Bad Luck Bananas

For years, we heard the old wives tale about bananas being bad luck on boats, and I decided to research why. The myth goes back at least two centuries, when these tasty fruits were shipped up from Central America to a hungry market in America. Back then, bad things sometimes happened to ships and crews hauling this produce, which I will detail below. How this bad luck translates to today’s fishing trips is a mystery, however. I’ve read that people can impose the “bad luck” symbol on just about anything, like black cats or walking under ladders. Just as they create good luck items like the rabbit’s foot. (Which was bad luck for rabbits.)

Fliers in World War II lived on the edge and carried all manner of good luck charms, which gave peace of mind and helped most of them get through dangerous times. In contrast with those guys, fishing the bays or offshore today is pure fun and gravy, although the occasional boat can still run out of luck. I write this after fishing offshore since 1968, knowing not everyone is comfortable venturing out beyond sight of land. Maybe newcomers really can use a good luck charm out there. Or at least avoid bananas that fishermen still consider bad luck juju.

I first head about this banana thing when I started fishing out of B-dock at Galveston Yacht Basin, during the big kingfish tournaments in the early 1980s. Where successful business owners with big boats kept a wary eye out for bananas. Charterboat captains, too. Meanwhile back in Port Arthur during my first 15 years of fishing, bananas were never even mentioned and people snapper-fished in small boats in those days. The biggest boat in the county was a 23-foot Formula owned by a doctor.

In Galveston it was a different story. One captain cautioned that on one trip, he’d allowed bananas on the boat and lightning struck, knocking out their electronics. (No injuries, though.) A Hatteras owner admitted that the night before a billfish tournament, he’d carried a box of bananas up and down the dock, tossing one in every boat except his. Just to mess with people. We do know you need a winning attitude to catch big fish in tournaments, and playing psychological tricks on the competition may lend an advantage.

My family never worried about bananas. There’s this old picture of my dad in 1954 buying bananas in Honduras for the research vessel he worked on, right there in what has long been called a Banana Republic. His crew wasn’t fishing much, but often spent a month at sea.

Many years later, again in Honduras, eldest son Ian and I bought a 25-pound bunch of bananas in mid-river straight onto our boat. That surely could have brought us bad luck in those environs, but nothing happened. The banana boat’s crew looked none too friendly; it was one of those “Sampan off the port bow!” moments. Our guide, half Scot and half Honduran, demanded a bunch of bananas for our fish camp and paid the other boat some paltry amount. I always wondered what might have been hidden beneath that cargo of bananas. One glance at their faces, and it must have been interesting.

Later that same day, loaded with more bananas than any Galveston boat could dream of, or have nightmares about, we had steady action on fish. That trip yielded us an estimated 75 snook, assorted jacks and one jumping tarpon. Casting or trolling Rattletrap lures along the shorelines was the favorite lure in those waters. We were 40 miles from the nearest (Indian) village, in flooded jungle country with numerous backwaters offering cover for those hauling cargo not…entirely legal. (You can’t be too careful around those sorts.) On the flight home, two guys who were trying to start a protective biosphere for jaguars said they’d motored up the wrong jungle creek, stumbling into a go-fast boat parked under the trees. There were scowling faces aboard. The biosphere guys turned their boat around in record time and left, spurred on by a burst of automatic fire that soared harmlessly overhead. Not sure if they carried bananas that day; it would have been impertinent to ask.

Our big bunch of bananas had no negative effect on the trip. They might have brought us good luck, because there were plenty of chances for things to go south, so to speak. Like rainwater leaking into the old Czech-built 20-passenger plane with Russian Cyrillic writing, the captain flying with one hand while wiping his windshield with a red rag from a gas station. The plane leaked. Ian, napping behind me, woke up with his back soaking wet. Flying across 200 miles of trees and marsh, then landing at an Indian village on a muddy airstrip with palm frond shacks lining the runway. Just before noon, when more serious, high-altitude thunderstorms typically arrive. Quite a test for bananas.

You see the locals there eat bananas every day, and they probably don’t blame freak accidents on their favorite fruit. Like the 20-year old woman who had a big tarpon free-jump into her panga, breaking her neck. Which is seriously bad luck. That boat wasn’t hauling bananas that I know of, only people and luggage out to a ship waiting in the Caribbean.

• With that said, when fishing the Gulf of Mexico, I still play it safe by avoiding bananas in the boat. They’re okay inside you, since they’re the perfect snack full of potassium for regulating body heat during hot weather. If I find a banana on the boat, I urge someone to eat it now. And throw the peeling overboard.

Historical Reasons for Avoiding Bananas on a Boat:

>Banana boats had a shallow draft for collecting bananas upriver. They would then speed to market before their cargo could spoil. This sometimes produced shipwrecks. Often, the only wreckage found was floating bananas. No survivors, no ship, only bananas. Easy to blame and accuse.

>Banana bunches house jungle critters like spiders and snakes. If a crewman was bitten by a viper or worse, a dreaded fer-de-lance, proper treatment was impossible and the afflicted often had a short lease on life. This helped give banana boats a bad name.

>Banana boats traveled faster than many ships, too fast to troll for fresh fish. In the old days it was common to keep a hand line behind the boat, often baited with a white rag coated with lard. This provided fresh fish on a long voyage, but not so if the boat was cruising at 12-15 knots. Except for an occasional wahoo.

>Bananas give off ethylene gas, which causes other nearby fruits to age quickly and spoil. That was impossible to detect in the old days, and the sailors were left with a spoiled cargo and bananas to blame.

>Sailors slipping on a banana peel carelessly left on a hard, wooden deck could be injured, which was more bad luck.

>Bananas are sticky and give off a scent that might have scared off fish from biting, though that sounds pretty sketchy. Hungry fish will surely overlook banana scent, and that can easily be proven by rubbing a banana all over cut bait, next time you go snapper fishing.

Banana companies also have a sketchy history manipulating foreign governments in Central America, which was bad luck for some people, but that’s another story.