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By Paul Abercrombie, Addictive Fishing publicist
As most guys other than Mick Jagger know, growing up can be tough on your ego. The parade of pratfalls often begins before elementary school, when maybe you realize you’re not the best pitcher on the team after all. Or even all that hot at warming the bench.
Soon might come the shock of discovering you’re about as suave and debonair as celery. Long about your late teens, you may even face the brutal reality that you’re not a super genius.
Going saltwater fishing for the first time ever a few weeks ago with TV’s Addictive Fishing show star Capt. Blair “Mogan Man” Wiggins was another one of these, let’s say, reality checks.
You see, I used to think I’d caught some decent-size fish. Now I come to realize that guys like Blair typically call anything that big bait.
About the only fishing I’d done before was of two kinds – fishing for pint-size crappy and bluebills in a lake near my dad’s house in the D.C. suburbs. Or fly fishing for trout, during family vacations to Maine and upstate New York, in streams about the size of lawn watering run-off.
Okay, I did technically go saltwater fishing one other time. But I’m not sure fishing off a tourist pier in Virginia Beach counts. ‘Course, I did catch a real whopper – my dad. Right through the nose. Let’s just say that after the nurses at the hospital stopped laughing long enough to snip the barb off and remove the hook, still baited with a chunk of squid, that my dad wasn’t exactly amped about getting near saltwater with me unless he got to push me in.
That’s why when the outdoors writer at the Palm Beach Post, who was going fishing with Blair for an article, asked if I’d like to join them I said something smart-sounding like, “Uh, yeah.”
The plan was to chase redfish in Blair’s home waters around Titusville, where he’d fished only one other time this year because of a schedule jam-packed with filming shows on the road, fishing in the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series tournaments and getting ready for his show to reach an additional 80 million households when the program begins airing in July on Fox Sports Net on Sundays at noon, following FLW Outdoors (the highest rated show on FSN).
But as soon as we got on the water, it was obvious that Blair remembered the prime fishing spots better than I remember my own phone number. Poling through shallow waters, Blair pointed to a spot way out in front of the boat and, in a whisper, asked if I saw the tell-tale ripples of big redfish. “Yes,” I lied. I made a mental note to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist. Yet sure enough, there, as we glided closer, was a big redfish. Could this guy think like a fish?
Soon he’d maneuvered us near a school of feeding redfish. Suddenly, Blair handed me a fishing pole. “Just lay it right over there,” he instructed, pointing to a spot to the left and beyond where several dozen tails of feasting redfish thrashed. I coiled and gave a Herculean heave-ho of a cast and… bull-whipped the D.O.A. jig clean off. Duh.
Meanwhile, Blair decided to give it a go, and it wasn’t long before he’d hooked up and hauled in a nice 20-odd pounder. As he gently released the fish, his hands shook. “If I ever lose that shaking feeling, it’s time to quit,” he said. “And I’ve done this a thousand times.” Got a suspicion I’d sooner win the lottery AND get picked as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive than Blair would lose that shaking feeling.
Armed with a fresh lure – a jig with a shrimp on it – I was jealous for some of that, too. Gliding up to another spot where the water rippled with redfish chomping, Blair gave the word for me to try again. I cast. And next thing I knew, my rod was bowed over like some contortionist. Line sang off my reel. For a second I thought I’d really goofed up and snagged a passing boat’s motor. A while later – could have been a minute or an hour, I was still wondering how a fish could fight like that – Blair hoisted the golden fish up gingerly. About eighteen pounds, he figured. Could have been eighteen hundred to me. A few photos snapped, and we watched the fish swim off.
Darn, I thought. So this is what real fishing is.
As humbling lessons go, that felt pretty fantastic.
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