Murphy's Law says that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. This statement is supposed to be fictitious, but if you are anything like me you believe that Murphy's Law is anything but fictitious!

In the coming months I plan to give you examples of how Murphy's Law applies to the wonderful world of fishing. I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to whether or not Murphy's Law applies, or whether it is pure coincidence. Regardless though, I'm sure after reading each example you'll be nodding your head in total agreement. Chances are it has happened to you too!

Murphy's Law of Fishing #1: When you have one bait in your tackle box that is producing all of your fish (a.k.a. "hot" bait) something is going to happen to it.

In the spring of 2005 we were fortunate enough to be able to head up to a lodge on a secluded lake near Red Lake, Ontario. The scenery was amazing and the fishing was even better.

The majority of our time was spent chasing monster pike and we seemed to be getting closer to our goal of catching the big one with each cast. The fish were progressively getting bigger. We were really on our game.

The lucky bait that was producing all of our big fish was a shallow running twitch bait. While casting this bait, I encountered a nasty birds nest so I sat in the bow of the boat and carefully started untangled the mess while my line was still trailing behind us in the water. We continued to drift down in front of the rock face we were fishing and once we got to the end, my partner fired up the motor.

Before I could tell him that my line was behind the boat we heard a strange noise and then a snap. He killed the motor and we both leaned over the back of the boat to inspect. Sure enough, the line had gotten wrapped around the motor and the bait had snapped off. After untangling the line from the prop we drove back down looking for our precious bait. We found it floating in the water but it was in really bad shape, completely unfishable.

We didn't speak for quite some time; we were both upset about the events that had transpired. Neither one of us wanted to admit guilt on this one. We knew our hot bait was gone and more than likely, so were our chances of catching our trophy pike.

The rest of the trip was good, but we didn't manage to pick up any more big pike on our other baits. Coincidence or Murphy's Law? You be the judge. All I know is that the next time we head up to that neck of the woods; we're going to have more than one of those baits in our box!