A Lure Tour

With fishing season looming (mine starts earlier than the trout opener) it is time to stock up on new fishing supplies. Unfortunately, due to some vile curse placed upon me years ago; I have very few vices. However, because of persistence and probably some weird, born that way, biological imprint; I am addicted to fishing lures; so at least I’ve got that going for me. I have to strike while the ground is still cold. Now is the time to engage in my destructive habit; I’m still hoping to meet an enabler but, for now, have to buy lures alone.

This year, I found a new dealer on the corner of the internet pushing fresh lures. I got a free sticker with my first purchase and now I’m hooked. Realizing that spring is close-the groundhog predicted a short winter and with a fifty percent accuracy rate, is the most accurate meteorologist in the world! So, I hawked my space heater to be able to step up purchases. My first choice for go to lures are for walleye fishing and I’ve got some river dancing to do come early spring for spawning ‘eyes. Going down the list of options on the internet can be confusing. When I shop in the store, by looking at the product, I can tell what it is used for and how or at least am able to ask someone wearing a name tag. On the internet where the main way to tell what the product is used for is by verbiage, it can be a confusing world. I have been able to decipher and decode much of this e-slang, fishing language (even though they use ever-confusing English). To save you time, I’ve invested mine to decipher the descriptions into the call of the lure hunter. Here are some examples:

First off there are many categories to syphon through just to get confused by more specific options. For some reason they aren’t even in alphabetical order. Reels: Everyone knows what a fishing reel is, even if there are fake ones that aren’t real. Easy enough, but then you hit the tab and apparently you can build reels. There are ice fishing reels, fly reels, spinning reels, bait caster reels (even though they all are, ostensibly, for casting bait) tight line, loose line, and left handed. My favorite, I’d call the reel of hypocrisy is the “adjustable, tension-free spool” reel (that one must be for politicians). The “Tight Line Pro Too” is advertised exactly as the name suggests. Except there’s only one not two or too.

Then there are the rods and rod combos and rod building sections. Rod building is a fun past time and a hobby unto itself. I’d try it if I wasn’t already distracted by the lure building section. I like lures better than rods. There are casting and spinning rods. I always spin after I cast so maybe that’s been my problem. There’s the “ambition rod”; ambitious fishing is a good thing if you can manage it. I’ve noticed that the ambitious don’t get enough fishing in. In the rod building part, there are tons of different gizmos like “foot snakes” (not a snake) and the recoil single foot guide (no foot but guide is a good word that gives me a picture).

There’s a terminal tackle section. Which as a guy who can’t get enough lures made me nervous. Turns out that it is your weights, bobbers (strike indicators for fly fishermen), swivels, snaps, jig spinners, leader connectors and bait holders (“hooks” for bait guys morphing into an in between stage to fly fishing).

Lure building is my favorite tab. I can get “one hundred count beads”, “folded clevis gold #2” and “silver streak #5 Colorando’s” and my significant bride sees the invoice and assumes I bought her jewelry for her birthday! Well, maybe yours will but mine knows better. She does enjoy a good birthday lure though.

The hard baits section is much different than the soft baits section. Don’t let that bit of accuracy fool you though. Hard baits are not jigs, even though they are hard. Those are lures that look like minnows but are hard. You can attach a soft bait to a hard bait and a jig is a hard lead or tungsten device that looks like a painted sinker with a hook out of it. Not all jigs are created equally though. There are sickle hooks, stand up jigs, banana jigs, mantis jigs, boogies ball jigs, and many others with different colors and color combinations that are endless. Fish are very finicky but not as finicky as you have to be when picking fishing lure birthday presents for humans.

Wait a minute. Looking behind the aquamarine looking glass into this website and seeing the evidence; it uses poor English, it is finicky, has lots of choices and colors, nothing is in alphabetical order, most of the stuff doesn’t work…Something off about the currency exchange, “send $50.00 USD, 100 worms or 50 minnows”. Everyone knows that 50 minnows don’t add up to 100 worms; that exchange rate isn’t right... I suspect that the site may be a front run by walleye or a musky cartel. I’m going to have to dry off the next batch of lures, pull off the weeds and look for bite marks.

See you along the stream.

The Lessons of Lynyrd Synynrd (From 2014)

Being a country boy, I have received an education from many diverse sources. Surprisingly enough I’ve managed to receive and attain some socially acceptable and certified forms of education and those have been helpful but not my most valuable lessons. I have learned lessons classically and in very unorthodox ways from a variety of types of teachers. Despite that, in my quest for knowledge, it may seem strange but I probably learned everything I needed to know just from listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Skynyrd was the anthem band for wild eyed country boys when I was growing up and is still for many today even though most of the original band members have passed away long ago.

