While fishing for trophy largemouth bass, occasionally we tie into a little tike. It never ceases to amaze me what a voracious and ruthless hunter they are from the get go. They are ever vigilant and will not hesitate to try and swallow something that seems way too big for their consideration.

One day, we had guests over who wanted to fish, so we set them up with fishing gear on our dock on Lake Ola in Tangerine, Florida. We were all surprised to see what appeared to be about an 8 to 9-pound lunker right off the dock in about 4 feet of water. In the clear water, she was easy to see. She would swim around and then disappear only to show up again a few minutes later.

We tried everything we could to get her interested in our bait, including live shiners. She wanted nothing to do with any of it. We finally just ignored her and continued fishing. Eventually, one of the young ladies in the group caught a nice pound and half to two-pound largemouth bass. We took pictures and high-fived and then released him back into the lake. No sooner had he hit the water, than that huge lunker came out from under the dock and swallowed him whole.  She just swam off with the smaller fish’s tail sticking out of her mouth.

We just stood there in disbelief. It was a National Geographic Moment. This monster was waiting for a dinner that was worth her effort. Those small bass stay hungry because, genetically, they know the longer they stay little, the longer they are going to be somebody else’s dinner.  

We do just the opposite with our children. We protect them and encourage them…we promise them that they will grow up to be big and strong if they will just join the clean plate club. I wonder how much the demand for spinach would increase if mom was right around the corner with a huge mouth and big teeth waiting to nab each one of them as they traipsed off to bed with food still on their plate?

No…it doesn’t work in our society…but you can see a version of it when we let our kids actually get hungry for something…when we don’t give them every single thing they need but instead allow them to work for what they want. You can see it when our youth work at their hunting camp to build a food plot preparing for the fall hunt or when they get the boat and fishing gear ready for tomorrow’s fishing trip. It is good to be hungry about some things and to figure out for yourself how to make things happen to satisfy that hunger.

We can all learn from the little largemouth bass, even if mom is a softy.  Stay hungry.