How A Botched Prostate Exam Helped Me Catch More Inshore Fish.

Yes, this hilariously true and highly embarrassing “Botched Prostate Exam” story actually has something to do with helping you catch more inshore fish.

Let me explain.

I am about to tell you a pretty funny (and super embarrassing) story about myself.

My hope is that you not only get a laugh, but that you learn from my mistakes of making assumptions (and a few other lessons that I will share in a second).

I promise that after you get a chance to laugh at my mistake, I will do my very best to show you some great value on how this incredibly awkward story ties in catching more inshore fish like Redfish, Snook, and Speckled Trout.

The Prostate Exam I Won’t Forget…

This true story happened right before I moved my family back down to Tampa from Atlanta last year.

And it all started due to yours truly showing some signs of “getting older male” problems. More specifically, I was waking up and hitting the bathroom 3-4 times each evening while sleeping (I told you this was going to be very embarrassing for me).

More specifically, I was waking up and hitting the bathroom 3-4 times each evening while sleeping (I told you this was going to be very embarrassing for me).

At first, I thought it might just be a fluke thing because some days I do drink up to a gallon of water per day, and it has to go somewhere… but it kept happening for quite a few weeks, so I decided that I finally needed to do something that I absolutely hate doing… going to the doctor.

For those of you that don’t know me well, I despise going to the doctor for anything.

The entire process of waiting in a lobby with a bunch of other sick people all wondering why they showed up on time when the doctor never shows up to see you remotely close to your appointment time just doesn’t excite me…

Not to mention, I am all about time management, and going to the doctor is a complete time kill for me (Probably why I ended up marrying a doctor so I could limit this unproductive, yet sometimes, much-needed event in life).

Anywho, after many evenings of multiple urination breaks, I knew the next step was that I had to book an appointment with a doctor.

And since I never go to the doctor, I seriously had no earthly idea on what doctor to go see as I had not seen a doctor (other than a dermatologist) in well over 10 years.

So I asked my lovely physician wife Loren to do some research and to pick out a good internist for me…

Since I already knew that if I walked into a doctor’s office complaining about urinating too much, that some sort of prostate exam was certainly in my near future…

That being said, I was wise enough to ask my physician wife to locate and book an appointment with a doctor that had the following qualifications:

• Female
• Preferably a female with small hands (I wanted to limit the pain of the potential rectal exam of course)
• Board Certified
• Been in business more than 15 years

The following day, my wife tells me that she booked me a doctor’s appointment.

Moreover, she tells me that she was able to find a physician that met 3 out of my 4 qualifications.

Good enough I thought…

• Dr. Courtney Brooks  – Check
• Female (hand size to be determined)
• Board Certified – Check
• Been in business for over 25 years – Check

Appointment Day!

The day of my appointment, I show up right on time, I go up the counter to sign in, and I do the standard “Fill out 12 pages of new patient questions and your entire life history” routine…

After writing down my entire life history, I politely went back up to the counter to give the nurse my completed paperwork, and you won’t believe what she told me…

She says, “Mr. Simonds, HE will be with you shortly.”

“Excuse me?” I politely said back.

The nurse looked at me with a slightly irritated look that she had to repeat herself and says, “He will be with you shortly… Dr. Brooks”

Now I am really confused!

I start wondering if I am dreaming… did I walk into the wrong office… am I getting set up on Candid Camera?

All of a sudden, my eyes dart down to a stack of business cards up on the counter that said the following:

Now I don’t know about you, but I have never met a female that had a “Jr.” in her name!!!

I didn’t know whether my wife had set me up or not, but I rushed over to a corner of the doctor’s waiting room and dialed her as fast as I could.

No answer.

Cripes!

So I sent my wife a text that said the following:

“Loren, this is NOT funny.  I am here at Dr. Brook’s office.  The doctor is not only a guy, but he has big hands.  You are killing me!!!!”

After a few minutes, I get a brief reply from my wife saying that she had no idea Dr. Brooks was a man.

That she ASSUMED Dr. Brookes was a female physician since his/her name was Courtney…

At this point, there wasn’t much I could do.

