By Danny E. Cook
| My wife, and next door neighbor, have been harping for a month or longer
about how we needed to get the Banjo Minnow, because it caught fish! I
mean, all you gotta' do is watch the tele' and you can see that it works.
Right? I tried to dissuade their line of thinking but to no avail. I knew
it was hype and could be reproduced with available tackle but I couldn't
locate all the pieces. Thanks to Jim Porter, an avid fisherman and outdoor
writer who can often be found around www.bassangler.com, I was able to come
up with the missing piece. My puzzle was solved and completed with the
following; a Fin-S Fish by Lunker City in shad color, a Tru-Turn
Hitchhiker Trailer R, and a 3/0 Eagle Claw Kahle hook with weedguard, and
an itty-bitty BB shot, just to get her down a bit. My wifes' hot tip for the week was to "work the cover". (All of the people she deals with in industrial sales always have the cure for what ails her (can also be read "our") current fishing drought.) So this weekend we were working the trees along Little Indian, which are now heavily adorned with pre-Christmas decorations of spinners, cranks, and assorted multicolored plastics, all courtesy of yours truly. I know we left close to $30 worth of tackle in those trees that day. Anyway, mid-day and we tied up to a tree to eat a bit of lunch. While my wife and daughter finished theirs, I decided to try out my "pseudo Banjo Minnow" and began flipping it into the surronding trees. Water clarity was around 4 to 5 foot and since I had not worked this bait rig before I was bringing it back to the boat and twitching it around so I could see it's action. I was working the rig fairly close to a vertical presentation, just pitching it out about 10 foot or so; rise, fall, twitch, twitch, rise, fall, etc.. About the fourth "cast" I was standing at the starboard bow, looking over the gunwale, watching for my bait to get back into view. I peered down into the water and watched it come into view with a s-l-o-w return. Just as it appeared, I saw a big ol" "Black Hole" open up behind the rig, and suddenly my bait was gone! Just dissappeared! What the h....! And that's when I saw the writhing body of one big ass fish, roll over and dissappear into the deep. Damn! Had I just witnessed a Director's cut from a scene in Jaws! That "Black Hole" had been big enough to stick my fist in! I swept my rod and listened to the sing of line being peeled from my reel! I furiously cranked the reel as the line continued to slide away. What in the hell was going on here! Why couldn't I stop him! My God! I forgot to reset the drag after rigging this blasted bait! I quickly grabbed at the drag knob, gave it a twist, and another sweep of the rod. I felt a shimmiein' and a shakin' and then all grew very still. I had been too slow. He was now wrapped up in the trees. I stood there for what seemed an eternity, hoping he might unwind himself. But he had dragged off probably thirty feet of line or more. Talk about depression! My wife and daughter were talking, but I couldn't hear them. All I could hear was the sound of that line scurrying off my reel. And about all I could see was the image of that big ol' "Black Hole" opening up behind that bait and it dissappearing. So, black holes just don't exist in outer space, because I witnessed one in a northeastern Missouri lake called Mark Twain, and matter does just dissappear into them. And another phenomenon is that the "Banjo Minnow" works, at least my pseudo did. Once. I had no more strikes on it that day. From exhiliration to dejection in the twinkling of an eye. I don't know how much more of this emotional roller coaster known as "fishing" I can take. But the batteries are charged and the weather looks good for the weekend, so what the heck! Post script: I've wondered about that fish for days now. I only hope that he was able to throw that hook after getting tangled in the trees. I hate to think that my stupidity could have removed that prize catch from someone's line, forever. |
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