Stan Fagerstrom
08-13-2003, 09:41 AM
“The Lady Ain’t Just Lucky”
By Stan Fagerstrom
Now and then I run into people with more talent at their disposal than a Hollywood-booking agent. I’ve known such a gal for the past several years.
You’ll see---and hear--- what I’m talking about if you’re around when she’s seated at the piano. Park her rear end in front of a computer and the eventual result would put an ear-reaching grin on Bill Gates. You’ll more than likely see the same kind of outcome when she’s got her fingers wrapped around the handle of a fishing rod.
Like I said, I’ve known the talented lady I’m talking about for the past half dozen years or so. I’d been trying to get her to go bass fishing with me just about as long. This summer I was finally successful. I’ve been debating the wisdom of having done that ever since it happened.
Are you wondering whom I’m talking about? Her name won’t come as a surprise to regular visitors to this spot on the Internet. Yes, you guessed it. I’m talking about Jennie Martin, the long limbed lady who runs the show here at www.ifish.net. (http://www.ifish.net.)
http://www.ifish.net/sfjclos.jpg
It took more than luck to put this dandy smallmouth in the boat. Jennie Martin displays an Umpqua River beauty prior to its release.
Jennie’s column provides the centerpiece for this Internet site. While her column does deal with her fishing experiences, it often winds up doing a whole lot more. Her writing doesn’t leave its readers guessing. Every now and then Jennie’s column raises the curtains of her heart to reveal the secrets of her soul.
If you’re among the hundreds who visit ifish regularly, you’re aware Jennie does most of her fishing for, and writing about, the migratory species. That figures because she and her companion, Bill Hedlund, live right on the shore of the Kilchis River. They’re within casting distance of a beautiful river that carries its share of salmon, steelhead and sea run cutthroat. Lots of female writers fish. Jennie is a fishin’ gal who writes.
But like I said, this is a woman who can hold her own in a bass boat or most anywhere else. She proved that to us male types who accompanied her on the trip I’m talking about. It didn’t hurt, of course, that the trip with Jennie took us to the beautiful Big K Guest Ranch on the Umpqua River. Scott Wolfe, the Big K’s chief guide was there to meet us. Within half an hour after we arrived we were putting smallmouth bass in the boat.
http://www.ifish.net/sfjpl.jpg
There he is! Jennie plays a nice smallmouth she hooked on the beautiful Umpqua River as Bill Hedlund looks on.
Jennie and Bill fished out of the bow seats of Scott’s drift boat. I was in the stern seat. My place in the boat provided a good spot to observe what was going on up front. I was still rigging my second rod when I heard Jennie let out a yip. Seconds later she hoisted a nice smallmouth into the boat. That first fish provided a pattern that was to be repeated all the time we were on the water.
Bill and I caught our share of fish. Nobody gets skunked when you go out on the Umpqua with a veteran guide like the Big K’s Scott Wolfe. The area of the Umpqua near the Big K is loaded with smallmouth and Scott knows where they are. Time after time on the trip Jennie, Bill and I made with him he pointed out where big fish were holding.
“There’s a dandy over there by that rock ledge,” he’d say, “that fish has to be four or five pounds. I see it every time I fish this part of the river. Cast your lure right up above that ledge and let it drift down close to the cover.”
Jennie has been plagued with vision problems that go hand in hand with a miserable disease called Marfan syndrome darn near as long as she can remember. But while her vision might not be as sharp as yours or mine, she’s a hundred yards ahead and gaining on most of us when it comes to figuring out how things work. That’s why I mentioned some of those other skills.
http://www.ifish.net/sfbillj.jpg
"Here's what they look like, Bill" Jennie says as she shows her companion another of her Umqua River smallmouth.
You’ve got to have a bundle of smarts plus God given coordination to park your posterior on a piano bench and play the classics like you are a second cousin of Chopin. Play sufficiently well, in fact, to be invited to perform at a presidential prayer breakfast in the nation’s capital. If they invited me to do something like that, they’d soon be praying to have me stop!
You’ve got to have the same kind of mental agility to figure out just what in hell those brain heavy dudes who write manuals on computer technology are talking about. That stuff might as well be written in Greek for as much sense as I can make out of it most of the time.
Jennie has and does master both tasks. What’s more she does it with a seeming ease that can be a tad unnerving to those of us who have the musical and mechanical smarts of a retarded billy goat, and you can put yours truly at the head of that list. I swear what the lady doesn’t know for certain she sure as hell suspects.
