I've lived in the Upper Peninsula for 5 years now. I fish constantly. I fish nearly everywhere. During the summer I try to fish once a day, although that sometimes doesn't work out as I envision. What I am trying to say is that I am a fishing fanatic. But, even being so obsessed with fishing I still made a huge error that I wanted to write about.
I live about very close to a particular river. 5 years ago when I was interviewing for my current job I stopped and fished in the middle of the day at this river. I didn't know much about the area and assumed that it was a trout stream in the area. After 10 minutes of catching nothing I decided that nothing lived there and that was that.
5 years later I have crossed that bridge hundreds of times and never stopped to fish. I mentioned earlier how obsessed with fishing I am, and even so, I never stop at the bridge, because in my mind, from 10 minutes of fishing 5 years ago, there is nothing to catch at that spot.
Something got into me this last week - maybe intuition, a feeling, a whisper of an inkling to try that bridge again. So, this time I suited up in my waders, prepared myself with bass tackle, and did an once of research before going.
I showed up cast my BBZ-1 rat lure 3 times and was rewarded with a huge smallmouth. I didn't have my tape measure with me, but it was at or around 20 inches. I continued to fish downstream and hooked into another nice fish before getting rained on and heading home.
This blog post is like a Disney movie, there is a message that should be punching you in the face. If you didn't get it- it is this. Stop passing up water because of one bad experience. Stop and take the cast.
I could have been fishing this location for the last 5 years - but instead I listened to that little negative voice in my head telling me how there are no fish in that river.
Think of it like this - we all have favorite locations that we fish. We've probably fished these locations enough times to have had at least one day where we were skunked. Imagine if the first time you went to that location you had been skunked and so you never returned because you didn't think it held fish. You would have lost out on so many awesome memories and experiences.
This was an 18incher that was caught a little distance from the other fish.
This was the fish I caught under the bridge.
As always.
Catch.
Release.
Wander.
C'est la vie.
Pura vida.
Carpe diem.