MY WORST DAY OF BASS FISHING
Jay Yelas
Editor's Note: You're supposed to have fun when you
fish for bass because most of us think of bass fishing
as recreation. You don't expect to find yourself chained
to a wall in a medieval dungeon to learn how much torture
you can endure when you bass fish. However, many anglers
who earn their livings professionally fishing for bass
must go to work when they don't want to, fish in bad,
nasty weather and endure sickness, disaster and disappointment
as a part of their jobs. You may think you've had a
bad day of fishing before or fished in a really bad
bass tournament. But once you read the experiences of
some of America's best bass fishermen and learn what's
happened to them on their worst days of fishing, your
bad day of bass fishing may not seem so horrible.
 Jay
Yelas, a 38-year-old from Tyler, Texas, the 2002 Bassmaster
Classic champion and the 2003 BASS Angler of the Year,
has earned all-time winnings on the BASS tournament
trail close to $1,300,000. "The worst day of bass
fishing occurred on the Connecticut River when I had
my wife, Jill, in the boat with me, and I was pre-fishing
for a tournament," Yelas mentions. "I'd found
a hidden back-water lake on the map that was well away
from the main river. But to get to this backwater, I
had to go up a really-narrow channel and use my trolling
motor to get through it. As we started going through
this channel, I heard my wife scream, 'Look out for
that hornet nest.' I'm extremely allergic to bee stings,
and of course a hornet stings. When I looked up, I saw
one of the biggest hornet nests ever only 4 feet from
my face. Because I'd bumped the nest, the hornets came
out and left the edge of that nest like fighter pilots
leaving the deck of an aircraft carrier. They were headed
straight at my face.
“Those hornets really tore me up and stung me
all over my face.  Thankfully
I wasn't deathly allergic to stings and didn't go into
shock, but I really did swell up from the stings. But
after encountering the hornets, we got on through the
channel and arrived at the backwater. After I fished
for two hours and didn't get a bite, I decided I needed
to leave that backwater and go find another region to
fish. However, I knew to get back home that night, I
would have to go right past that hornet nest again.
So, I thought and thought about what I could do to keep
from getting torn up by those hornets again. I decided
to wear every piece of clothing I had. Well, I put on
boots, raingear, a motorcycle helmet with a space shield
on it, stuffed old shirts around my neck and put on
gloves. There wasn't a piece of clothing in my boat
that I wasn't wearing. When I turned around to look
at Jill, she asked, 'What about me? I don't want to
get stung either.' I told her, 'I'm going to put you
in the rod locker,' which I did. I locked the lid on
it just before we got to the hornet nest. As we went
past those hornets, they attacked again, but because
I had on so many clothes, their stingers couldn't get
to me. Jill was fine once I let her out of the rod box
after we made our way out of the little channel. We
decided to go straight back to the motel.
 "The
next morning when I woke up, my head was twice the size
it had been the day before. I was swelled-up like a
balloon. I finally had to go to a doctor's office and
get a shot before I could even go fishing. Being stung,
having to go the doctor and being miserable from the
effects of the hornet stings was bad enough, but not
finding any bass in that backwater area that I'd paid
such a high price to get to made this the most-miserable,
terrible, memorable day of bass fishing I'd ever had."
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