Recently a friend from South Africa said they hoped that I was doing well and that my fishing was good. That’s funny because there is 4” of snow on the ground and our lakes have anywhere from 15-30cm of ice on them. You can drive on 25cm of ice with a pickup truck and its only mid-December. We are having temperatures common to late January…definitely outside my comfort zone!
My first contribution to this magazine was a general Spoonplugging article. The article must have read like Egyptian Hieroglyphics and been a lot to swallow. This confusion is why I decided to write about comfort zones. Not so much about what fish feel or even what my comfort is in -23°C weather, but opening fishermen up to con-cepts that are very alien. Mr. Perry wrote a lot about this in chapters of his book, “Mental Aspects”. Considering that I struggle with the concepts just like any other fisherman, I figured that I should write a bit about stepping out of our comfort zones in our type of fishing.
While I am stuck in the snow and ice of Minnesota for the next few months, I am going to be sharing my experien- ces with fishing within the Spoonplugging Guidelines. Most are going to be well outside of your comfort zones. Please remember that we don’t make these situations, we find them. When you read about these situations, remember that you drive your boats over them EVERY time you go fishing. So…
Last week I bought a new engine for my 4.27m Jon boat. The original 9.8 Nissan was brand new and fantastic but inadequate. It’s a really big deal when you’re 22.63km from the nearest ramp and you need to escape the weather. Anyway, it was during the process of buying the bigger engine that I thought of my friends in South Africa. It is one thing to write about weather and fish movements but in order for anyone to take full advantage of what I say, there is going to have to be some fundamental adjustments made to the way people think about their fishing.
An example of an adjustment needed is dealing with South African English vs. American English. An example is the word 'Dam'. In SA 'Dam' refers to the whole body of water behind the 'Dam Wall'. In the US, a 'Dam' is the structure that holds back the water. The Hoover Dam creates Lake Mead. In the US Lake Mead isn't a Dam, it's a 'Reservoir'. I will do my best to accommodate my South African friends but I am going to have to stick with the definitions Mr. Perry created in the 1940's. Here’s a link to Mr. Perry’s 2nd Fishing Facts article, which has some of the vocabulary Structure Fishermen use today. Click here to access the article
I am asked often about how, if Spoonplugging is so old, why have I never heard of it? At this point you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
Believe me, everyone’s fishing has been
affected by Mr. Perry whether you’ve heard
of him or not. Someday when I'm drunk we
can talk about pitching, flipping, depth
sounders, why fishermen don't troll in
bass tournaments, and how Terry O'Malley
was denied entrance into a bass tournam-
ent because a lure company paid
his entrance fee…
But this is a fishing magazine. Fran how
about talking about fishing? OK. Some
short examples to wet your fishing
appetite. Spoonplugging allows people
to catch fish that wouldn’t be catchable
in other ways. There are structure
situations where trolling is the ONLY
COMFORT ZONES
Bass Digest/January, 2014
My friend John Bales with a Largemouth Bass caught trolling