Back to School
- kristopherbmartin
- Aug 5
- 8 min read
The On-The-Water Classroom
Chance favors the prepared – it’s a phrase that resonates with me for many reasons. I’m hardly one to plan everything to the nth-degree, but I do believe that being ready is just as important as being on time. I get my stuff ready for work the night before so that I don’t have to go looking around in the dark for clothes to wear and if for some reason I’m late to work I know a concerned coworker will notice and not hesitate to make a call to inquire if I’m ok. It may sound a little silly, or a bit OCD, but it’s the way I prepare to have a good day. I stop and get a cup of coffee on the way to work without fail, and I know to keep enough fuel in my vehicle so I don’t waste too much time on my commute every morning. I value my sleep and every minute counts, but I also value my routine. It’s kinda’ like Ohm’s law – change one part of a circuit, and you change the whole circuit. If I miss a step in the morning, my whole, entire day can come crashing down. It may sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m pretty sure that my day is going to be horrible if I break routine. Check that – It will be the worst day of my life. If I do it for a few days in a row, each day will get worse, thereby making each day that I continue to live be a ‘new’ worst day of my life.
I of course am kidding (slightly), because a person can only prepare so much. Imagine how pleased I was when I reached out to my returning high school bass fishing team to inquire about their summer and to see if they wanted to get together for a day on the water – and they ALL said ‘yes’.
Fortunately for them, I happen to know a few people who were willing to help out and act as captains for our re-acquaintance on the lake. With a few phone calls and some promises of fun my two assistant coaches and good friend Jim White agreed to help me hold a small, impromptu pro-am tournament on Lake Champlain this past weekend. I’ll give John Lowell his flowers as well. He agreed to help out if he could, but instead was able to jump in the BFL out of Plattsburgh after being stuck on the wait list until two days before the tournament. He got in – his story will be shared in a later post. I’ll just say that he had an interesting day.
The Rules:
Each team will consist of a club member and a high school angler. (Casey agreed to take two with John unable to make it).
Whichever high school angler weighed the biggest fish would get a prize pack.
The team with the heaviest five-fish limit would be declared victorious. All scoreable fish must be 12” or better.
Confined to the Inland Sea portion of Lake Champlain from 8:30AM-4:30PM. Weigh-in will take place on the water near the boat launch.
The Boaters:
Casey Baroffio – assistant coach and darned good fisherman.
Olivia Baroffio – assistant coach and darned good fisherwoman.
Me – coach and all around junk fisherman.
Jim White – consumer of breakfast foods and helluva’ jig fisherman.
The High School Team Members:
Knox – Sophomore
Austin – Sophomore
Gabe – Sophomore
Preston – Junior
Ruel – Senior
The Pairings:
Olivia and Knox
Casey and Austin and Gabe (mostly because Casey was getting the two of them confused for each other)
Me and Ruel
Jim and Preston
Time on the water for a high school bass team holds premium value. Everyone was paired with each other for a reason.
Olivia has a smaller boat and Knox is a smaller person. If he moved around quickly in her boat he wouldn’t throw everything off balance. Knox fished with me as a guest in a club tournament a year ago and Olivia, despite her self-deprecation is a better boater and angler than she gives herself credit for. She is safety conscious and has coached high school softball.
Casey got Austin and Gabe for the above-mentioned reason as well as his ability to be constructive in his criticism. With both guys familiar with a baitcaster Casey was eager to get them on some different techniques using a spinning rod, particularly drop-shotting.
Preston was paired with Jim specifically for one reason –learn the jig. Jim is par excellence with all forms – structure jig, football jig, swim jig etc. You name a jig type and he can fish it better than anyone than I know. Preston’s ambition and coachability, coupled with Jim’s godfather approach to jig fishing it was a match made in heaven.
Ruel went with me because we didn’t get a chance to spend any real time on the water last year in order for me to assess his ability. At practice he was a willing participant but I wanted him to be able to put theory in to practice and see what he retained. As my lone senior angler, it was up to me to give him the opportunity to impress me.
We blasted off at 8:30AM and I pointed the boat east towards the Sandbar State Park and once there we set up on the shoreline that runs north. Ruel took the opportunity to throw a chatterbait while I worked through my rod locker, eventually choosing a swim jig. Naturally Ruel had a few questions about why I chose that spot to start.
