Retired steel worker, draftsman, minister and grandfather of many, Allan (all in one person)and his son-in law and grandson, from Minnesota, pushed off in calm water to troll with me on Lake Superior, and more precisely Bete Grise. They took along a long time aquaintance, retired business owner Dave. With much anticipation in their eyes, we set several lines near the Point Issabelle area. There was a light bite early on with a few misses and we soon moved out to deeper waters in search of Lake Trout.
At about this point, I brought up the banana superstition because of the misses we had and sure enough, Jeff had bananas aboard. He ate one and discarded the peeling, but did not say they had yet another one stashed away.
After we set lines again, we hooked into a laker almost right away, but as I was busy setting another line, I broke my own rule and allowed a one of the 3 fishermen to try to net the first fish. (one of my rules is that I net the first fish, so that if it get lost, I have only myselft to blame.) The 3 to 4 lb laker was lost right at the swim platform and he managed to quickly swim out of reach and back down to the bottom. At least he was not bloated and was able to get avoid getting picked apart by the seagulls.
I could sense dissapointment, so I assured him it does not matter… “We’ll get some more fish, I told him.” Soon after that, he asked if he should get rid of the other banana. “Yes”, I said, “I’m beginning to get superstitious myself.”
As it turned out, Dave became my deckhand and steered the boat over my “spot” many times in order to pick up several fish now that the bananas were all gone, among them a 6 lb steel-head and a small coho salmon.
The steely was caught on a Silver Streak watermelon color about 250 feet behind the boat, on the surface. Dave had properly set the drag lihgt with the clicker “on” so that when he hit the reel started singing, alerting us to the hit. Jeff brought that one in as it fought a good fight and I opted to net it myself.
Now that’s twice in the past few days, as Saturday morning my clients also brought bananas which relulted in poor luck, except in that case the luck never turned.
