Maybe Buckner Is Good Luck...

Steelheaders can get in their own head in a second...

It was October and when it should be the best, when in fact...was the worst.

Our crew lazily sat on the beach of the big river, b's'ing away the day and waiting for a dinosaur to pick up the stinky baits that rolled around the bottom.  We had for that day, given up on the fish that had us driving upwards of 400 miles to fish for. 

To pass the time, we resurrected a game from our youth.  The name game, baseball players only.  First guy calls out a name, lets say...Randy Johnson.  The next guy has to start with the first letter of the last name of the previous entry.  In this case, the letter J, so lets go with John Olerud

It's an interesting game because you quickly see what era you and your friends came of age.  To this day I can name the starting lineup of the 1990 Oakland Athletics.  Another friend with midwest ties was heavy on the Cardinals and Cubs.  Still others who grew up around deeper baseball culture reached way back in the vault for names like Stan Musial, Dan Quisenberry and others.

The game can pass hours quickly, and I found myself saddled with a B....

Bill Buckner...

All of a sudden, my buddy Brian about falls over laughing.  Out of a zipper pocket he brings out Mr. ball between his legs and hands it over to me.  It was like it was meant to be.

I thought maybe this could be my lucky charm.  A karma changer if you will....

Fast forward to three months without a grab and I realized that Buckner was still in my front wader pocket. 

Could it be?  Could this be the cause of my horrendous slump?  Cast the rest of the reasons aside as to why I hadn't been graced with a grab trip after trip and obviously this was the bad juju in cardboard form

--

I sat down on a log on the beach after landing the biggest steelhead of my life.   Hands still shaking, trying to take in the last moments of glory as I reran the entire grab to landing again and again.

Reaching into my front wader zipper pocket for some gum, I grabbed something else instead

BUCKNER!

Maybe after all, he was good luck....

Or maybe, steelhead fishing is just an unanswerable question where the joy is in  trying to solve the unsolvable