No one can deny that the greatest southern rock band and one of the greatest rock bands ever covered all topics. Yes, they spent a lot of time singing about women and whiskey but tell me, how far will a man make it through life with a PhD if he knows nothing about women and whiskey? Even their name is a lesson in “How to Succeed 101”. Lynyrd Skynyrd was the name of teacher who told them that they would never amount to anything in life. When they became successful they named themselves after him to celebrate their perseverance and resulting success. They also reconciled with the teacher who became yet another fan which showed it doesn’t hurt to choose being classy.

Even though everyone that knows rock and roll knows about “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” those two very popular songs were probably their least insightful. Deeper into their albums, Skynyrd taught timeless lessons in politics, religion, environmental issues, family, and social issues while being on the right side of history even when it wasn’t popular. “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” came at a time when it may not have been popular to celebrate a man of a different color and taught us that everyone had value and that there is beauty where it isn’t obvious while saying outright that those that don’t see it are fools.

The song “Simple Man” spells how to succeed in life all right out, literally, for you. If you know the lyrics of “Simple Man” and follow them there’s not much else one needs. Conversely, “That Smell” and “The Needle and Spoon” plainly tells a person where they will go off the rails.

Skynyrd has a slew of songs about friends and family, not coincidently, in a large ratio to how they should be important to anyone’s life. Relationships are as complicated as the topics covered in these songs. “Am I Losing” warns of the possible dangers in friendships. The band’s take on love and relationships does run the gamut of emotion but in each song, there is a nugget of help for the realities of love. If you really want to stay tuned into not being caught off guard in a relationship, the painful but beautiful, “Every Mother’s Son” should cover it for anyone who is the son of a mother. While, “I Never Dreamed” covers what the risks of love are for.

Some people may say the band was “anti-gun” due to the song “Saturday Night Special” but they aren’t listening to the band or the song as they have many a song that makes it clear that gun ownership is a right and they had clarified that in conversations other than song. The song “Gimme Back My Bullets” and “Mississippi Kid” show deference for the citizen to protect and even avenge himself.

“The Four Walls of Raiford”, “Mr. Banker”, “Cry for the Bad Man” and “Was I Right or Wrong?” Each teaches listeners that life isn’t fair, at all. They also explain that some things are worth dying for and about courage and perseverance as well as perspective. While the song “Things Going On” accurately predicted the problems we now face would happen and explains why. If our Ivy league educated leaders had only listened to some simple southern boys, the United States would probably be in a lot better shape because the song accurately tells them what they do, what they’ve done and what it’ll lead to. On everything from the criminal justice system to federal spending; the Southern Boys were right and the “elites” have been wrong. Is it too late to fix it? Dealing with these people and what they think is nailed in “I’m A Country Boy”. They predicted a resounding “no” to that question and even though people don’t know it…that is also covered in “Sweet Home Alabama”.

As a guy that has travelled a lot in my life, far from home on assignment, Skynyrd covers the best attitude to have on the road and manages to teach how to keep perspective when you’re out. “Roll Gypsy Roll”, “Travelling Man” and “Coming Home” have been huge beacons in the night to me when I’ve been away. From the Middle East to South America as well as miles back and forth across the United States and at the same time, as a guy who has always been from nowhere and everywhere, Skynyrd always has helped me find where “home” is.

It hasn’t all been good. For me personally, I would have appreciated Skynyrd writing a song telling me not to drink a fifth of whiskey and jump off the high parts of a power line tower… or any moving pickup trucks or airplanes. Or they should have written one advising me not to try to win in a game of chicken with a farm tractor. A song advising me not to date “Susan Amwarth” and one saying not to invest in Adelphia would have been helpful but they didn’t. Maybe just a few tips on how to not screw up a chance at a 170 class buck would have been nice. However, they definitely wrote songs that helped me recover from my setbacks…

I think the sad irony of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s teaching is that you can be right but that doesn’t mean it will matter beyond how you handle yourself because the group thinkers will almost always go the wrong way. Most of their lessons include; this is how it is, this is how it got that way and it won’t change much. In one of the most poignant and beautiful songs ever written called “All I Can Do Is Write About It”, the band laments the future and the spread of urban sprawl (physically and culturally) and while the song warns that “you better listen to my song” it also states what is coming and how callous we will become towards the environment is inevitable. As we see yet another push for the development of our forests for consumptive and high erosion recreational use in the last bastion of anything close to “Wild” in Pennsylvania, the Southern boys give yet another lesson on the future, from the past. (P.S. They did mention not to name any real names of the people you’ve dated).

See you along the stream