Bassin’ Blogosphere: Bad Luck Bananas
Category: article
Oct 9th, 2008 by OutdoorsFIRST
Modified Oct 9th, 2008 at 12:00 AM
I know this is an old topic in the sense the following belief has been around forever (or so it seems) in the world of tournament bass fishing. Bananas in your boat are just plain bad luck! Come on now, really? Bad luck? I think it sounds like baloney, but your dutiful scribe had to research this old phenomenon and see if anyone still held this belief system. The quick and simple answer is yes.
I delved deep into the history of this belief (actually about a 15 minute search on Google) and found most of the evil banana tales can be traced back to colonial times, or thereabouts, when merchant ships were occasionally picking up shipments of bananas to take with them as food for the long journeys back to Europe. Apparently the nanners were not only tasty treats, but lots of nasty critters liked to piggyback in the banana crates. Oh, you know, creatures like venomous snakes, spiders and other various vermin.
So to remedy this, ship captains started telling their crews that bananas were bad luck to persuade them from bringing the tasty fruits on board. The ancient mariners were a superstitious lot. This brings us now to the present day tournament angler. Why would they possibly still buy into this belief?
When I asked Lucky Craft pro Skeet Reese if he allowed bananas in his boat, he replied with a stern “Hell no, its bad ju ju!” He said the banana curse is true. Reese claims to have seen this phenomenon too many times not to believe in it. “If you’ve got bananas, you’ve got no bass!”
On the flipside, BASS Elite Series pro John Crews feels it is a bunch of baloney sausage. “I’ve heard the old wives tales. I don’t believe them, but I don’t put bananas in my boat. My reason is that my roommate freaks out about it. I don’t want his head messed up since we room together. Keep the mojo working, you know.”
My favorite response from my queries came from former tournament angler and host of ESPN2s Beat Charlie Moore, Charlie Moore. However, since this is a family friendly site I won’t quote him, but here is a generic paraphrase, “Blankety-blank no! Don’t blankety-blank with blankety-blank and then the boat won’t sink!”
Charlie of course was saying this in a comic way laughing the entire time, but he still follows the old mariners’ belief of bananas in the boat being bad luck.
Being a Chicago Cubs fan my entire life sheds light on my beliefs about these types of curses. The Cubs have so many curses, it’s tough to keep up with them. So you may be surprised to know that I think it’s nuts, crazy, dumb, stupid, ridiculous and frankly immature and foolish to hold such beliefs. I mean, for cripes sakes we are all adults. Good lord.
One more thing, don’t bring bananas in my boat. They’re bad luck.