I was aware of this when I lined up our fishing trip for smallmouth. Some elements of it surfaced again before the trip was over. Bill and I usually flipped our lures some distance from the drift boat. Not Jennie. I noticed that she spent a good share of her time just dinking the Outlaw Baits tubes baits she used to catch most of her on off the bottom right next to the boat.
http://www.ifish.net/sfclsm.jpg
Jennie caught most of her Umpqua River smallmouth on an Outlaw Baits tube lure.
Jennie Martin might not have eyes like an eagle, but it didn’t take her all day to figure out that it pays to watch what’s down there under the boat when you’re on the clear waters of the Umpqua. The river’s fearlessly aggressive smallmouth ease out from under the rock ledges to eyeball your lure. Often it’s one of the smaller fish that darts in to grab it first.
But that isn’t how it has to be. You don’t always have to let the smaller fish run off with your lure unless you choose to do so. You can simply twitch it away from them and concentrate on getting in front of the nose of the bigger ones lurking like shadows around the river’s boulders and under its rocky ledges.
I didn’t ask her specifically, because I didn’t have opportunity for a one-on-one exchange after our trip. But the way I’ve got it figured, that’s exactly what that smart aleck of a computer whomping, piano plunking, piscatorial phenom we call Jennie was up to. And it figures. Why? Because before the day was over she I saw her set the hook and watched as her rod tip was yanked down into the water. A couple of minutes later Scott had his net under a beautiful smallmouth that had to crowd 4-pounds.
A smallmouth that big is a lot fish for its size. If you have doubts about that it has to be because you’ve not hooked one like it on light gear lately. Did I hear you say she’s just plain lucky? Pig poop! She’s no luckier than the rest of us, but she does a whole lot better job of sizing up a situation whether it be performing for a president, taking the confusion out of computer manuals---or fooling fish.
Jennie’s ifish column is one of the first things I go to when I begin my day on the Internet. It fascinates me. And part of that fascination is in knowing her numerous accomplishments were and are being made despite being burdened with physical problems that would have put someone with less guts and spiritual strength in the prone position a long time ago. Now and then, especially if I catch myself feeling sorry for myself, her writing makes me realize just how damn lucky are those of us who don’t carry the same kind of cross.
Like I said in the beginning, I’d been trying to get her to fishing with me since we first said hello a few years back. As I said before, now that I have I’m not sure it was all that good an idea. Why? Because she wound up kicking the collective butts of everybody else in the boat. And because I’ve been trying to figure exactly how to get the backlashes out of my bass fishing ego ever since it happened!
By Stan Fagerstrom
Now and then I run into people with more talent at their disposal than a Hollywood-booking agent. I’ve known such a gal for the past several years.
You’ll see---and hear--- what I’m talking about if you’re around when she’s seated at the piano. Park her rear end in front of a computer and the eventual result would put an ear-reaching grin on Bill Gates. You’ll more than likely see the same kind of outcome when she’s got her fingers wrapped around the handle of a fishing rod.
Like I said, I’ve known the talented lady I’m talking about for the past half dozen years or so. I’d been trying to get her to go bass fishing with me just about as long. This summer I was finally successful. I’ve been debating the wisdom of having done that ever since it happened.
Are you wondering whom I’m talking about? Her name won’t come as a surprise to regular visitors to this spot on the Internet. Yes, you guessed it. I’m talking about Jennie Martin, the long limbed lady who runs the show here at www.ifish.net. (http://www.ifish.net.)
http://www.ifish.net/sfjclos.jpg
It took more than luck to put this dandy smallmouth in the boat. Jennie Martin displays an Umpqua River beauty prior to its release.
Jennie’s column provides the centerpiece for this Internet site. While her column does deal with her fishing experiences, it often winds up doing a whole lot more. Her writing doesn’t leave its readers guessing. Every now and then Jennie’s column raises the curtains of her heart to reveal the secrets of her soul.
If you’re among the hundreds who visit ifish regularly, you’re aware Jennie does most of her fishing for, and writing about, the migratory species. That figures because she and her companion, Bill Hedlund, live right on the shore of the Kilchis River. They’re within casting distance of a beautiful river that carries its share of salmon, steelhead and sea run cutthroat. Lots of female writers fish. Jennie is a fishin’ gal who writes.
But like I said, this is a woman who can hold her own in a bass boat or most anywhere else. She proved that to us male types who accompanied her on the trip I’m talking about. It didn’t hurt, of course, that the trip with Jennie took us to the beautiful Big K Guest Ranch on the Umpqua River. Scott Wolfe, the Big K’s chief guide was there to meet us. Within half an hour after we arrived we were putting smallmouth bass in the boat.
http://www.ifish.net/sfjpl.jpg
There he is! Jennie plays a nice smallmouth she hooked on the beautiful Umpqua River as Bill Hedlund looks on.
