The sun was about to set as my dad and I pulled into the parking lot. A dozen or so fishermen were standing on the rocks, casting plugs into the water- a good sign. This was my fourth trip to the Cape Cod Canal and hopefully, my first fruitful one. As we tired out lures onto the lines, I noticed the quiet. Looking down the shoreline, I saw that all the fishermen had left. Definitely not a good sign. And then the mosquitos showed up.
They swarmed us. Every cast was disturbed by the dozens of mosquitos landing on my legs and neck. I furiously slapped at them with my free hand while holding my reel in the other. The bugs were relentless as I reeled every empty lure in. After only a few minutes I ran back in the car to check for bug spray. Nothing. Then my dad offered to escape the bugs and buy some bug spray at the nearest CVS. It helped a little, but there was no hiding from the mosquitos completely. We didn’t stay long and left the canal with no fish but half a pint of blood lighter.
The trip was terrible. And I lost a plug to a mistied knot. It’s another one of the basics that I’m working on. Trying to tie a knot while my legs were swarmed with mosquitos was setting myself up to fail. If this was one bad outing during a successful season it wouldn’t stand out. Even the best fishing seasons turn out a couple duds. Fish are fickle! But this outing was just one of many bad ones in 2022. Mechanical issues kept my grandfather’s boat out of the water for most of the season. So most of our usual fishing- ground fishing for black sea bass and scup- was out of reach. I tried shore casting excursions, but I came up empty. On my cast of the season, my rig snagged something on the bottom and never came back up. A fitting end of my fishing year.
Speaking of poor performance, let’s talk about my stock portfolio. Other people (link Cathie Wood) had worse years than I did investing in 2022. The major indexes were down ~20% to end the year, making it the worst stock year since 2008. Owners of the big tech companies took even bigger losses. Facebook went down 65% and Tesla declined 69%. Tesla has come roaring back to start the new year, but is still down 50% since mid-September. Alternative “investments” have also lost their shine. Multiple crypto platforms went bankrupt due to fraud, illegal activity, and insane risk taking. They took billions worth of people’s digital tokens with them. I won’t even get into the implosion in the NFT market (sale volume down 95%). Overall, a disaster year for stock investors! It hurts to see the line go down and to the right for an entire year.
Responding to a Poor Season
Bad seasons are an expectation in the stock market. This century alone, there have been 7 years where the S&P 500 generates negative returns. That’s getting close to a 30% occurrence rate. Long term investors need to be prepared for these down years and plan the response. Even though we experienced a historic bull run after March 2020, I knew that the market would go down at some point. And I decided ahead of time that I wouldn’t change my investing strategy because of it. At this point in my investing life, I have decades to go before I’ll need the money in my retirement accounts. I have the luxury of time so that I don’t have to lose sleep over a bad stock year while I’m in my 20’s. If I were in my 50’s, I might feel differently. But I hope that I plan well enough ahead that I can go through a similarly bad year without feeling too bad. Plus, this bad year gave me the chance to test my actual risk tolerance. Losing money in my investing accounts was disappointing, but it didn’t ruin my year. On the contrary, I have the satisfaction of buying into the stock market at a discount.
Now how do I respond to a bad fishing season? It would be easy to throw all my gear into a dark corner of the basement and take up golf. But that sounds boring. My focus is on finding a new approach to my fishing excursions. First, I freely admit that there’s so much that I need to learn. Which means I need to focus on improving the basics. That starts with tying rigs and having the right gear (without spending too much, because I am still Frugal Jon). And all the frugal bones in my body hurt when I lose a rig because I tied a knot poorly. There’s also the strategy part that needs improvement. My current method of “read a couple internet articles and head out” isn’t producing the results I want. I need to get down into the weeds of technique. I subscribe to a regional fishing magazine, which is a good place to start. There’s some low hanging fruit to grab here. Like learning how to read a shoreline. There are many features along beaches and jetties that hold fish. Part of being a fisherman is learning how to recognize areas that have a higher likelihood of having fish in them. Another part is getting lucky and being willing to try other areas when one spot is dead. The cold winter and early spring months is the perfect time to give myself a crash course in shore casting. Then when the season starts, I’ll be ready to apply trial and error as I go after the denizens of the deep. The key is to be patient with myself and not expect immediate results. I’ll even enlist the help of a fishing guide if that’s how I need to learn. I’m optimistic that this year will be much better than last.
Having a bad season is part of life. 2022 was one of those years. I’m responding to it with intention and action. By addressing the year and reacting well, I won’t let it bleed into 2023. Even if the market has another bad year in 2023, I can look at it individually. With a really long investing timeline ahead of me, I’m okay with buying stocks on sale as long as I can get them. With fishing, I won’t just sit back and let another bad year happen. Even though the season is months away, I’m already gearing up for it. When it’s time for fishing, this year I’ll be in a better position to succeed.
Sign Up for the Frugal Jon Journal
