Proof is in the product, not packaging. My wife came into the living room with a smirk on her face and dumped a small piece of plastic in my lap. It had fallen out of the pocket of my fishing shorts, and she wanted to know the particulars of the item contained in the small package labeled Marathon.            

It seems the little blurb at the top that said, “Goes the distance” didn’t complete the description, and neither did Convenient “One Pull” Package.            

When her man leaves before the sun comes up and returns after it’s seen the better part of the horizon, and he’s sweaty, stinky and tired, then there’s only one conclusion for her to draw—the fishing was slow. The fact that there was only one Marathon package in the pocket means bait was hard to find, or else there’d be more Sabiki rig packages in there.            

If there’s one truism regarding fishing guides, it’s that we don’t litter. We may be prone to rusty hooks on the console and dead baitfish in every hatch, but you’ll never see a captain throw a lunch wrapper in the water. And when your Styrofoam coffee cup and hat blow out during the morning run, rest assured it’s the cup I spun around to retrieve.            

That being said, there are limited places on my boat to put trash, the most convenient of which is the pocket of my shorts, which have gained notoriety in the laundry room for their ability to spew everything from Slim Jim wrappers to booger banks. If it’s small trash, doesn’t have a barb and contains a minimal amount of liquid, odds favor it’ll see time in the front pocket cloth closet. Larger items tend to find a home in the coolers.           

Don’t get me wrong, my boat has enough storage space to hide a small family from a thunderstorm, but a garbage can it’s not. Those compartments hold the essentials for success on the water, be it lures, hooks, flyrods, rain gear, first aid kit, life jackets or the assorted trucks, trains, buckets and float rings my kids deem necessary for a trip to the sandbar.           

Once trash enters those hatches, it morphs into a camouflaged compartment contaminant, complete with the odor of decaying life and the stain of death. In a week’s time, a single Oscar Meyer lunchable packet with a scrap of leftover cheese can stain a yellow square into the bottom of a storage box that requires a double espresso, a single-edged razorblade and a bottle of muriatic acid to remove. The cheese will condensate into a blob of oozing green mold that smells like the inside of your grandmother’s purse and adheres to whatever it touches like Paris Hilton to 15 minutes of fame.              

The transformation of trash to coagulate is a mystery as keen as the true hair color of most females over 30, and it doesn’t just take place in a sealed, waterproof compartment. I’ve pulled items out of my pockets that went in as solids, and came out as performance art. Needless to say, there’s a definitive sculpturing effect that takes place if it goes through the rinse and drying cycles first.            

Which brings me back to the items that don’t make it to the wash, and that includes packages for skirts, teasers and harnesses. Names on some of the packages include Hooker, Hot Lips, Flashdancer and Gulp!, so I see ambiguity from my sporting life.            

The product labeling in this case might not be so coincidental. Just maybe, some of that language catches the eye of the sporting angler, even if there is an argument for some truth in the advertising.            

Enough fishing products are purchased by anglers who feel the need to own a hook, lure, rod or reel for every occasion that there needs to be something that separates and distinguishes a product if it is to be successful. And appealing to the lowest common denominator, the male thought process is actually clever marketing. I’ll expect to see fishing products exploit food and beer, the other two major males interests next.            

Products like Chicken Fingers, the hot dolphin daisy chain, or keg ‘o hooks, in a convenient to tap package. None of these products will help me avoid speculation around the homefront, but I’m sure some of them will end up in my pocket or boat cooler. After all, subliminal suggestion (send a dollar to Mike) is one of the most (send a dollar to Mike) effective means of (send a dollar to Mike) advertising.