Met an impressive fisherman today

[cassidyta]

My wife was picking up the kids today so I had about an hour of sunlight to head down to one of the local lakes. I ended up on a fishing dock with a guy named John. He said that the bite had been slow, but he had managed to catch a couple by pitching about 5 foot from the tullies. I thinaked him for the tip and bean tossing on the opposite side of the dock. We made small talk for a little while and I asked him what colors he was using. He responded that he did not know. "excuse me?"
Turn out that John was born blind.
Most of our conversation was small talk, but I did ask him how he knew what lure to use and where to cast.
He asked me to open up my tackle box and he proceeded to pick up my various lures and was able to identify the make and in most cases depth simply by touching them.
He had an almost brail system that he applied to the bills of th ebait to distinguish color. He explained that he had no clue the differance between red and blue, but there were times that it mattered to the fish.
He also explained that when he would go to fish a new area that he tied on a 1/2 weight and would cast it in a fan direction. He would figure out the tullies, depth, and structure.
I am not to proud to say that he could cast to a location better than I could while being able to see it.
While I did not catch anything, I was glad I got to meet him.

[fishin spro]

thats cool man...its always cool to meet people like that.

[Bubba_Bruiser]

Good read Cass. People like him just show that nothing is impossible with a positive attitude and the want to towards it.

[WTL]

I bet he is probably pretty good. Like when you take away one sense the others get stronger, his feel of the rod is probably 10x what we have.

[bingham]

Yeah that is pretty wild

[carolina-rig-01]

that is amazing, thanks for sharing buddy.

[bcklash]

Thanks Cass that was a good read. Hope you get to fish with him more.

[bamabassman]

man.....cass, that is awesum man. you need to take this man fishing with you just to learn. and i bet he does have a better sense of feel holding the rod than we do. great story cass.

[MississippiBoy]

Man, that's a great story. I would've loved to meet that guy.

[Jim80]

Awesome read cass .


Jim

[woody]

Good story!

And like WTL said, his sense of feel has to be "out of this world" when it comes to detecting what's happening on the other end of the line.

I also believe that the lack of visual distractions would also give him a greater advantage with his ability to focus on the rod and bait like none of us could ever even begin to imagine.


~Mark

[abu4600]

Great story cass. Thanks for sharing.

[Basscrazie]

Awesome story.Man i bet you could learn alot about feel and maybe teach him some stuff to.I think that is great and hope you run into him often.

[zaraflux]

My great grandad told me a story about his neighbor that was blind.He took him fishing a couple times and the guy did pretty well once he was lined out where and how far to throw.One day my gr8 grandad was loading his boat to go to a stream to catch crappie the neighbor ended up going with him.They had been fishing a while my grandad started focusing more and more on what he was doing and less on the neighbor.There was a commotion in the back of the boat when he looked back his rod was heading in the water so he grabbed it pulled up the fish and it was @5 pound grinnell the blind man lipped not knowing any different.

[aikenyounggun]

man thats a great story...... shows that you can do anything as long as you try.... man but zarafluxs story must of hurt like crzay..... those things have sharp teeth