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Field Ethos
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By Caleb McClain
I sat at the edge of a pond, staring at a single largemouth on a spawn bed for at least 45 minutes straight, twitching a Senko worm and praying for the fourth or fifth fish of the day.
“There has to be an easier way,” I mumbled to myself, wiping the sweat from my sunburned forehead. “I need a lure that twitches by itself and does the work for me.”
I thought through every way to create a lure that could swim, vibrate, or twitch without any effort from myself. I flipped through a mental rolodex of various wind-up children’s toys, small motors, and about 1,000 other options that all seemed useless. Then, as I repeated the word “vibrate” to myself, I had my eureka moment: I would build a lure from a vibrator.
There are many men who have said, “Of all the thousands of ways to catch fish that have been tried since the dawn of time, I can find a better way.” The best of these ideas, such as Larry Dahlberg’s Whopper Plopper or that fake minnow by some Finnish guy named Rapala, have been successfully designed, prototyped, tested, manufactured, marketed, and distributed in a manner that landed them in millions of tackle boxes across the world. Unfortunately, most of them are so absurd that they make Wile E. Coyote’s schemes to catch the Roadrunner seem practical.
I hate to admit it, but my own idea fell squarely into the latter category.
I scoured the internet for waterproof adult toys. After purchasing a couple bullet vibrators from some seedy website, I attached them to J-hooks with hose clamps. It was not pretty, but I knew I could design future iterations to look much better, so long as they worked. As they bounced and wiggled during the beta-testing in my bathroom sink, I could already feel my bank account swelling from the success of my self-catching bass lure.
And with that, I rushed to the water.
The first cast seemed promising, and the bass showed interest in the source of the vibrations in the water. He came in hard and fast, then … nothing. Within 20 seconds, the vibrations abruptly stopped, and the bass returned to guarding the eggs. I quickly learned that “waterproof” doesn’t necessarily mean waterproof when fully submerged, and the vibrating mechanisms would lose power once the toy was waterlogged. I alternated between the two vibrators, drying them out between uses.
Another angler came by and asked about the contraptions. I explained my thought process, but he treated me like he was talking to a man with a tin-foil hat. Still, I was undeterred. I moved to another spawn bed, convinced I was holding the next international bass fishing craze. Then another … and another …
After over three hours of failed attempts, they were no longer functioning. I kneeled in defeat and began popping them up and down on the bed, no different than I had with the Senko just days before.
At the end of the day, all I had to show for my efforts was a single 1.5-pound bass and two broken bedside table toys.
And in case you were wondering, I did not become a millionaire off my self-catching bass lure invention.
The post Sex Toys & Big Ones appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
I sat at the edge of a pond, staring at a single largemouth on a spawn bed for at least 45 minutes straight, twitching a Senko worm and praying for the fourth or fifth fish of the day.
“There has to be an easier way,” I mumbled to myself, wiping the sweat from my sunburned forehead. “I need a lure that twitches by itself and does the work for me.”
I thought through every way to create a lure that could swim, vibrate, or twitch without any effort from myself. I flipped through a mental rolodex of various wind-up children’s toys, small motors, and about 1,000 other options that all seemed useless. Then, as I repeated the word “vibrate” to myself, I had my eureka moment: I would build a lure from a vibrator.
There are many men who have said, “Of all the thousands of ways to catch fish that have been tried since the dawn of time, I can find a better way.” The best of these ideas, such as Larry Dahlberg’s Whopper Plopper or that fake minnow by some Finnish guy named Rapala, have been successfully designed, prototyped, tested, manufactured, marketed, and distributed in a manner that landed them in millions of tackle boxes across the world. Unfortunately, most of them are so absurd that they make Wile E. Coyote’s schemes to catch the Roadrunner seem practical.
I hate to admit it, but my own idea fell squarely into the latter category.
Sex Toys, Big Bass & Bigger Dreams
I scoured the internet for waterproof adult toys. After purchasing a couple bullet vibrators from some seedy website, I attached them to J-hooks with hose clamps. It was not pretty, but I knew I could design future iterations to look much better, so long as they worked. As they bounced and wiggled during the beta-testing in my bathroom sink, I could already feel my bank account swelling from the success of my self-catching bass lure.
And with that, I rushed to the water.
The first cast seemed promising, and the bass showed interest in the source of the vibrations in the water. He came in hard and fast, then … nothing. Within 20 seconds, the vibrations abruptly stopped, and the bass returned to guarding the eggs. I quickly learned that “waterproof” doesn’t necessarily mean waterproof when fully submerged, and the vibrating mechanisms would lose power once the toy was waterlogged. I alternated between the two vibrators, drying them out between uses.
Another angler came by and asked about the contraptions. I explained my thought process, but he treated me like he was talking to a man with a tin-foil hat. Still, I was undeterred. I moved to another spawn bed, convinced I was holding the next international bass fishing craze. Then another … and another …
After over three hours of failed attempts, they were no longer functioning. I kneeled in defeat and began popping them up and down on the bed, no different than I had with the Senko just days before.
At the end of the day, all I had to show for my efforts was a single 1.5-pound bass and two broken bedside table toys.
And in case you were wondering, I did not become a millionaire off my self-catching bass lure invention.
The post Sex Toys & Big Ones appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...