Blue Moon Bass-Losin’ Blues

Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a limit in my boat
Without a check of my own

Technically, a “blue moon” is “[t]he third full Moon in an astronomical season with 4 full
Moons (versus the normal 3),” a phenomenon that occurs roughly every three years
(http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/blue-moon.html), hence the colloquial phrase
“Once in a blue moon.” Such were the skies over beautiful Lake o’ the Pines July 31, 2015, the
night before the Celina Bass Club’s eighth tournament of the season. In Florida this night, the
blue moon would inspire a witchcraft-related, ritualistic triple-homicide. God willing, my fellow
CBC anglers and I would encounter a much less grisly fate.

Having found some solid bass off a main-lake point during pre-fish, including a five-
pounder and one just shy of three pounds, my partner and I hopped in his sweet new Ranger and
zoomed to the spot first thing the morning of the tournament. Though the bite was significantly
slower than the day before, around 6:15 a.m. I managed to land a keeper just under two pounds.
After fishing the point on the other side of the creek mouth where we each caught a couple of
short fish and my partner caught his first keeper of the day, we headed back to our starting point
around 8:30 a.m. About fifteen minutes later I hooked one at the end of a seventy-yard cast, and
as I felt the line coming up, I dropped my rod tip to keep her from jumping. She surfaced
anyway, though, shook her head, and threw the hook. A solid three-pounder gone just like that.
“*!@#!&#*!” I exclaimed. It was probably the first time my partner’s ever heard me
curse . “I did everything you’re supposed to,” I pleaded.
“I know,” my partner reassured me. “There’s nothing else you could’ve done.” About
twenty minutes later I hooked another fish, and he swam so fast toward the boat that I had to reel
as fast as I could with my 7:5 gear-ratio reel and still barely caught up with him. Nevertheless, he
jumped at the boat just out of net-reach and got off. Two-pounder gone just like that.
“Okay,” I told myself. “It happens to everyone at some point. Professionals put it behind
them and overcome.” So after checking the sharpness of my hook—it was still sharp—I kept
fishing. After my partner caught his second keeper of the day, a nice two-and-a-half-pounder,
the bites dried up, so we motored down the lake to a point where we had caught quite a few
spotted bass the day before, including a sixteen-inch football. This time, however, all we could
manage were a couple of bass more the size of a baseball.
“Let’s hit that bridge,” my partner suggested. I picked up my Carolina-rig and caught a
twelve-and-a-half-incher off the front-right corner of the bridge, and my partner got out his
spinning rod and started working the pilings with a shakey-head. I knew he was serious then! 
As we eased under the bridge, I cast my rig across the back-left corner, felt a solid thump, and set
the hook hard.
“It’s a good one,” I told my partner. “Here’s my chance at redemption,” I thought. Then I
felt the beast rising to the surface. “No, no,” I said to myself and stuck my rod-tip in the water.
Still she broke the surface, shook her head, and my stomach sank as the bait went one direction,
and she went the other. Five-pounder gone just like that. Though there was an hour-and-a-half
left in the tournament, I was pretty sure it was over for me. Sure enough neither my partner nor I
caught another keeper.

Allen Heston won the tournament with a fifteen-pound limit he caught from the dam on a
chatterbait. Randall Morris came in second place with a twelve-pound limit he caught on a
Stanley Ribbit Frog. Jeff Cartwright took third place with about ten pounds (the official weights
haven’t been posted yet), and Rusty Denison came in fourth with eight pounds. My one keeper
weighed 1.92 pounds, but I had left at least ten pounds back in the lake. The last one that got off
would have won Big Bass easily, and I would have at least come in third place if not second.
Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

I decided to narrate all of this in part for my own therapy, but also because I know I’m
not the only one. In fact, JT Andersen told me that he, too, lost a five-pounder and a three-
pounder at the Pines, and Coach Mark Oglesbee reported losing a four-pounder at Ray Hubbard
on a day when bites were practically non-existent.

“This is what someone needs to write an article about in one of the fishing magazines,” I
told my partner when we got back home. “How to psychologically overcome losing fish in a
tournament.”
“They should,” my partner agreed, “but no one’s written it because no one’s figured out
how.”