Jennie and Bill fished out of the bow seats of Scott’s drift boat. I was in the stern seat. My place in the boat provided a good spot to observe what was going on up front. I was still rigging my second rod when I heard Jennie let out a yip. Seconds later she hoisted a nice smallmouth into the boat. That first fish provided a pattern that was to be repeated all the time we were on the water.
Bill and I caught our share of fish. Nobody gets skunked when you go out on the Umpqua with a veteran guide like the Big K’s Scott Wolfe. The area of the Umpqua near the Big K is loaded with smallmouth and Scott knows where they are. Time after time on the trip Jennie, Bill and I made with him he pointed out where big fish were holding.
“There’s a dandy over there by that rock ledge,” he’d say, “that fish has to be four or five pounds. I see it every time I fish this part of the river. Cast your lure right up above that ledge and let it drift down close to the cover.”
Jennie has been plagued with vision problems that go hand in hand with a miserable disease called Marfan syndrome darn near as long as she can remember. But while her vision might not be as sharp as yours or mine, she’s a hundred yards ahead and gaining on most of us when it comes to figuring out how things work. That’s why I mentioned some of those other skills.
http://www.ifish.net/sfbillj.jpg
"Here's what they look like, Bill" Jennie says as she shows her companion another of her Umqua River smallmouth.
You’ve got to have a bundle of smarts plus God given coordination to park your posterior on a piano bench and play the classics like you are a second cousin of Chopin. Play sufficiently well, in fact, to be invited to perform at a presidential prayer breakfast in the nation’s capital. If they invited me to do something like that, they’d soon be praying to have me stop!
You’ve got to have the same kind of mental agility to figure out just what in hell those brain heavy dudes who write manuals on computer technology are talking about. That stuff might as well be written in Greek for as much sense as I can make out of it most of the time.
Jennie has and does master both tasks. What’s more she does it with a seeming ease that can be a tad unnerving to those of us who have the musical and mechanical smarts of a retarded billy goat, and you can put yours truly at the head of that list. I swear what the lady doesn’t know for certain she sure as hell suspects.
I was aware of this when I lined up our fishing trip for smallmouth. Some elements of it surfaced again before the trip was over. Bill and I usually flipped our lures some distance from the drift boat. Not Jennie. I noticed that she spent a good share of her time just dinking the Outlaw Baits tubes baits she used to catch most of her on off the bottom right next to the boat.
http://www.ifish.net/sfclsm.jpg
Jennie caught most of her Umpqua River smallmouth on an Outlaw Baits tube lure.
Jennie Martin might not have eyes like an eagle, but it didn’t take her all day to figure out that it pays to watch what’s down there under the boat when you’re on the clear waters of the Umpqua. The river’s fearlessly aggressive smallmouth ease out from under the rock ledges to eyeball your lure. Often it’s one of the smaller fish that darts in to grab it first.
But that isn’t how it has to be. You don’t always have to let the smaller fish run off with your lure unless you choose to do so. You can simply twitch it away from them and concentrate on getting in front of the nose of the bigger ones lurking like shadows around the river’s boulders and under its rocky ledges.
I didn’t ask her specifically, because I didn’t have opportunity for a one-on-one exchange after our trip. But the way I’ve got it figured, that’s exactly what that smart aleck of a computer whomping, piano plunking, piscatorial phenom we call Jennie was up to. And it figures. Why? Because before the day was over she I saw her set the hook and watched as her rod tip was yanked down into the water. A couple of minutes later Scott had his net under a beautiful smallmouth that had to crowd 4-pounds.
A smallmouth that big is a lot fish for its size. If you have doubts about that it has to be because you’ve not hooked one like it on light gear lately. Did I hear you say she’s just plain lucky? Pig poop! She’s no luckier than the rest of us, but she does a whole lot better job of sizing up a situation whether it be performing for a president, taking the confusion out of computer manuals---or fooling fish.
Jennie’s ifish column is one of the first things I go to when I begin my day on the Internet. It fascinates me. And part of that fascination is in knowing her numerous accomplishments were and are being made despite being burdened with physical problems that would have put someone with less guts and spiritual strength in the prone position a long time ago. Now and then, especially if I catch myself feeling sorry for myself, her writing makes me realize just how damn lucky are those of us who don’t carry the same kind of cross.
Like I said in the beginning, I’d been trying to get her to fishing with me since we first said hello a few years back. As I said before, now that I have I’m not sure it was all that good an idea. Why? Because she wound up kicking the collective butts of everybody else in the boat. And because I’ve been trying to figure exactly how to get the backlashes out of my bass fishing ego ever since it happened!