Sarley: Why some captains won’t allow bananas on their fishing boats

The world of sports has a strong connection to luck and superstition.

Gene Clines, the former Chicago Cubs coach once told me that players believed they could catch what they called “the thing.” “The thing” was a spell of horrible luck that befell a player. Players believed that a guy could catch a jinx from another player, causing bad play or a hitting slump. Nobody wanted to catch “the thing” and other players wouldn’t even sit on the bench near an afflicted player.

There was no guaranteed way to get rid of “the thing,” although many things were tried. If you remember in the movie, “Major League,” the first baseman set fire to his bats in order to remove the curse he believed was plaguing them.

Do jinxes or bad luck have any place in the world of fishing? You bet they do.

One of the oddest and also the most widespread jinxes in the world of fishing has to do with fruit. Incredibly the simple banana gets the blame for many types of bad things that happen to boats and their drivers on the water.

For some reason a long-held superstition about bananas being unlucky seems to go back hundreds of years. I’ve spent far too much time looking up facts about boats and bananas with no luck in finding a reason for it. All I know is that an awful lot of fishermen and boat captains will not allow the presence of that curved yellow fruit onboard their boats.

I’ve had charter boat captains on Lake Michigan ask the members of their fishing party if they were in possession of any bananas before they departed the marina. If anyone answered in the affirmative, the captain ordered the bananas to be deep-sixed.

I don’t know if keeping your bananas back on land makes a difference, but I have been on charters where the group wasn’t catching fish at all until the captain questioned his passengers about bananas. One of the passengers had a banana in his jacket pocket, which the captain threw overboard. The banana, not the jacket or the fisherman, of course. Incredibly, we immediately caught fish and ended up with a limit of king and coho salmon.

Now I would like to think that this event was mere happenstance and not a matter of luck or mojo or anything like that, but I guarantee you that there is one charter boat captain that will swear to God the bananas are bad luck on a boat.

Not every captain believes in the curse of the bananas, but some believe very strongly. I saw captain turn red in anger when he saw a passenger board his boat holding a container of banana nut muffins. Not bananas, mind you, merely banana flavored muffins. Too close for comfort. The muffins were not allowed on the boat.

I have never been a superstitious person. I don’t even have any lucky apparel, not as much as a hat. I have a confession, though. I have a belief that the net in my boat has to be wet. Yep, fish don’t want to be caught in a dry net.

This is why I dip my net in the water as soon as I begin to fish. I’ll wet it again every so often so that it is never dry. Does it work? I don’t know but you’ll never see me with a dry net in my boat. It’s a strange belief that came from my father who made me wet the net every time I got in the boat with him. Thanks, Dad.

If you have any interesting jinxes, good luck charms or crazy fishing superstitions, I’d love to hear about them.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.