July 10, 2014 - Mountain Run Lake

I went over to Mountain Run Lake after work.  The forecast was calling for a 60% chance of precipitation, lightning, and misery, but to me, being an eternal optimist, as everyone who knows me could attest to, that just meant that it was a 40% chance of sunshine and good times.

I put in about 5:30 and fished until about 6:30 when I got chased off the lake by rain and then thunder. I caught one bass, about 8 inches, on a black diving crankbait.

Because there was so little of interest that happened, I feel like I should take the opportunity to expose a massive conspiracy, the likes of which haven't threatened America since the moon landing.

The reason forecasts are bullshit, loyal reader, is that that's not really the way they work.  In truth, the probability of precipitation is not a linear function.  If the chance of precipitation according to forecasters is, say, 40%, then the actual chance of precipitation is 80%, in my experience.  If the chance of precipitation, according to forecasters, is 60%, then the actual probability is indistinguishably close to 100.

You might say, we have all these models, the GSF model, the European model.  You might say, supercomputers the size of school buses spend their days computing storm tracks and interpreting Doppler radar to generate snazzy colored maps to put up on the evening news.  However, all of this science and equipment is an elaborate ruse, a clever deception, because meteorologists are out to con us all.  All because of one group operating behind, nay UNDER, the scenes:  the bread-bakers cabal.

The bread-bakers cabal, a sinister group of malevolent thugs, sitting in back rooms in various bakers across the country, shower meteorologists with gifts, like free trips to Hawaii and a lifetime supply of seedless pumpernickel.  "Why?" you ask?  So that they forecast nice weather when it will certainly rain.

Why is this advantageous to the bread-bakers?

Imagine, for moment, that you are going to have a picnic.  The forecast is for a 40% chance of rain, so you say, that's a 60% chance of sun, so you go to have your picnic.  Maybe you take hotdogs, maybe you have hamburgers.  No matter what, you will take bread of some sort to wrap around the meat.

But then, a maelstrom hits, and what happens to your bread?  It gets soggy, and is no longer suitable for human consumption.  So you throw it away, or feed it to geese. (By the way, bread in large quantities is not a suitable diet for waterfowl.  Take under advisement before you throw a whole loaf at them.)

So then, you have to buy more bread that you wouldn't have otherwise.  The extra bread sales represent a greater profit for the bakers, and the kickbacks to the weathermen continue.

This is also why they forecast 10 inches of snow, and then you get 2.  Everyone goes to the store, stocking up on bread for the period when they're snowed in and would have to dig through 6 foot drifts to find sustenance.  Then, when the snow of the century passes by, all the bread rots and you throw it away.


You might say that I am deluded, and that no such conspiracy exists, in which case you're just part of the problem.  Also, just in case the bread-bakers cabal is reading this now, and are on the phone with their crack assassination squad giving instruction to take me out, I've mailed the evidence of this plot to my confidant with instructions to release it to the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the National Enquirer if I should die under suspicious circumstances, like being smothered by yeast rolls.


 On a different tack:

A message to the reader who commented a few posts ago that you'd caught a bass out of the stormwater pond near the old DMV location, and anyone else who might catch a bass out of there, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave them in there, to be fruitful and multiply, and cull the sunfish population.

I'd also appreciate it if anyone fishing that pond would be a little circumspect about it, lest it become overrun by worm dunkers and other individuals of ill-repute.

I also appreciate the efforts of whoever was kind enough to dump them in there in the first place.