Inside Angles: Recalibrating the Old Eye-Ballin' Eye

As the saying goes: “All anglers are liars, except you and me, and I’m not too sure about you.” For most anglers, though, lies aren’t mean spirited, or maliciously deceitful, so much as slightly fractured “stretchings” meant to improve the quality of the day. If, after all, a tree falls on no one in the forest, who be harmed? So much the better if a fishing tale harms no one but in the telling delights (or at least amuses) a few? (Of course, filling a fish’s belly with lead weights to win a fishing tournament is quite another thing, indeed.)

I wrote something like that initial paragraph many years ago after acquiring a copy of Izaak Walton’s The Complete Angler. (As an aside, over the course of the last 45 years that copy has mystically disappeared and reappeared quite a few times. The book has legs and another life, and where it legged off to this time, I wonder . . . and I wonder if it will be wandering back.)

Walton was a famous 17th century fisherman and writer. He believed that a fabrication here and there lent characteristic charm to our sport. He advised:

“The contents of your story be guided thusly: expand, but do not entirely invent. It is blasphemy and pure folly to usurp the role of the Creator and cause to appear upon the water some imaginary monster which, perchance, snatched away your pole, made mincemeat of your legging, mouthed a pony, and bore away your luggage on its back. But if you gently take one of his trout, and in a spirit of generous indulgence cause it to gain a foot or two of extra measure in the course of telling, you will have the favor of your listeners . . . “

He further advised how to tell such a tale:

“And when you prepare to spin out a tale, see that your hands do not tremble, nor your eyes dart to and fro, and do not permit your hands to wander hither and thither, but hold the one carelessly over your heart, as if proclaiming an oath, and the other open in front of you, as if to say, ‘See, I conceal nothing.’”

Exact fish weight isn’t a big concern to me most of the time anymore, although specific length obviously at times plays a role in whether fish are legal to keep. I like to eat fish. So I always have at hand a bump-board ruler of some sort. A weigh scale not so much.

So, most of my weight calls holding fish up are of the eye-ball variety. And at times, catching myself having pitifully underestimated the size of a catch and vowing not to disappoint like that again, I from that point reset estimations—if there is to be error it should be no more than slight overestimation, certainly not even the slightest underestimation.

Some semblance of reality is important, though. One’s eye-ball calls should be plausible, not laughable. After decades of handling lots and lots of various fish species of various sizes, I am pretty good at eye ballin’. But accuracy fades with time, so about every 3rd year or so, I resolve to weigh a bunch of fish that I wouldn’t otherwise put on a scale. It’s a necessary reset of sorts. A recalibration of the old eyeballin’ eye.

As noted, eyeballin’ estimations usually tend to bend upward. There is a telling example from our two decades running the Professional Walleye Trail, a noteworthy tournament series for the time. At one of the tournaments our tournament director and fish weigh-scale master was asked by an onlooker why an 8.75-pound walleye was the biggest walleye weighed in the tournament, when in practice the pros caught all kinds of 9s and 10s. “Because that’s what those 9s and 10s weigh when they cross a certified scale,” he replied.

So, as this season unfolds I will at times have in hand, in the boat and on the bank, a trusty Berkley Digital Scale and an old weigh sac (bag) of now unknown origin. The bag, which is made of soft cloth, gets a quick dip, slide the fish in and you’re on the board and batting 1000 when it comes to accurate fish weight. For bigger fish like pike or flathead catfish, I have a bigger Euro-style bag designed for carp and wels catfish. At times, when a bigger bag isn’t available, I use a decoy sack.

This likely is one of the least consequential Inside Angles topics of all time. A little fun? A pleasant diversion? I’m set for a season of weighing some fish as a necessary reset of sorts—a recalibration of the old eye-ballin’ eye—given at least passing interest in a modicum of believability when a caught fish is lifted toward the sky and the camera’s eye.

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