Murphy's Law of Fishing #2: You will always catch big fish when you have forgotten your camera at home. Now would you consider that to be fact or fallacy? In my case, that statement is most definitely fact. It seems to me that each and every time I have mistakenly left my camera behind I can be guaranteed to catch some beautiful fish. To save yourself some wasted effort, please note that I have tried on numerous occasions to purposely "forget" my camera, but unfortunately for some reason Murphy's Law doesn't seem to apply to those situations!

It has been a long-standing story that all fishermen share. One of how ole' Bob was out early one morning by himself and he hooked into a 20 pound walleye. Being the strictly catch and release fisherman that he is, he had to let it go without a picture because he didn't have his camera on board. Now I'm sure that all of these stories are not completely true. Some of them probably perpetuate out of a day of shortcomings on the water. Others may be small stretches of the truth, a 3 pound bass may be stretched into a 5 ½ pound bass, and so on. I do believe however that the majority of these stories are true, due to the fact that it has happened to Adam and I on numerous occasions. I also believe these stories to be true because I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law.

Due to an unfortunate situation early last season, Adam and I were left without a camera for many of our trips last year. I am not going to go into details of this situation because I am still driving the bitter bus over the whole debacle. Needless to say, after that incident, we had a lot of successful fishing trips. We caught huge bass, fat walleye, big pike and long, girthy muskies. You name it, we caught it. And what evidence do we have? With the exception of some of our later season trips where we were fortunate enough to have another camera, we have zip, zilch, and zero, except for a few grainy images from a disposable camera. That is probably why we never really spoke of our trips much last year. Until now I suppose.

So why do we all even care if we have a camera on board for our fishing trips anyway? I know that I like to have photos of my catches to keep as trophies, while others might like to have them for bragging rights. I do believe however that most of us have that camera on hand for the big one that we all hope to hook into one day. Nobody wants to leave the camera at home on that day. With the luck that we had last year, "sans camera", I am starting to think that I might have a better chance of catching my big one if I start leaving my camera behind!