Lucky Fishing Shirt

A moderate sized common carp caught in August 2013 during a trip to Bandemer Park
located on the Huron River in Ann Arbor, MI

I started fishing for carp in July 2013. As my friends on Facebook will attest in those first few weeks of fishing, my fishing wardrobe consisted of shorts, a t-shirt and my Australian made Brahma hat. I wore the shorts and t-shirts for comfort and the Brahma hat to protect my bald head from sunburn.

Gaining the knowledge needed to begin catching carp was not an easy process for me. I did a lot of Google searches; and a lot of trial and error experimentation before I hit on a combination that enabled me to start catching carp with some relative consistency. After all, if you're not catching carp at all, how much success do you really need to be considered successful even if only a very, very minor one? In my case...catching one or two fish would do.

Things were so bad at one point that I started believing in various superstitions. Things like, using 3 specific baits in case fishing preferred 1 more than the other 2; casting at various distances from the shoreline to simulate various fishing depths; leaving the lines in the water while packing up the car to allow for a few more minutes to get a bite and hopefully catch carp; and any time I actually did catch a fish or two during a session I tried to emulate all of the details from the prior session to a "T" to hopefully duplicate those minor successes.

And, predictably, my superstitions applied to my clothing as well. For 90% of my first 10 or 12 fishing sessions, I wore the same faded reddish t-shirt purchased during a vacation trip to the Grand Canyon in 2010. Some friends on Facebook pointed out that I needed a new shirt since that Grand Canyon shirt was apparently the only one remaining in my dresser drawer.

Eventually the weather turned cooler and I started catching more and more carp, so the t-shirt had now been relegated to the bottom dresser drawer. But don't think for a second that I won't pull it back out if I ever have a fishing slump again!