Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
“That’s why they call it fishing and not catching.”
Gosh I hate to hear that term! Not that there’s anything wrong with it, in fact, when someone makes that statement it usually means that they have a pretty good attitude about fishing. “You can’t get them all the time - that’s fishing!”
The reason I’m not so keen on hearing the term is because when I do it’s usually at the end of an unsuccessful fishing trip and one of my charter clients is trying to be nice in response to my apologies for not catching fish that day. So it’s not so much the statement as it is the situation that promotes it to be proclaimed in the first place. No matter how good the fishing has been or how good you are at doing it, there are always uncertainties, no guarantees, and there will always be days when… well - you know.
This whole “uncertainty” thing popped into my head the other day as I was returning home from what turned out to be a rather uneventful day of fishing. “Yes” we managed to catch a few fish, but we were hoping for a trip like the day before when we had awesome action from start to finish. Yet despite what seemed to be identical conditions of wind, tide, and weather as the day before, things just didn’t click and when it was all over we were left scratching our heads wondering what the heck happened overnight that either sent the fish scurrying off to some other corner of the planet or gave them all lockjaw. But “that’s fishing”. Right?
As I pondered what I should write about in the first issue of the Coastal Fisherman of 2023, I thought back to those two days and knowing that for the next few months I’ll be spending a lot of effort trying to explain how to catch a fish. It struck me that maybe I should start the season off by highlighting a sampling of reasons why we sometimes might “not” catch fish. As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that just from my own experiences I’ve got a lot to say about “not catching fish”! Being that I’m always looking for new topics to write about each week, I’m thinking too that throughout this season I might just pitch out more than a couple columns that might help steer anglers away from some of the goof-ups I’ve made over the years, and therefore, minimize the times that they don’t catch fish.
To kick this series off, I thought it was best to have a short discussion on a facet of fishing that a lot of anglers have in common, and that would be “bait”. Certainly not all anglers use bait all the time, but at some point in their fishing career pretty much every fisherman will need to acquire and properly use some form of bait, and if bait is what you need to catch fish that day you really- really want to make sure you have good bait. Sure sometimes a fish will bite anything you throw in the water, but just as you’d probably prefer the fresh steak just coming off the grill rather than the leftover one that’s been in the fridge for a few days, most fish are discretionary. When someone is having a slow day of fishing it very well could be that the fish they hope to catch just aren’t into what they’re serving up.
Fresh bait that’s very recently caught and has never been frozen is almost always best. Of course a lot, if not most, bait is simply not available fresh unless you’re in a position to catch it yourself. When it comes to fresh bait most tackle shops around here only sell “live” bait such as minnows, crabs, eels, and maybe spot. Other than that, their selection is going to be frozen (the next best thing to fresh) which is okay as long as it was properly caught, handled, packaged, quickly frozen, hasn’t been thawed and refrozen or been sitting in a freezer too long.
Ok, so let’s start by having you walk into a top-notch tackle shop, grab a pack of bait from the freezer, pay for it and head out to your favorite fishing hole. It came from a reputable store so it should be good bait. Right? Wellll… not necessarily. Don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting that good shops would deliberately try and sell bad bait, but just like produce in a grocery store, mixed in with the good apples there’s going to be some bad, or sometimes the whole shipment of apples are bad but somehow they still made it to the store shelves.
Anyway, regardless of whether it’s a box of squid, a bag of shiners, a flat of butterfish, or a pack of ballyhoo, if you’re going to spend your money on it, and bet the success or failure of your long awaited fishing trip on it, you better make sure it’s the best it can be. Just like choosing food for your own consumption, when buying fresh or frozen bait you want to give it a thorough inspection before plunking down by the register. You wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) buy seafood for your own consumption that’s all freezer burnt, stinky, and nasty looking. So why expect that a fish will take a bait that’s anything but the best it can be? All kinds of packaging is used for bait and it’s good to know what to look for to determine the quality of the bait inside.
If the bait is vacuum packed - well sealed with no air so that the plastic is snug around the contents, look for a life-like color, clear eyes that aren’t sunken-in and baits that aren’t busted up or have a lot of broken fins or missing scales. Bait that comes in boxes such as squid, shiners, butterfish, mackerel, or whatever should be thoroughly inspected as boxes are never air tight. Always open the box and look at the bait. It shouldn’t look dried out, shriveled up or covered with thick ice crystals. Learn to recognize the light colored, dried-out signs of something that is freezer burnt, it’s a telltale indication that the bait is worthless.
So unless you’re totally happy with spending your day “fishing” instead of “catching” it always pays to start your day with the best bait you can buy, catch or steal. Oh yeah, and remember too that the wonderfully fresh bait you started out with in the morning needs to stay that way right up to your last cast of the day. Maybe some discussions about that later... §
