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About 35 years ago, when I was trying to make a fisherman out of my then-young son, we were pounding the shores of Bull Shoals Lake with lures in search of the ever-elusive black bass when a thunderstorm popped over a green Ozark hill.
We got caught because dad wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe because he wasn’t smart enough to figure out what was happening. If you’re a fisherman, you’ve been there.
Man vs. Weather: Be Your Own Weatherman by Dennis DiClaudio (published in soft cover by Penquin Books, New York, N.Y., $14.00) is a book that can help you avoid—or at least be prepared—for such scenarios.
How often have you been in a tournament when it started raining, pouring buckets of water upon your head so thick you could barely see your partner in the front of the boat?Or how often have you developed a pattern that required a pretty good wind banging against the rocky shore or the flooded timber to have a decent bite?
Of course, that’s always in practice, but the wind shifted or flat died during the tournament. And you weren’t ready for that change. DiClaudio is a humorist who has written a number of books, including The Hypochondriac’s Pocket Guide to Horrible Diseases You Probably Already Have, The paranoid’s Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You can Just Feel Coming On and others. Just those titles should give you an idea of where he is mentally—and he lives in New York City.
Although he works hard at being funny—sometimes maybe too hard—he did do a lot of great scientific research on this book and he passes it on with a tickle of your funny bone. For example, after going through the science of the development of a thunderstorm, he offers eight tips to avoid being struck by lightning:
“Tip #1: Try not to walk around the middle of an open field in the advent of a thunderstorm. In fact just stay inside. This one’s kind of easy to guess at, really. Shouldn’t need that much explanation. Lightning usually strikes outside, so you don’t want to be where the lightning’s striking.
“Tip #2: If you cannot avoid being outside in the event of a thunderstorm, see if you can’t get in a car. In all honesty, this is just a different version of Tip #1.”
Personally, I wish this guy and his tips had been inside the heads of a few tournament anglers I’ve shared a boat with—because a bass boat is not a car. Jump to Tip #5.
“Tip #5: Avoid wearing metallic body suits. Metal is a fantastic conductor of electricity. It’s a terrific fashion statement. I’m going to level with you here: you look like a douche bag. What do you think you are, a robot?”
Few tournament anglers wear metallic body suits, but they do like to wave graphite (a form of metal) fishing rods around. This also makes them the tallest spot on the flat water of the lake or river. Lightning loves to tickle tall things. Skip to Tip #8.
“Tip #8: Watch out for general weirdness. If your hair starts to stand on end or you feel your skin begin to tingle, that could very well be positive energy rising through your body toward the sky. Or it’s a ghost. Either way, get the hell out of there!”
Been there, done that one too. Unfortunately, bass sometimes like to bite really well when that action is going on—which makes tournament fishermen very reluctant to follow the last part of the tip. Before he gives those tips in Chapter 5, entitled “Weather Shows Its True Colors,” DiClaudio does an excellent job of explaining wind patterns, air masses—including cold fronts, warm fronts and stationary fronts, and storms. He also explains instruments, including thermometers, barometers, anemometers and more.
In all, this is a book that is fairly easy to read, has enough humor in it to make it fun and plenty of information to help the angler improve his understanding of the environment in which he’s trying to compete.
We became the ones getting pounded. We’d tried to run for the marina, but a wind so strong it blew the aluminum fishing boat sideways forced us to shore. We huddled under the hammering drops as we watched the waves blow, pocked by the sheets of heavy rain. The lightning flashed, the thunder boomed and rolled.
Although we both had on decent raingear, we were pretty well soaked after a few minutes as we huddled in the rocks on the shoreline. My seven-year-old was not a happy angler.
