Chapter 4 - Everybody Came to Beat the Bum
Within a week, Lake Harrison became a circus.
Pickup trucks lined the county road before sunrise. Food vendors appeared near the public ramp. Teenagers sold T-shirts printed with crude cartoons of a bent stick. Drone pilots hovered over coves until park officers threatened fines. Every second person seemed to be filming every first person.
And nearly all of them wanted to beat Eli Carter.
The challenges came in waves.
A kayak champion from Tennessee arrived first. He specialized in shallow-water stealth, skipping jigs beneath docks and pitching Texas-rigged creature baits into cover so tight most anglers would not attempt the cast.
Eli beat him by ounces using a small swim jig along a reed edge where wind pushed bluegill.
A smallmouth specialist from Michigan arrived next. She was polite, technically brilliant, and deadly with a drop shot. Eli respected her immediately.
“You don’t shake it much,” he told her after watching three casts.
“Fish are pressured.”
“Good.”
“You disagree?”
“No. I like people who let the bait do less.”
She smiled. “You trying to make me nervous?”
“Only if it works.”
She nearly beat him.
The final difference was a fish Eli caught on a hair jig counted down beside a rocky point, retrieving it almost imperceptibly above bottom.
When she lost, she shook his hand.
“You’re as good as they said.”
“No,” Eli replied. “Today I was two ounces better.”
That clip went viral too.
Then came the loud ones.
Men with matching jerseys and camera crews announced themselves as “legend killers.” A social-media fisherman named Brock Denton showed up with a hundred-thousand-dollar wrapped boat even though the challenge was bank-only. He spent twenty minutes explaining his electronics to the crowd before realizing nobody cared.
“You know what separates professionals from old-school guys?” Brock asked Eli.
“Debt?”
The crowd erupted.
Brock’s face turned purple.
He lost by four pounds.
Then he accused Eli of having locals pre-bait the water.
“Search my pockets,” Eli said.
Brock stared at his coat. “I’d rather not.”
“Then carry your loss home.”
Ryan began posting the challenges, but the tone of his videos changed. Instead of mocking Eli, he added short explanations of what the old man was doing.
He showed viewers how Eli read wind lanes, how he watched where leaves collected to identify subtle current, how he used bird activity to locate baitfish, and how he changed lure profile based on water clarity rather than brand loyalty.
The most popular segment became something Ryan jokingly called “Eli’s Anime Moves.”
Eli hated the name.
“You make me sound twelve.”
“You name techniques like attacks.”
“I name them so I remember them.”
Ryan pointed the camera at him. “Tell them the Three-Ripple Cast.”
Eli sighed.
The Three-Ripple Cast was not magic. It was a skipping cast tuned for overhanging cover. Eli aimed low, controlled spool speed, and tried to make a soft plastic touch the surface only two or three times before disappearing deep beneath a dock or branch. Too many skips bled speed and made noise. Too steep an entry killed distance.
“The trick,” Eli explained, “isn’t skipping far. It’s entering quiet where the fish thinks nothing can reach.”
The Ghost Current was his name for detecting nearly invisible lateral water movement by watching foam, pollen, loose vegetation, and the angle at which suspended debris traveled.
The Bell-Ring Retrieve was simply a stop-start cadence with a bladed jig: accelerate enough to feel the blade engage, then kill it beside cover so the lure fell unpredictably.
The Dead Water Count involved timing how long a falling bait took to reach known depth, allowing Eli to estimate where suspended fish were holding without electronics.
Viewers loved the names.
Eli kept insisting they were just memory tools.
Then one morning, the best challenger yet arrived.
His name was Marcus Vale, reigning champion of the Northern Pro Circuit.
Unlike the others, Marcus brought no cameras.
No trash talk.
No entourage.
He walked to Eli, shook his hand, and said, “I watched twenty hours of footage before driving here.”
Eli raised an eyebrow. “That sounds unhealthy.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Marcus smiled. “You’re not beating people with secret techniques. You’re beating them at decision-making.”
For the first time, Eli looked interested.
Marcus continued. “You don’t marry a pattern. You test a hypothesis.”
Ryan whispered to Tyler, “This guy might actually kill him.”
They chose a deep, clear reservoir called Blackwater Lake.
Marcus was strongest offshore. He used forward-facing sonar expertly, locating individual suspended bass and tracking how they reacted to his lure. He employed modern mid-strolling: a small minnow on a jighead, swum horizontally while subtle rod-tip movement made it roll and flash. When fish became hesitant, he switched to a hover-style presentation with an even more delicate action.
Within forty minutes, Marcus had a commanding lead.
Eli had one fish.
The crowd grew uneasy.
Ryan approached during a break. “You need to move.”
“No.”
“He’s seeing fish you can’t see.”
“I can see enough.”
“What?”
Eli pointed to the sky.
Clouds thickened from the southwest.
“The light’s changing.”
Ryan looked at the lake.
Marcus was targeting bass suspended over twenty-five feet of water. As clouds reduced penetration, baitfish began rising and spreading. The bass followed, but not uniformly.
Eli moved to a windblown point and tied on a jerkbait.
Cast.
Snap, snap.
Pause.
Not two seconds.
Eight.
Ryan whispered, “That long?”
“Clear water. Cool front. Suspended fish. Let them stare.”
On the next twitch, the rod loaded.
Eli caught one.
Then another.
Marcus adjusted immediately.
“That’s why he’s champion,” Eli murmured.
The contest turned into a chess match.
Marcus used sonar to find fish.
Eli used weather to predict where catchable fish would become active.
With five minutes left, they were tied.
Marcus made a perfect cast to a fish he saw thirty feet ahead. His minnow fell exactly to depth.
The bass followed.
He watched it on screen.
“Come on,” Marcus whispered.
The fish turned away.
Eli cast a jerkbait across the point, not at a visible target but through the wind seam.
He paused.
Ten seconds.
Twelve.
Marcus stared.
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
At fourteen seconds, Eli twitched once.
The strike nearly tore the rod from his hands.
When the scale settled, Eli had won by six ounces.
Marcus laughed.
Not bitterly.
Joyfully.
“That was the best loss of my life.”
He shook Eli’s hand.
Then he leaned close enough that only Eli and Ryan heard his next words.
“Victor Kane called me last night.”
Eli’s expression went cold.
Marcus continued, “He offered me fifty thousand dollars if I embarrassed you badly enough that people stopped taking you seriously.”
Ryan felt sick.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Marcus looked at Eli.
“I told him champions don’t need help beating homeless men.”
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“And now?” Eli asked.
Marcus smiled faintly. “Now I know why he was willing to pay.”
