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Fishing News Latest Fishing News Bad luck bananas | Bad luck bananas |
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| Written by Ralph Winingham | |
| Saturday, 21 June 2008 | |
 It’s not luck: Aaron Hastings ignored the popular superstition that bananas in the boat are bad luck in winning the 2007 FLW Tour event at Lake Travis. Photo by David J. Sams. Try to take a banana on a boat along the Texas Gulf Coast and some guides will make you leave them on the dock. Others just throw them over the side — you are lucky if you don’t go over with them. As long as some veteran mariners can remember, there has been a persistent superstition that bananas on a boat are bad luck. Apples are fine, grapes are good but one banana will send some guides into a fruit phobia. Most guides can’t explain the fear of yellow fruit, although spiders often play a part in any discussion of the bad luck superstition. Finally, during a slow morning of fishing with Capt. George Rose out of Rockport when deep discussion replaced landing redfish and speckled trout, the secret behind the bad news bananas was revealed. The popular misconception is that bananas and boats don’t mix because the bundles of yellow fruit being transported from Central and South America often harbored deadly spiders. One report of an entire ship’s crew being killed by spider bites and leaving their craft adrift on the open waters is the often-repeated story. Other theories revolve around the transport of jewels inside of banana crates centuries ago. Pirates would overtake the vessel, steal the jewels and sink the ship, leaving the broken, floating crates and bananas behind for other travelers to see. Not so, according to Rose, a fellow fisherman who just happens to be a Texas A&M University graduate who studied the banana bias in an effort to peel back the truth. “Bananas are a fruit that produces a lot of ethylene (a natural plant hormone that affects the growth, ripening and aging of plants). The gas given off by bananas could permeate and break down the wood in the boats,’’ Rose said. According to the California Fresh Market Advisory Board, ethylene will permeate through cardboard shipping boxes, wood and even concrete walls. Maybe in those old days, multiple loads of bananas caused the wooden hull of a boat to rot or perhaps ship’s crews experienced health problems from all that ethylene gas floating around the cargo area. The superstition about bananas being bad luck in a boat has also surfaced among the freshwater fishing crowd, although it does not hold water with Aaron Hastings, winner of the February 2007 FLW Tour event at Lake Travis in Austin. “I’ve heard about the superstition, but I am not superstitious at all,’’ Hastings said. “I have no clue why someone would think they are bad luck,’’ he said, pointing out that the yellow fruit is one of his regular fishing-time snacks “because they are natural energy and it is better than eating a bunch of junk food. “I believe that when preparation and chance come together, you create your own luck.” In any case, bananas earned a bad rap that carries forward today — even with modern synthetics replacing wood as boat building materials and with little chance of high concentrations of ethylene gas on open boats. At the very least, the bad luck bananas can be a good excuse for some anglers who just can’t seem to find a fish to break up a slow day. |
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