I had already filled out my entire life story on the new patient forms, my day was already shot, and the thought of going up to the front desk and telling the nurse that I wanted to cancel my appointment because I found out Courtney was a dude didn’t seem practical either.

So I sucked it up and went through with my appointment…

Ass-Upmtions Can Hurt…

Upon entering the examination room that the nice nurse led me in to, I did everything I could to not be mad at both myself and my wife for making a false assumption.

A false assumption that I knew was probably going to be painful to me in the rear-end…

So while waiting for Dr. Brooks to come in the office, I examined the room hoping for any clues of small hands, or any clues to something positive… like an escape window…

Quickly, my eyes caught sight of the latex examination gloves dispenser on the wall (see picture below).

Bad News!!!

It appeared that NOT A SINGLE SMALL GLOVE HAD BEEN USED!!!

But there was still hope because someone had definitely been using the mediums… or so I would have liked to believe.

So I sat there and waited.

And then I started getting mad at myself for making assumptions and not doing enough due diligence myself on such an important matter…

But then there was that “Doctor knock” on the door and I heard a male voice call out, “Can I come in?”

And as Dr. Courtney Brooks, Jr. walked in the room, all of my fears all came to fruition…

Here is what I learned in a matter of minutes in that small and unforgiving doctor’s office that day:

• Dr. Courtney Brooks was definitely a man
• He definitely had large hands
• He definitely ended up having to give me my first ever prostate exam (aka anal examination)
• I tried to imagine pleasant things like beer, baseball, and fishing, but all I could envision was my wife laughing out loud while I took it in the rear-end

Note: It turned out that my wife really had no idea that Courtney was a man, and it was an honest (but painful) mistake on both of our parts for making assumptions…

So what can you learn from this, and how can it help you catch more inshore fish?

Well, it turns out that most of us (including myself) make the same kind of painful assumption mistakes when it comes to inshore fishing.

What do I mean?

Let me explain the three lessons (it’s really one main lesson with two critical sub-lessons that tie in to lesson #1) that you can learn from this prostate mistake.

Lesson #1 – Don’t Always Assume That Just Because You See It In A Fishing Magazine Or On A Fishing Television Show That It Is Good (Or That You Really Need It)

Let me ask you a question.

If your favorite fishing magazine told you to get a prostate exam today because a doctor was paying them to say it, would you do it?

Of course not.

So why do we all continuously keep buying all of these crazy new lures and tackle that we are bombarded with every day in magazines, etc?

Most of we have no need for at all!

Now before I get a bunch of hate mail from my favorite fishing magazine editors and TV hosts, I want to go on record and say that there are some really amazing fishing magazine editors, writers, TV producers, and YouTube celebrities that truly test out, personally use, and completely believe in the products that they talk about and “endorse”.

But sadly for our industry, the vast majority of the “Hot Fishing Lures” and “New Must-Have Fishing Equipment” that you see in many of the fishing magazines and shows are nothing but paid advertisements.

Meaning, the only reason you are seeing it is because the magazine or show was getting paid to show it or “feature” it.

Now as a marketing guy, I have nothing against advertisements.

In fact, I enjoy reading them and watching them on TV.

But it doesn’t mean I should assume that I need every new shiny lure and piece of fishing gear that I see advertised on the screen, being discussed on shows, and “featured” in fishing magazines.

Our friend and pro angler Gene Genson “The Flukemaster” talked about this same issue on the recent Fish Strong Podcast (you can listen to it here).

In fact, he said the entire reason he started his now popular YouTube channel was to actually teach fishing instead of doing what all of the magazines and TV shows were doing (which he called a “product pitch fest” more or less).

You see, before I wised up, I assumed that if my favorite magazines and TV shows were featuring it that it must be good, so I spent pretty much every penny I had trying every new lure out there for a while…

And the more that a fishing expert or a fishing magazine was “endorsing” a certain product, the more I figured I needed to try it out.

Before you know it, I had a TON of fishing tackle.

