The Biggest Fish Ever

How important is a story of the biggest catch ever? 

At the boathouse we give away free coffee for good fish stories which, actually, isn’t saying much since even without a good fish story we also say “If you can drink it you can have it.” 

A good fish story is to a fisherman what shopping is to a woman.  Though neither will understand the other, at least within their own world each can at minimum agree that the one that got away and the prize find at a sale have value directly proportional to the size of their respective imagination.

I had no sooner written this than into the boathouse walked a guy who wanted to buy some worms and, during the transaction, asked if I had ever heard of anyone having ever scented the worms. 

A related word here to ladies who fish with pink fishing poles.   First, we don’t allow on our dock ladies with pink fishing poles.  Second, we especially do not allow ladies on the dock with pink fishing poles when mounted on the pink pole is a spinning reel that flashes lights in a rainbow of colors.  I mean do you want us maggot-handling, fish-gut-smelling, spare-worms-in-our-pocket-carrying husbands to go shopping with?  I didn’t think so.  So don’t even.  Third, scenting worms is not a reference to perfume - unless you use the garlic-or-shrimp-scented stuff.

The fellow purchasing worms and I both laughed when I recalled a fisherman the other day who said he stirred in coffee grounds with his crawlers.  He said he thought the caffeine made the worms more active.  Can’t you just see a worm high on caffeine?  I mean you wouldn’t know if you had a fish on or if it was the worm dragging the bobber every which way.  And how is a fish supposed to catch up with that?  Maybe worms on caffeine catch fish?  By strangulation? 

Anyway I thought, in the interest of accuracy, I should Google whether caffeine affects worms. 

What I found was that caffeine certainly seems to affect everything else: headaches, blood pressure, weight-loss, cramps.  And, caffeine has been known to affect memory.  And canines.  Although in the latter case I’m not sure how.  But we can imagine.  I mean what would a Chihuahua, hyper to begin with, on caffeine look like?

Or a centipede?  Already fast, 100 little legs stimulated by a pre-race dinner of crystalline xanthine alkaloid and it’s no contest.

There was apparently a study, guessing it was funded by a sizeable government grant, on caffeine’s presence in an aquarium.  Heck, what’s a half-dozen gold fish more-or- less, buzzed into oblivion by blasting into the boundaries of their watery world?

Turtles too.  So that’s how the tortoise beat the hare.

But worms?

Without going into the biochemistry of the polyphenols as lab-types describe the properties of caffeine, suffice it to say that if you eat worms, especially those with a turbo shot, it’ll not only wake you up but most certainly take the edge off your hunger.

At this point, if you’ve read this far which means if you’re out fishing then fishing is really slow to be on your i-Pod, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with the opening question: How important is the story of a biggest catch ever?

Hang on, we’re still fishing.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Just one more medium-sized-tub-of-worms-worth of information I found while trolling about on the Internet.  Do you know what they call that little icon you can have installed on your computer that gives a buzz to your PC every 59 seconds, simulating a keypress so your machine thinks you’re still working at the keyboard so it won’t lock the screen but instead activate the screensaver?  Yep, they call it the “Caffeine.”  And I bet you can even guess what the icon looks like.  Right again: a coffee pot.  Instructions say “Double-clicking the icon refills the pot, and will keep your machine awake.”

Think of the possibilities for employees whose boss was subliminally alerted every 59 seconds to make them think you were still working. 

Now that alone, right there, is worth the time you’ve taken to digest all the above.

So back to our original question.  The biggest fish you ever caught – how important is it?

Better question: Who was there when it happened?