Dealer's Choice: Building a Hand Out of Nothing

 

Editor's Note: I am Conrad's brother, I do play poker but I'm not that good. Otherwise I'd be paying somebody else to post these articles.

I have a brother that plays tournament-grade poker. He’s good.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever won a game of hearts or spades, or even old maid. Fish? The card game? I don’t think so.

I do know that in any of those games you have to play the cards you’re dealt. Doing that, sometimes you have to build a hand out of nothing. In that regard, poker can be a very creative enterprise. Same as fishing.

When Dave Hladik, from Mannford, and I dropped my boat into the water at the Prairie View ramp late this past week, we found the water in Lake Keystone high, muddy, and wind tossed. I’ve said for years I cannot catch a fish on a north wind, but that’s the hand we were dealt. I still play it at every opportunity.

On the water, still within swimming distance of the ramp, we started sorting through our hand, keeping this card; throwing some others away, trying to build a hand out of nothing. Well, as far as I was concerned, anyway.

Letting the motor idle and warm (I love the smell of boat motor gas and oil fumes in the morning), letting the locator pull up data and “give me a sign”, I spoke to Dave.

“Well, whatta’ ya’ think?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Whatta’ you think? Maybe we could find some clean water up in the back end of Salt creek.”

“I hate a north wind,” I said.

“I know, I know. Me, too,” Dave said.

“What, then, troll? Hit all the windy points we know between here and the Cimarron? Take us most of the day to do that, which is what we came for.” 

“Beats stayin’ home watchin’ Oprah,” which Dave Hladik would never do.

“Hey, buddy. We got a good lunch packed, cold drinks; we get wore out, we’ll pull into a cove out of the wind and act like old, retired guys,” I said.

“I’m not old, you are.”

I knew the lure he was going to tie on before he did it: A number five shad rap. That lure in any close-to-shad-color, number five through number seven sizewise, is, in our opinion, the absolute best choice to go to on a day when the results of a day’s fishing are totally unpredictable, no matter the lake you are fishing.

Every gamefish eats shad in Oklahoma. I know of no other crank bait that looks more like a shad than a shad rap. Not much of a gamble, there.

That lure, trolled, that is pulled on a long line behind your boat past the “fishiest” places you know, will produce fish when practically no other method will. The trolling itself allows you to cover a lot of water when weather and water conditions have scrambled your chances. It’s all a gamble, right? Poker much less so than the slots.

Generally speaking, you don’t want to troll broad, open reaches of water just hoping to find fish while you troll. Ideally, you will troll places where you have caught fish before, or places your electronic locator shows to have fish holding cover. In our country, that would be rock piles, ditches, humps, or long slanting points ending in water frothed with waves your boat can handle.

Long points on windy days in October can be the most fishing fun you will ever have on Lake Keystone. Strangely, to me, you will have practically the whole lake to yourself, even on weekends. Lots of people believe you can’t catch fish after Labor Day. Could be they’re just afraid of cold water. I don’t know. I said it was strange, right?

By about one-thirty that afternoon, neither Dave nor I had caught a fish or even had a strike. We tried all of our best places. The back end of Salt creek was as muddy as the front end. The wind howled out of the north at both ends and in between. Jeeminy Christmas, deal me another hand.

We pulled into the back end of the Snake Pit, tied the boat to a stob, and broke out the lunch: Ham sandwiches, chips, ice cold pop, and more quiet than either of us had had all week. We turned our cell phones off, radical stuff nowadays.

We watched an osprey, fishing, like us; a migrant fisherman if there ever was one. Then, a hell diver, mudhen if you prefer, who had to have been in Canada last week. Heck, maybe last night.

There was a long parade of pelicans, bone white against a powder blue sky, and seeming interminable skeins of obsidian-black water turkeys filing past in short, black robes like padres on the way to mass. What was going on? Everything that does in the fall of the year. We were in a good place to see the show.

It was a good lunch and downtime, even if the fishing was poor. I can’t catch a fish on a north wind.

I caught one fish after lunch in front of the Salt Creek Marina. It fought hard, hard enough that I thought it might be a small striper, and told Hladik to get the net ready. You see the fish accompanying this story.

Big deal, right? Well, hey, after the day we’d had, we both called it a little deal at least. With the show we’d seen at lunch, we both decided we had broken even, every gambler’s fallback. We were back at the ramp before dark.

There is cleaner water coming. The wind will moderate, and the lunches will always be as good as I can make them. I just can’t catch a fish on a north wind.

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen