The Perfect Bait

by SCOTT CORBETT

THIS is the time of year when fishermen can’t look at a page of print without seeing a column by some socalled export telling us what kind of bait is best for what fish when; so while we’re on that subject, I want to tell you about a little experience Judge Faggett and I had fishing on Cape Cod Bay.

We were out in the judge’s skiff trolling for striped bass, and we weren’t having any luck at all. The fishing had been terrible all week, and it hadn’t improved any for us. We weren’t getting a bite, we weren’t getting a nibble. We weren’t even getting a hard stare.

“Maybe we ought to try something else besides sea worms,” I said. “We’ve tried ‘em with spinners and spoons—maybe we should . . . Well, I don’t know. Mac was telling me the fellows down that way have been using a blue nylon feather—”

“Poppycock!” snorted the judge. Judge Faggett is a large, imposing man, and his years on the bench somewhere — I never ha ve found out exactly where — must have increased the powers of his voice. Nobody could have started out with a voice like that. His bald head was shaded by a discouraged old canvas hat, and he had on his usual fishing outfit — a set of garments which looked as if they had been stolen from some unusually slovenly sharecropper during the judge’s recent swing through the South.

“All poppycock!” he went on. “Either they’re biting or they’re not. People never stop to think what maybe going on down there,” he added, pointing to the water. Judge Faggett has a low opinion of people. “Maybe just this morning a mess of stripers ran into a mess of sea worms and had a regular feast. They’re lying on the bottom down there picking their teeth with crab claws and groaning. One of ‘em says to another, ‘Friend, I’m so st idled I couldn’t look another sea worm in the face!’ Just then some simpleton like us lets down a sea worm he’s paid 75 cents hardearned cash money a dozen for. W hat do the fisli do? They take one look, burp quietly, and swim away fast as they can.”

“I —”

“Stop talking so much and let’s eat lunch,”said Judge Faggett. “Get out the beer.”

I stopped the boat, and we solaced ourselves with tomato-and-Iettuce sandwiches and a few cans of beer.

“Another thing,” Judge Faggett resumed. “People don’t give fish credit for being as human as the next one. Fish are more like people than people think. They have fads just, the same as people. One day some fish who’s big and popular in the school decides he likes squid best, so for a while nothing will do but squid. It’s all the fashion.”

“Seems to me that that flies right in the face of your first thesis.”

“My boy, you’d never make a judge,” he said pityingly. “Hand me that sack of beer. And the opener.”

I handed him the beer sack and the opener and dropped a piece of tomato out of my sandwich doing it. I picked it up off the floor boards and tossed it, over the side.

There was a splash and a flip of a tail, and nyv eyres popped. “Judge! Did you sec that?”

“See what ?”

“That fish! It struck my tomato!”

Judge Faggett looked at the water and then he looked at me. “You’re not getting any more beer,” he said, rolling down the edge of the beer sack firmly.

“But I tell you it did! I threw out a hunk of tomato. The fish jumped. The tomato is gone.”

“Took it down with him,” snapped the judge.

With trembling fingers I picked another piece of tomato out of my sandwich. “Well see,” I said, and tossed it overboard.

Slosh!

“That was a worth-while fish,” said Judge Faggett slowly, wiping the splash off his face. “How many more of those sandwiches have we?”

“Two.”

“Get ‘em out and let’s bait up.”

One hour later there wasn’t footroom on the floor hoards.

“What I like about it is, only the big hoys seem to go for it,”said the judge as wo gaffed a 50-poifnder over the side. Water was lapping at the top of t he gunwales.

“Judge, w-e can’t take any more fish,” I said. “We don’t dare. Anymore and we’ll sink — boat, fish, and all — and have to swim for it.”

Judge Faggett cast a sharp glance toward the shore. “Think we could swim it from here?”

“Well, I don’t know about you,” I said somewhat vainly, “but I could.”

“Then start swimming,” said the judge, turning back to his work. “I’m going to boat a couple more.”

“Now, there’s several possibilities we’ve got to consider,” said Judge Faggett back at the house, while I was drying my clothes in front of the fire. He poured himself a few more fingers of my best liquorand cleared his throat, with it. “First of all, is it the tomatoes they like, or is it the mayonnaise? Well, they must have seen tomatoes before, and they must have seen mayonnaise. Lots of fishermen take tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise on them and drop pieces of ‘em in the boat and then heave ‘em out the way you did. Therefore, it must be either the special kind of tomato or the particular brand of mayonnaise. Now, those tomatoes out of your own garden certainly are exceptionally well adapted to the purpose. They stay on the hook. Those tomatoes have the nastiest, thickest, toughest skins I’ve ever seen.”

