Fishing and Job Hunting

Fishing for me is a tool to get away from the crazy hectic lives that we live. So when my brother-in-law Dave wanted to go Muskie fishing at "The Chain" in Antioch a couple of weekends ago, I jumped at the idea. We had discussed on the Wednesday before, that Tyler my nephew would come with us to try and catch his first Muskie. I have a boat that I share with my older brothers and I called them both to see who else wanted to go. Plans were made, and soon our Muskie outing had turned into a party of five people. My oldest brother Kevin, had requested that we should not plan on fishing for Muskies all day, because the odds were, we probably wouldn't catch one and we didn't want to go home empty handed. Now, we were going to have a "party of five" and all the gear (for every kind of fish) we could cram into our 17ft boat. Keith, my other brother decided that since the weather was so nice he would stay home to stain some more sections of his log home. Thank God! Space! Sunday turned out to be the perfect day to be outside so we were very excited at the chance of boating a few fish. Stopping for bait on the way, we loaded up the minnow buckets with about 8 dozen assorted minnows and shiners. We managed to get all the gear on board (and we put the plug in the boat) so we were off to a great start. Tyler wanted to catch a Muskie, and that was the first (and his only) plan. After about an hour of moving Kevin's tackle around the bottom of the boat (he packed rain gear on a sun filled day) I had finally started to fish with my first minnow. Kevin and Dave took a break from Muskie fishing after a couple of hours to fish with some live bait for Walleyes and anything else. We marked fish on the graph the entire day. Kevin had one bite around 10:00 am (and missed him) and that was it for awhile. I managed to catch one ugly Catfish before lunch and that was it! Four good fisherman and half of the Cabelas catalog was in our boat and that's the best we could do? We stayed and fished until dark and didn't see anything else. As usual we had a bunch of laughs (at Kevin's expense) and we always enjoy a day of fishing regardless of the outcome. Later that week while I was surfing the .coms, looking for a job (so I can afford to throw away 8 dozen minnows) it hit me. Searching for a job in today's economy is just like fishing. It doesn't really matter how prepared you are, or how many applications you fill out, or where you submit your resume. All that matters is weather or not you get a bite, and so far all I've got to show for it is an ugly Catfish!