll go to your grave claiming that certainly PROVES that there is “something” about bananas on boats that brings about bad luck. I don’t know, maybe bananas emit a smell that’s offensive to fish. Maybe when the sunlight reflects off the yellow skin it scares fish away, or maybe the superstition was started by someone who wanted to make fishermen look like fools. I’m betting on the latter.
As I stand here on my soapbox, bashing folks who truly believe in the power of the banana, I’m going to shift gears a little and appeal to those of you who believe in the existence and the power of God. Yes, I said “God”. You know the “supreme being”, the “creator of Heaven and Earth” the one who made you, me, AND even the bananas! I wonder how many fishermen take the time or even think about pausing for a few moments as they prepare for their time on the water and ask God to bless them with a good day of fishing. After all, if you believe in God then you know that it’s He who dictates how a day is going to go from start to finish, so shouldn’t it be Him who we turn to for “luck” each day rather than a silly rubber rat or dirty old fishing hat? And if we hold that a banana (of all things) has the power to shape the outcome of our day, then aren’t we in turn suggesting that God’s role in our lives can be overshadowed by a fruit?
Wow! I know I’m getting into some pretty heavy stuff here and not what most folks expect to read in a fishing paper, but I’m not ashamed to say that after spending most of my life making a living by trying to get a fish to bite a hook, I have come to know that my successes (and failures) can not be attributed solely to my own actions and abilities, there’s more to it than that. There are times out on the water when a chain of events will just “happen” with an outcome that cannot be explained in mortal terms, and I for one will not give credit for such events to a ceramic mug or a snack someone has in their food cooler!
The bible teaches us to put aside false idols and pray to God for what we want in life. So I say this: Ask God to grant you a safe day on the water and a good catch of fish, and don’t be afraid to demonstrate your faith in Him and His supreme power by bringing bananas for lunch!
Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and Captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
