If you’re a serious sportsmen or for that matter ever been affiliated with sports in one form or another, then somewhere along the line you've picked up a your share of superstitious behavior.. Be it from your football days as a youth, where you refused to change your socks after a win or the ultimate refusing to wash your jock till your team lost a game. For the later of the superstitious behaviors, for your team mates sake you're winning streaks weren't that long.. Or for the more down to Earth people maybe it is just a ritual you go through before taking to the water. Like always stopping at the same fast food store to pick up your groceries before heading to your favorite hot spot. Which is a subtler form of superstitious behavior. Perhaps that is where you stopped before you caught that 10 pound once in a life time trout 3 years ago. No matter your once favorite fishing hole has since been posted off limits due to the dumping of toxic waste from the new plant upstream. These trivial things don't seem matters to the die-hard superstition angler though. As long as he has somewhere in the past a fishermen has caught a decent fish from the before mention waters. There is a good chance it will be somewhere on the list of anchoring point during the course of a day of fishing. Not matter if the creek bed has turned into a swamp of stagnate water from a hundred year drought. If a fish worth bragging about was pulled from this spot, then by God there is bound to be more there just waiting to grab hold of that special lure just as big as the last..

Thus the birth of fishermen superstition, a little known phenomenon of the modern day angler, but a just as important part of the sport than any rod and reel that has hit the market place. And just as a well-kept secret in the fishing community as any fishing hole that produces 10 plus class trout on a consistent basis. Although little is known about this strange quirk among the species of humans better known by their scientific name ""Fishious Storytellious.."" Research of this strange phenomenally has produce certain strange behavior common among it's afflicted. Usually one or more common objects are selected to form this uncharacteristic and abnormal bond to help perpetuate this disease.. For instance a stronger than usual tendency to always wear a certain item when partaking in the sport of angling.. This could be an article of clothing such as shirt, hat, pants, shoes or in the worse case underwear, and in the most drastic of those afflicted with the decease member of the opposite sex undergarment, or better known as ""Pitcherious Afflictious"" see: Bull Durham!!!

For those less afflicted with this rare form of disabilitating decease the symptoms are less obvious.. For instance say a fishing partner has a strange quirk of always starting his fishing day casting a specific lure, with the same pattern and color every time you fish with him. No matter that the fishing conditions that day may suggest using the complete opposite of what he is fishing with. Then chances are he is hiding or not even aware of the fact that he is showing the symptoms of Fishermen Superstitious Decease!! Those in the latter stages may even mark a hot spot like Bucks in Rut, with some form of marker. Even though it has been months since they last caught a fish from that particular spot. But like trained rats running for a treat at the end of a maze, they cannot help themselves from constantly returning to the same spot where at some time in the past a miraculous event occurred where they actually caught a fish species worth keeping….

Looking in the mirror I realize I’m in dire need of S.F.A (Superstitious Fishermen Anonymous), since having more than three qualities of the before mention superstitious habits.. Hopefully with me bearing my infliction’s it can help some of you anglers out there realize if someone you are close to have some form of this decease..

• I always wear the same once clean Guy Harvey shirt, that once I wore when cleaning up on a boat load of Reds, Drum, Specks, and always on my fishing list Sand Trout. The first and last time my fish box was ever overflowing with more fish than it could hold…
• Secondly we almost always stop at the same bait camp right after we cross the Galveston Causeway. Although in my defense they usually always have live bait there and by then we are in need of a pit stop if you catch my drift…
• And lastly sometime during the day we somehow manage to set anchor over the place of our past glorious fishing expedition of almost 14 months now. Sometime, I guess when we hit the year mark I stop counting in days.. Even if another boat has set up anchor we somehow manage to run them off, this is where an old tire tied to the front of the boat come in handy…