Nor have I. But as I’ve been licking my wounds and replaying the three bass that got off,
I’ve also done some research. “Losing fish is really starting to get to me, to be honest,” admits
FLW pro Dave Lefebre in his June 16, 2015 blog post. “Everyone loses a fish or two from time
to time, but if you were in my boat and saw some of these things happen, you would simply be
amazed. All I can do is laugh and move on to the next one, after I vent for a minute …” after
which Lefebre elaborates,
Going into Chickamauga I was fresh off a second-place finish at the James River
Rayovac FLW Series event, where I hooked and lost two 5-pounders on day one, two
more 5-pounders and a 7-pounder on day two, and a 5- and 6-pounder on day three. That
sounds unbelievable, but my new friends (my co-anglers/therapists) will verify the
insanity. I also lost a 7-pounder at the net on my last stop on day three at the Walmart
FLW Tour event on Lake Eufaula the week before the James, and “Losefest 2015”
carried into the Chick.
(http://www.flwfishing.com/tips/2015-06-16-my-lost-fish-troubles-continue)

Okay, sorry Dave, but that does make me feel a little better. After all, my own “Losefest” at the
Pines constitutes only the second time I’ve had a bass jump off in a tournament with my partner
Nick Geller in the two-and-a-half years we’ve been fishing together. The first tournament Nick
and I fished together I lost a five-pounder on a lipless crank at Cypress Springs, after which I
promptly bought a fiberglass Dobyns rod to make sure that never, ever happened again. This
time after the Pines I’ve purchased a Falcon football-jig rod with a Moderate-Fast flex rather
than the Fast flex I was using. Will it make a difference? We’ll see (If you, too, want to
rationalize your exorbitant bass-fishing purchases, see Lefebre’s July 29, 2015 post at
http://www.flwfishing.com/tips/2015-07-29-do-you-really-need-so-much-stuff-).
 In addition to consumer-therapy, I also feel better when I remember that, compared to the
big guys, I’m fishing for relatively low stakes. After losing a key fish on the last day of the 2014
Forrest Wood Cup, Scott Canterbury lost the tournament and the $500,000 by one ounce. In the
aptly titled article “1 Ounce Off” in the August-September 2015 issue of FLW Bass Fishing
magazine, Canterbury shrugs, “I lost a fish that cost me winning it, but I fish every day and you
can’t catch ‘em all” (78).
Or can you? In his optimistically-titled blog post “Never Miss a Bass Again,” FLW pro
Pete Ponds begins, “Do you ever listen at the weigh-in at how many guys talk about all the fish
they missed? I can’t accept that it’s part of the job at hand. It’s one of my pet peeves. Most of us
would do much better if we would just ask the simple question ‘why?’” For Pete’s sake, Pete! Do
you realize how many times I’ve asked that question in the past week? Here’s a hint: I’m overly-
analytical to begin with, and I have OCD. Yes, my hooks were sharp. Yes, I set the hook
properly. Yes, I kept my calm. Yes, I stuck my rod in the water to prevent the bass from
jumping. Yes, they got off anyway. At the end of his post, even Ponds concedes, “The bottom
line is that we all miss fish. Think about your year and ask yourself if you would have caught
every fish that you had on how many more checks would you have gotten?”
(http://www.flwfishing.com/tips/2015-07-22-never-miss-a-bass-again). A couple I suppose, but
dwelling on it further would send me even deeper down the OCD rabbit hole.

So my fellow bass chasers, I leave you with this: after you have done all you can—
bought the best equipment you can, changed out your hooks, checked for frayed line, honed your
hook-setting and fish-playing mechanics, and prayed that God will help you execute properly—
know that even after all of this, you will still lose fish from time to time. As my buddy Randall
“Sweet Tea” Morris (nickname courtesy of Nick Geller) told me at the Pines weigh-in,
“Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug. Today you were the bug.”
Besides, how boring would it be if every bass lost the fight? A big part of the thrill would be
gone. We need to be thankful that God allows us to chase our dreams, even when some of them
jump back in the lake. And I need to be thankful that even though I lost three good bass, valuable
AOY points, and $400 or so last Blue Moon weekend, at least I wasn’t murdered by a witch. Of
course, when my wife finds out about this latest Falcon rod…