150 Ways Not to Catch a Fish

I've been fishing twice now from the boat on the lake here, Ft. Phantom. Let's just say it's not Wright-Patman. There's a Thursday night tournament every week, and so I put in with them and hung around for the weigh in just to learn their game. Seems as if there's usually 8-12 guys in an every man for himself format, three fish, 16" limit. Turns out that for the past two weeks, no one has even caught a single keeper. When that happens, they roll the week's money over to the next week. This week one guy caught two fish and took home almost 400$, three weeks worth of money. Here's the bad part: the math. If you figure about 50 fisherman (about 13 per night for three tourneys) fishing a three hour tournament, that means that for 150 man-hours of fishing, there were only TWO keepers. That's pretty crappy. No wonder I didn't get a bite. On the other hand, if a guy could just catch a fish or two, he stands a chance of winning.

Here's a pic of some fish I caught in the summer of 2003 fishing with David Jackson and Jason Dempsey, just so I'll remember what a fish is supposed to look like.