Fishing Superstitions 101: The Cell Phone Call
Keith Lusher 04.03.24
Have you ever heard of the banana on the boat superstition? It’s the one that says you won’t catch any fish if someone brings a banana on board your boat. Or what about holding your mouth right? Maybe that’s the reason you didn’t catch any fish on your last trip. How about the one that claims if you want to catch a fish, all you have to do is take out your cell phone and put it to your ear?
Randall Foto of Mandeville LA, didn’t buy into any of these superstitions. That was until today. On his latest trip to the bayou, Foto was setting jug lines for catfish. His normal routine is to set the lines out and do some bass fishing while the lines soak. “I slowly trolled the shoreline along a stretch where I’ve caught bass before,” he said. The small bayou is called Bayou Powell and it connects to a feeder bayou called Bayou Lacombe in Southeast LA.
Foto was throwing a silver and black curly-tail worm. He made a cast about one foot off of the bank when his phone started to ring. Foto scrambled to double-task as he held his rod with one hand and slid his phone out of his pocket with the other. Foto then looked to see who was calling. “I saw that it was my wife so I answered it. I started chatting with her and held the phone to my ear with my shoulder,” Foto said.
The multitasking soon became a challenge as Foto felt a thump at the end of his line. “I just set the hook,” he said. Foto stayed on the phone while he fought the fish, however, as the fish neared he had to make a decision. “It made a huge splash which told me that it was a big fish so I yelled – I got a big one… I gotta call you back.. and hoisted the fish over the gunnel,” said Foto.
He grabbed the fish and unhooked it as fast as he could so that he could put it in his live well. He then headed down the bayou to the nearest convenience store so he could weigh the lunker bass. “I knew they had a scale there so I brought it in and hung it. It weighed 4.68 pounds. This is the biggest bass I’ve caught in Louisiana,” Foto said.
While Foto admitted he’s never been superstitious when it comes to fishing, he also said he’ll be ready the next time the phone rings while his line is in the water!