“Well, there’s some current there, and a big, deep weedbed with a ton of bait swimming around. Some years, the weeds come on better than others and it can get a little pike-y. I assume that the other ran north to chase smallmouth, so, I figured we’d go after largemouth to start off.”
We worked the area with moving baits for a bit until I finally picked up a jig. With no takers on the jig, I then went to the drop-shot. On my third cast I hooked in to a three-plus largemouth that came off an abandoned mooring in 15 feet of water to inhale my bait. We continued to drift along when I felt another bite and raised my rod to set the hook – and it just took off. My first thought was, “I’ve got the biggest bass in the lake. This thing is huge.” After fighting it for a few seconds though, my excitement waned a bit when I realized what was struggling on the end of my line – or rather what was giving me the struggle.
“Well, it’s not a pike, it’s not a bowfin and it’s certainly not a bass. I’m thinking I’ve got a massive sheepshead on.”
Ten minutes later we finally got a look at the 14-pound monster that woke me up. Letting it go, we continued to fish our way north, stopping to fish a few different times. It didn’t take long for Ruel to want to try the drop-shot out for himself, and a few minutes later he was helping himself to our second keeper – a two-pound smallmouth.
As a coach, I decided early on that I wasn’t going to just act as a guide for kids who just wanted to go on fast boat rides or to just take them to the fish. I wanted to build a team first, and then have them learn enough to reason their way to positive results. Anyone can take a person fishing and put people around fish – most of them better than me. It was when Ruel started to have some trouble with his line that I realized everything I had taught him last year had been forgotten.
“Fisherman’s knot? Palomar knot?”
“I dunno’. It’s just a knot I tie.”
“That’s not going to cut it. 90% of this tournament game is tying knots. Everything else is situational, but if you don’t tie good knots, you don’t catch good fish.”
It was later in the day that Casey and Olivia relayed to me that their high school anglers were struggling with the same thing. Preston however was not. In fact, Jim was impressed with how he stuck with it and could tie a Palomar knot just as easily as tying his shoes.
“Once he stopped casting across the wind and learned to keep his jig in contact with the bottom, he started catching fish,” Jim said. “He’d cast across the wind and get a big bow in his line and he missed about ten bites before he got the hang of it.”
Moving north up towards the islands, Ruel and I finally caught the flurry we’d been looking for. I no sooner put our third fish in the well and casted back out when I looked up at Ruel fighting another as I set the hook on our fifth fish.
“Doubles!”
Dropping them in the well we then high-tailed in to the north end of Woods Island to break for lunch with the rest of our crew. It was kinda’ nice to meet up on the water for lunch and pass the chips and pickles around while discussing what everyone had done to that point. It’s also a good time to rib each other and up the ante a bit with ridiculous claims and bets. I liked that my team was coming together – and humor was the driving force.
Ruel and I spent the rest of the day bouncing around on our way south, stopping to watch Casey and crew beat up on the smallmouth just a few yards from where we had previously been before lunch.
I’ll spare all the minutiae, but back at the launch the Team of Casey, Austin and Gabe weighed in nearly 19 pounds with Jim and Preston being disqualified for bringing in more than a limit.
“Were you holding two fish? I had two.”
“Yeah, I had two,” Preston replied.
“Well, there’s two more on the bag!” <laughing all around>
Preston did however claim lunker amongst the team with a 3.26 smallmouth take that portion of our tournament. Of course, Casey culled ALL of his team’s fish, forgetting that he needed to keep at least two of them. Knox’s (fishing with Olivia) 2.8-pound largemouth wasn’t enough to claim top prize, and Ruel, while he caught fish, didn’t stand a chance.
Getting together on the water was more than just reacquainted with my team – it was an opportunity to impress upon them that we are a team. Each and every one of us has a role and each role is dependent upon the effort that their fellow team members put in. The reality is, for my first two years, the team hasn’t been that successful, but I knew early on how I wanted to build a program that wouldn’t only compete annually, but contend yearly. It wasn’t going to be easy – anything worth doing rarely is. My role as coach is to guide everyone to a common goal, and give them the tools and inspiration in order to achieve it.
As I told Ruel while we were fishing Saturday – “I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make him drink. Official practice starts in a couple of weeks. Everyone is going back to ‘knot-school’. It’s time for this team to take a leap.”
Comments