Journal
Ditch pickle, hydrilla gorilla: a short glossary
Half of fishing is the language. Someone says they pulled a ditch pickle out of the slop and everyone in the boat knows exactly what happened — the size of it, how the guy felt about it, whether it was luck or work. Nobody explains anything.
That is the whole idea behind what we print. A shirt that has to be explained is not funny; a shirt that says something the water already says gets a nod at the ramp. Here is what is on ours, in plain words, for anyone who is new to it.
Ditch pickle
A largemouth bass. The tone is affectionate and slightly dismissive at once — you call it a ditch pickle when the fish was good but you are not going to make a speech about it. Culverts, farm ponds, roadside canals: the unglamorous water where a lot of good bass actually live.
Hydrilla gorilla
The heavy bass that comes out of thick hydrilla — the weed mat most people steer around because it fouls a lure on every cast. The name is a compliment twice over: to the fish for living somewhere that hard, and to whoever went in after it with a weedless rig and enough patience.
The tug is the drug
The answer to why anyone keeps going back. It is not the cooler and it is not the photo. It is the half second when the rod loads and everything else in the week stops mattering. Ask a hundred anglers why they fish and a good share will say some version of this.
It's called fishing, not catching
The oldest line in the sport, given to whoever asks how many you got. Six hours out, nothing in the cooler, and it still counts as a day well spent. Anyone who has been skunked and gone back the next weekend understands it without being told.
O-fish-ally out of office
A pun on the auto-reply nobody reads, for the days the truck was loaded the night before and the laptop stayed shut. Not clever, and not trying to be. That is rather the point.
Every design here is drawn for the shirt it sits on — no stock art, no clip art bought by the sheet. If there is a phrase from your water that everyone says and nobody has printed, tell us. We read those.