If Only Money Bought a Few More Bites

They say money doesn’t buy happiness. Apparently it doesn’t buy fish either.

I own a fishing boat with all the bells and whistles. It has three motors, sonar, and GPS. There are a dozen rods in the on-board locker, drawers filled with every lure on the market, and a live-well big enough to hold me. There’s even a retractable yard stick to measure all those fish I don’t catch.

Before I could afford such a craft, however, I fished out of more modest boats and caught more fish. My most successful trip to Fort Peck Lake was my first, fishing out of a pontoon boat, chasing the rumor of a bite on a part of the lake I’d never seen before.

In my top-of-the-line boat on a lake I’m now quite familiar with, I’ve yet to duplicate that success.

The same holds true for me on the Yellowstone River. While I’ve owned a couple of drift boats that led folks to think I might even be a guide, the best fishing I ever had there was out of the old Grumman canoe I bought with paper route money when I was a kid.

It cost $239 new. I spend that much now to gas up the fishing boat.

I’m at a point where I don’t know whether to step it up or step back.

The latest trend in fishing technology is something called Livescope, a forward-facing sonar that allows anglers to see what’s ahead underwater. Fish show clearly on the Livescope screen making them easier targets for casting or jigging.

I’d rather not know exactly where they are. It would make an often frustrating sport even more so. Seeing the fish certainly doesn’t mean they’ll bite.

Fishing last week out of my fancy boat I hooked a heavy fish that took a while to land. I caught a flash of color and thought I was into a big walleye. Instead it turned out to be a smallmouth buffalo, a very un-fancy fish that weighed about five pounds.

A couple of days later I read about a woman fishing Nelson Reservoir who landed a smallmouth buffalo weighing 40 pounds, a new state record. She was fishing from shore, no boat, GPS or Livescope.

That fish didn’t care.

Maybe I shouldn’t.

Parker is at [email protected]