Here is a picture of the Wild River tackle box that I used to lug around with me for inshore fishing (because I had so much freaking fishing tackle).

But the real problem wasn’t that I had too much fishing tackle (although that was a pretty big problem).

The really big problem was that I had way TOO much fishing tackle AND I wasn’t catching any more fish because of it.

In fact, for the amount of time that I spent fishing during this “fishing tackle splurge” period of my life, I was catching fewer fish per hour on the water…

Probably because I was spending half of my time tying knots and leaders to try out new lures that rarely worked as advertised…

So here is my advice:

Start treating any tackle advice from fishing magazines and so-called “fishing experts” with a grain of salt if you know they are getting paid to promote it.

In most cases, you just don’t need it.

Which brings me to my next lesson…

Lesson #2 – Keep it simple

You saw my old tackle box above. well let me show you the tackle box that I now share with my brother Luke.

Well let me show you the tackle box that I now share with my brother Luke.

More importantly, I now catch at least double (if not triple) the amount of inshore fish (like redfish, trout, snook, and flounder) with less tackle than I did when I had hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of fishing lures in my tackle bag.

It took me listening to my brother Luke (who frequently made fun of my monster tackle bag) to understand that simplifying your tackle can be one of the best things you can do to catch more fish.

If you haven’t read Luke’s incredibly popular (it has been downloaded and read over 10,000 times now) “Inshore Fishing Manifesto”, I highly encourage you to take the time to read it.

It was a complete game-changer for me in terms of catching more inshore fish in less time.

His Manifesto report is not short, but it is free, and it could help you save TONS of time and TONS of money in your pursuit of catching more redfish, snook, and trout.

Lesson #3 – Specialists Make More Money. Specialists Catch More Fish.

Speaking of doctors, which doctor makes more money (and works fewer hours)?

• General practitioner
• Plastic surgeon that only works on the retina

If you guess the plastic eye surgeon, you would be correct.

And not only do they make upwards of 500 percent more money than a general practitioner, they have fewer patients, and they only have to be an expert at one thing (in this case, one small area of the eye).

This same counter-intuitive “Specialist” phenomenon happens around us every single day, yet so many of us try to do the opposite and be “well-rounded” and decent at way too many things.

What I have found with almost 100% accuracy is that when someone (or a company) decides to become the world’s best specialist at any certain product, service, athletic event, or even fishing with a certain fishing lure, that is when the real magic happens.

Now that isn’t to say that pro anglers don’t know a lot about a bunch of different lures, etc, because they do.

But if you hang around the very best fishing pros, you will find out that most of them have become experts at 2-3 different lures or techniques.

In some cases (like when Chad Morgenthaler won the Bassmaster Southern Open on Lake Toho by only using one lure for the entire three days), you will find the pros rarely deviate from what they know works.

What Luke taught me in the hard-hitting and must-read “Inshore Fishing Manifesto” is that as soon as he decided to become a MASTER at three artificial lures, he caught more inshore fish than he ever had in his life.

And I’m here to tell you that the exact same thing happened to me (and countless other weekend warrior anglers that have read the Inshore Manifesto and joined the Insider Club).

Conclusion

When it comes to important things like your prostate and fishing lures, don’t ever let assumptions get the best of you.

Heck, don’t even just assume a female has smaller hands than a male… haha

But in all seriousness, stop buying into all of the advertisements and “Sponsored Content” that surround us in all of the fishing magazines, videos, etc.

Most of it (not all of it) you do NOT need.

More importantly, if you can remember these three rules going forward, you are certain to start seeing an improvement in your fishing game:

1. Don’t assume you need more tackle and the “hottest new lures”
2. Simplify your tackle
3. Become a specialist/expert with 2-3 lures and forget the rest

Finally, make sure to read Luke’s hard-hitting (and a bit controversial because it goes against what many of the magazine ads tell you) Inshore Fishing Manifesto.

You won’t regret it.

Click here to read it now.

Fish On!

P.S. – If you think your angler friends or fishing networks would enjoy this, please Tag them or Share this with them. You Rock! Pa-POW!