How to Find Fish Using 'Most Recent Information'

 

If you don’t know where the fish are you can’t catch them, right?

I bet Edwin Evers would agree to that, as would Jason Christie, the top two finishers in the most recent Bassmasters Classic held on Grand Lake here in northeastern Oklahoma. Evers, the Classic winner from Talala, was quoted in published reports to have relied on insider family fishing knowledge of the lake to “cash his chips” on the final day of the tournament and come from behind to win after trailing several pounds behind Christie going into the final round.

Christie as well was reported to have built his early two-day lead of the three-day event from family fishing knowledge of the old lake. Both are excellent bass fishermen, and might’ve won, or placed nearly as high as they did, without the benefit of MRI, what hunters and fishermen call the “most recent information.”

My four-year old grandson, Brantley, has to at least be able to hold a rod in his hands (which he can), but once he does that, if I then say to him, “Now drop that worm right next to that big, fat perch yonder in the shade of the dock,” what sort of a bump in his chances of catching a fish have I just given him?

In years past, rumors floated that some of the better-known pros paid local guides and tournament fishermen for insider information on the whereabouts of concentrations of fish in lakes the locals fished the year around; sometimes literally every day. Where local jackpot tournaments are concerned, what chances would an angler from, say, Lawton have in fishing Lake Keystone against a bevy of anglers who live in Mannford, or Sand Springs, or vice versa?

Professional gamblers in Las Vegas literally make their living off of insider information gleaned from locker rooms, places behind closed doors and not generally open to the public, in both amateur and professional sports. Even small but nagging physical injuries can adjust the point spread on games and competitions of all types, making them less “games of chance” than they might otherwise be. Divorces, news of dysfunctional family situations of any type, and other seemingly unrelated events that might tinge a player’s day-to-day attitude can be turned into hedges on bets, and money in the pocket.

In the long run, you don’t need to pay off players or referees to throw games. In fact, again in the long run, that’s a losing game that could get you tossed in jail and notably reduce your yearly gambling revenue. All you really need to know is which way the wind blows. Know that, and you will win more than you lose.

While I’m thinking about it, the most overused analogy applied to the most recent Classic was its being called “the Super Bowl of fishing”. To me, it would be more properly, and popularly, identified as “the Masters Tournament of fishing.” The time setup is almost identical, and commonly, in golf’s grand tournament, The Masters, the first day’s leader is seldom the winner on the last day’s last putt.

The Master’s four-day setup, like the Classic’s three day, can lead to some phenomenally exciting turns of events, ups and downs, those things that give all sporting events their human drama, and keep drawing the less talented, like me, back to watch. Would that I could do what they do.

Evers and Christie both gave us a tremendously exciting finish to an event that interests anyone that has ever picked up a rod and wondered about their prospects. Late last night, listening to the tournament details on TV, I was put to thinking about a bass fishing trip my old friend David Campbell and I made up into the wilds of Upper House Creek on the Cimarron Arm of Lake Keystone a couple years back.

That trip, too, involved an MRI from a family member that led to our success. David’s aunt and uncle owned property that was bordered on one of its sides by a steep drop-off into House Creek. We dropped off one day after work into that steep chasm into wonderfully clear green creek water whose bass had not seen a lure in two or three years, and they bit us like crazy.

While down in the creek, one of us going upstream, the other down (walking, no Triton), we saw several copperheads, and killed one of them that did not want to move. Dave ran into a tree stub that would’ve served well as one arm of a spring steel crossbow and nearly clipped off his ear.

In the picture accompanying this piece, if you look carefully, you will see blood (which I tried unsuccessfully to hide with camera angle) dripping off his right ear. That sports fans, is the price paid by the simplest of fishermen for success, and we, too, will take all the family help we can get.

All the bass on that stringer were released back into the creek, by the way. We would’ve eaten them, but neither of us wanted to carry them back up the face of that cliff in the dark.

We were just happy to be there.

Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen