Story: The Competitive Angler

The Weekend had finally come for the biggest fishing derby of the year. Jack a small-town boy in east Texas was completely prepared for this event and had been practicing on this lake for the past month. He knew exactly what the fish were doing and knew exactly what his plan would be during the tournament. Jack had been competitive bass fishing for seventy five percent of his life now and knew nothing other than it.  He had won many tournaments but never one of this caliber, so he knew this was his time to shine. Jack was only scared of one thing, the stick of east Texas. This man went by the name of Tom Smith, he had won this particular tournament the past 7 of the 10 times he had fished it. Jack believed there was no way he could beat Tom with out a little advantage.

Two days before the tournament was supposed to start Jack was contemplating methods, he could use to beat Tom, and some of them were unsportsmanlike and did not represent Jacks character of being a hard worker and rule follower. The idea that Jack had come up with was that he would unplug Toms boat the night before the tournament not allowing it to fully charge to be able fish the entire day the next day.  Jack felt awful about this but did this in the hopes of beating Tom the next day.

The day of the tournament rolls around and Tom notices his trolling motor is super low, and just assumed he forgot to plug it in the night before. This would not allow him to fish the fish he found in practice on the main lake. So on the spot Tom picked a cove near the launch that was very calm and protected and fished a long secondary point just inside. To Tom’s amazement he had that day everyone dreams about where he cracked 34 pounds far surpassing the second-place finisher with 21 pounds. Jack was dumbfounded witnessing what happened on the water that day. After takeoff Jack ran to his first spot where he caught a small limit and then ran out of gas because he forgot to fill up the night before because he was too focused on Tom’s boat.

Jack congratulated Tom and left the tournament with nothing to say. Jack was amazed with What tom made of that day. And that day Jack told himself he would never try to take the easy way out of something. As well he would never do a quick fix because it is bound to backfire and hurt himself in the end.

(Picture is of a Competitive Fishing Boat, Source: Personal Picture)

Authors Notes:

The story above was inspired from the story of TheMonkey and the Girl. This story came from the Santal Folklore section. In The Monkey and The Girl, there was a girl that fell for a monkey. But the girls parents did not approve of this so they killed the monkey. The dad decided to burn the monkey like the corpse of a man. The girl was watching and distracted everyone standing around and then blinded them with sand. When they were clearing their eyes the girl jumped in the fire and burned with the monkey. So the plot I took away with this story was that doing a quick fix to a problem will backfire in the end. And this plot if from the perspective of the dad losing the daughter in the end. So in my story Jack was the one that tried to fix the problem of Tom always winning and then it backfired on him because tom won because he went two a brand new cove he had never fished before.