I decided to overlook this insult, since it happened to be true. “Yes, but —”

“Now, the mayonnaise. What brand of mayonnaise did you use?”

“Well, it’s a new kind —”

“Ah!”

“It was on special. Cheaper than all the other brands at the supermarket, so my wife decided to try it.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere! The judge rose and paced the floor for a moment, scratching his stomach thoughtfully, and then stabbed a finger at me. “Pick me up at 4 A.M. in the morning and we’ll resume operations. Don’t forget the mayonnaise. And the tomato. And the beer. Now let’s drive down to the cove and go sell some fish.”

We drove in the judge’s jeep down to the out-of-the-way cove where we had beached his boat in order to keep the size of our catch a secret, and when we had loaded the stripers into the jeep we went out and sold part of them at each of four different fish markets, to keep anyone from getting wind of too much. During the fishing season, fishermen live in a police state of their own making. Every move a fisherman makes is watched. Meantime, he’s watching all the others.

The second day we got the thing narrowed down in no time. Plain tomato got us nothing. Tomato with ordinary good mayonnaise got us nothing. But tomato with that bargain mayonnaise had our arms aching as we hauled them in.

“Prattley’s Premier Mayonnaise,” mused the judge, reading the label through his pince-nez, which were attached to his filthy fishing-jacket by a piece of 16-pound test Irish linen line. “I wonder if we could quietly pick up a block of stock in this concern? Well, that’s for later. After we’ve completed our research. I can deduce part of this stuffs secret already, though. It’s so goppy and gooky that even salt water doesn’t wash it off the tomatoes. That’s half the secret — it sticks.”

Judge Faggett is a brilliant man. After all, he’s a judge.

Well, the whole week went the same way. Every day we made a killing. Naturally, despite all our precautions, the other fishermen got suspicious and began to keep an eye on us, but we simply went off and fished in such unlikely places that they couldn’t believe we’d get anything there. Wherever we went, though, the big ones followed. I suppose Judge Faggett and I are only flesh and blood, and prey to the same tendency to let success go to our heads as anyone else. It got so we wore throwing back the 40-pounders.

The fifth day the wind came up a little too heavy to go out. “We won’t let the day go to waste. We’ve got a job to do,” said Judge Faggett, and we did it. We spent the day driving up and down the Cape buying up every jar of Prattey’s Premier Mayonnaise we could find. We found 1263 jars. Judge Fagged was determined to corner the market if it took every cent I had.

The next day the weather leveled off and we went out again — and it happened. I knew something was wrong the minute I let out my line, because I ran out 75 feet without getting a strike. After 1 stopped my reel I still didn’t get any action. Judge Faggett wasn’t getting any either. We looked at each other, and the judge’s nose seemed drained of color.

“I knew it! It was just a fad! A fish fad!” he groaned. “Now they’ve gone on to something else. The question is, what?”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “Something funny is going on here. I keep getting touches — extremely light touches. It’s as if my tomato were out of balance. That’s it! I’ll bet there’s something wrong with the mayonnaise today. I’ll bet it’s coming off!”

“Poppycock!” snapped Judge Fagged. “I tell you they’ve had enough of Prattley’s. I told you this would happen,” he added not quite accurately. as even judges sometimes will in the heat of a bad moment.

“Well, I’m going to reel in for a look at my bait,” I declared, and began slowly reeling in. All the way, that strange action of my line continued. It was scarcely discernible, and yet it was there. Then, as the end of my line approached the boat —

“Great jumping Jeroboams!" the judge shouted under his breath, if you know how I mean. “Look at that monster!”

It was by half again the biggest striper we had ever seen. Long as the boat. Must have weighed a hundred. Sure world’s record. And it was slowly and contentedly licking the tomato like a kid licking an ice-cream cone. “Judge! They don’t want the tomato any more,” I whimpered. “They’ve learned to lick ofl the mayonnaise!”

Judge Faggett collapsed from a half-standing position onto the center thwart, and his huge pot sagged in defeat. “We’re whipped,” he muttered. “Plain and simple whipped.”

We’ve talked it over up one side and down the other ever since last summer, but we haven t been able to come up with anything yet. So if you can think of any way to put Pratt ley’s Premier Mayonnaise on a hook and keep striped bass from licking it off we’ll give you a jar. You can get in touch with us c/0 General Delivery, Cape Cod.