TIGHT LINES
BACK TO BASICS
with Andrew Spencer
She just looked so cute sitting there in the pick-up truck. She was waiting outside Fast Forward, so I ran in, got myself a cup of coffee, and came back out. I was late for work, but there she was, looking as cute as ever. Those big brown eyes were too much to resist. I just had to spend some quality time with her.

And Tom Walsh didn't seem to mind that I was paying attention to his dog rather than to him.

That's right, kids. My boy T. Walsh, builder extraordinaire, was sitting in his "other office" a few days ago, imbibing his morning caffeine, and Daisy, his very cute and very friendly golden retriever, was in the truck bed. After I'd spent sufficient time paying attention to Daisy, I turned my attention to her lesser half. Tom and I talked about the usual stuff - coffee, fishing, life in general - then Tom started throwing around some big words. Stuff like "empirically" and "tantamount." I stopped paying attention, as I so often do when people start using big words. I just get lost when I listen to people who are smarter than I am, and I've found that it's much easier to let the mind wander in such situations. At least that way I know where it is.

All the gadgets in the world can't help you master the basics.

So as my mind was wandering, my gaze began to shift downward, into Tom's truck. I have to say that I was amazed by the contents of the man's vehicle: a laptop computer; a BlackBerry; a cell phone. The guy is a veritable mobile Radio Shack. And while he's talking on the phone, he can be texting on the BlackBerry and entering spreadsheet stuff on the laptop. And he does all of that while drinking his coffee. The show is akin to watching that cartoon of the octopus washing glasses. It's a veritable ballet of technological advances, all seamlessly performed; the production as a whole is almost enough to bring a tear to your eye. But I digress.

So T. Walsh has got all of this cool stuff. And yeah, I know, technology makes our lives easier and we're all slaves to it. Jill will gladly tell anyone in earshot that I'm never more than arm's length from my BlackBerry, and that my laptop is a constant companion. But even so, all those technological toys got me to thinking back to my graduate school days when I was a research assistant assigned to Dr. Maurice Hunt. Dr. Hunt was, at the time, writing a scholarly examination of some obtuse idea in "The Tempest," and I was assigned the task of helping him. The final manuscript went something like five-hundred typed pages, which isn't all that long when you start talking about books. There was a catch, though.

Dr. Hunt didn't type.

And I don't mean that he didn't type well or he didn't type a hundred words a minute. Dr. Hunt flat-out didn't type. Instead, he wrote longhand. On yellow legal pads. Lots and lots of yellow legal pads. And then he handed the stacks of pages off to his research assistant - that being me at the time - and told said poor soul to start transcribing. One day I finally worked up the courage to ask him why he refused to type the pages in the first place. He didn't like to, he told me. Writing it all out made him "feel connected to the page in a way that is lost when typing," he explained. And besides, he was the chairman of the English department, so he basically called the shots. What it all boiled down to, then, was that he felt the basics - writing longhand, in this case - was the way to go and the way he worked best. And you know what that made me think of, after lo these many years of mulling it over?

Fishing tackle.

It's so basic! How can you not see it? It's right there in front of you! That is the segue!

Friends and neighbors, my father is very fond of telling me that a lot of fishing tackle is designed to catch anglers more than it is to catch fish. And, to a degree, he's right. Consider my father. Seriously. Despite his professed wisdom about new-fangled fishing lures, Dad's got no fewer than four bait casting reels that have microchips inside them to prevent backlashes. And a quick scan through Dad's tackle box reveals more than a few lures that are pretty much angler-catchers, too. I mean, when did rubber mice become the food of choice for largemouth bass? Yeah, they look life-like, but seriously. Mice?

The moral of the story here is that we're pretty much all guilty, no matter how high we may aspire, of falling into the techno-trap set by tackle manufacturers. Today you can find lures that glow in the dark, lures that have internal light bulbs that start flashing when immersed in water, lures that have special flavors injected into them, the list goes on. But you wanna' know a little secret, kids?

The old stand-bys are oftentimes better than any of the new-fangled nonsense you might see hanging around.

A lot of bass are being caught now in the harbor, and not on anything that comes with an instruction manual or a warning label about the contents being harmful in the state of California. Gibbs Swimmers - the same ones our forefathers fished with - are currently the go-to plug out there in the harbor, and the old standby pencil poppers and Slug- Gos aren't far behind. So stick to the oldiesbut goodies and leave the smoke and mirrors for the medicine shows.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to run. After all, it's the official first day of scalloping, and there's not a technological advance on the planet that's keeping me from that.

Tight lines. And full baskets. I