Imponderables: Fun and Games (9 page)

T
his expression, popularized by former President Gerald Ford, actually started as an English military term. When the troops were firing in lines, the command “’ware before” indicated that it might be prudent for the front line to kneel so that the second line wouldn’t blow their heads off.

“Fore” is simply a shortened version of the “before” in “’ware before.”

Submitted by Cassandra A. Sherrill,
of Granite Hills, North Carolina.

T
he core of a tennis ball is made out of a compound consisting of rubber, synthetic materials, and about ten chemicals. The compound is extruded into a barrel-shaped pellet that is then formed into two half shells.

The edges of the two half shells are coated with a latex adhesive and then put together and cured in a double-chambered press under strictly controlled temperature and air-pressure conditions. The inner chamber is pressurized to thirteen psi (pounds per square inch), so that the air is trapped inside and the two halves are fused together at the same pressure.

Once the two halves have been pressed together to form one sphere, the surface of the core is roughened so that the fuzz will stick better. The core is then dipped into a cement compound and ovendried to prepare for the cover application.

The fuzzy material is felt, a combination of wool, nylon, and Dacron woven together into rolls. The felt is cut into a figure-eight shape (one circular piece of felt wouldn’t fit as snugly on a ball), and the edges of the felt are coated with a seam adhesive. The cores and edges of the two felt strips are mated, the felt is bonded to the core, and the seam adhesive is cured, securing all the materials and for the first time yielding a sphere that looks like a tennis ball.

After the balls are cured, they are steamed in a large tumbler and fluffed in order to raise the nap on the felt, giving the balls their fuzzy appearance. Different manufacturers fluff their balls to varying degrees. The balls are then sealed in airtight cans pressurized at twelve to fifteen psi, with the goal of keeping the balls at ten to twelve psi.

The single most expensive ingredient in a tennis ball is the felt. Many other sports do quite well with unfuzzy rubber balls. In the earliest days of tennis, balls had a leather cover, and were stuffed with all sorts of things, including human hair. So why do tennis ball manufacturers bother with the fuzz?

Before the felt is added, a tennis ball has a hard, sleek surface, not unlike a baseball’s. One of the main purposes of the fuzz is to slow the ball down. The United States Tennis Association maintains strict rules concerning the bound of tennis balls. One regulation stipulates, “The ball shall have a bound of more than 53 inches and less than 58 inches when dropped 100 inches upon a concrete base.” The fluffier the felt, the more wind resistance it offers, decreasing not only the bound but the speed of the ball. If the felt were too tightly compacted, the ball would have a tendency to skip on the court.

A second important reason for fuzzy tennis balls is that the fluffy nap contributes to increased racket control. Every time a tennis ball hits a racket the strings momentarily grip the ball, and the ball compresses. With a harder, sleeker surface, the ball would have a tendency to skip off the racket and minimize the skill of the player.

A third contribution of fuzz is the least important to a good player but important to us refugees from hardball sports like racquetball and squash. When you get hit hard by a fuzzy tennis ball, you may want to cry, but you don’t feel like you’re going to die.

Submitted by Dorio Barbieri of Mountain View, California.

W
e see Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, but we never see their Dad, Donald’s brother. Why not?” wails our concerned correspondent.

The main reason we never see Donald’s brother is that he doesn’t have one. He does have a sister with the infelicitous name of Dumbella. In a 1938 animated short,
Donald’s Nephews
, Donald receives a postcard from his sister informing him that she is sending her “three angel children” for a visit.

Poor Donald, excitedly anticipating the arrival of Masters Huey, Dewey, and Louie, had no idea either that the little visit would turn into a permanent arrangement or, since his sister really thought they were little angels, that she had really earned her name. The three ducklings, indistinguishable in their personalities and equally adept in their propensity for mischief, continued to torture Donald and Scrooge McDuck in many cartoon shorts.

In a 1942 short,
The New Spirit
, Donald lists the three dependents in a tax form as adopted, indicating that Donald was a most generous brother, a certified masochist, and just as dumb as Dumbella.

Submitted by Karen S. Harris of Seattle, Washington.

S
ome things we know are true: Where there is water, there are fish; where there are fish, there are fishermen; where there are fishermen, there are fishing stories; where there are fishing stories, there is disagreement.

We expected disagreement. What we did not expect was more theories than there are Commandments. We’ll try to boil down and consolidate all the opinions we received, but we now realize one more thing: Where there are fishing theories, there are rarely short fishing theories.

On a few points, fishermen seem to agree. When fish are biting, it means that they are trying to find food for themselves. There are discernible patterns to when fish are most active in pursuit of food, related not just to hunger but climatic conditions in the water. And almost everyone agrees that rain seems to affect freshwater fishing, especially in shallow water, more than ocean fishing.

We posted this Imponderable on several online fishing forums, and received plenty of anecdotal evidence that fish bite more in rainy weather. “Jimbo’s” response was typical:

In roughly descending order of popularity, here are the main beliefs about why fish bite more when it rains.

1. Dinner Is Served!

Many fishermen echoed the sentiments of “Bazztex,” an avid bass-fishing Texan:

Mark Bain, a fish biologist at Cornell University, confirms that the rain can even dig up new food opportunities for bottom-feeders, such as catfish:

2. It’s the Barometer, Baby!

Before a rain, the barometric pressure falls. Fishermen believe that fish can sense the barometric change and get more aggressive. Captain John Leech, a full-time professional fisherman and bass guide, wrote to
Imponderables
:

What explains this behavior? Professor Bain confirms that fish can sense barometric pressure changes, and the most likely explanation for this gift is to allow them to sense when food might be difficult for them to acquire (such as when there is a storm). Instinctively, then, fish may sense a drop in barometric pressure as a time to start eating “while the getting is good.” Biologists don’t know for sure exactly how fish sense barometric changes, but one common theory is that the “lateral line,” a collection of hairlike structures along the flanks of most fish, is responsible. We know that fish use the lateral line to detect pressure waves from other fish to protect themselves when they are about to be attacked, even if they can’t see or smell the potential predator.

At least one credible source minimizes the importance of barometric changes in affecting fish feeding behavior. B. C. Roemer, president of ScentHead, a company that manufactures artificial baits, writes:

Roemer notes that a fish swimming even a few inches up toward the surface or lower toward the floor will feel a much greater change in pressure from their altitude than because of barometric fluctuations due to weather patterns. Mark Bain acknowledges the truth of Roemer’s assertion, but adds that fish may be able to sense the outside pressure changes independently, in a way that we do not understand.

3. The Eyes Have It!

The clearer the water is, the more fish act defensively. In his article in
Field & Stream
, Jack Kulpa notes this effect:

Mark Bain notes that rain tends to reduce water clarity. Although turbid water makes it harder for predators to attack, it also decreases a fish’s visual access to food. Many experts believe that fish learn when the water turns cloudy that they had better look for food fast, before a storm renders it too difficult to find and eat a proper meal. For the fisherman, this can be a mixed blessing. Says Bain:

With rain comes clouds, and when there is a cloud cover, less ultraviolet light penetrates the water. Fish are sensitive to light and are more apt to feed when there is relatively less light in the water. This is probably a major reason why the presumed best times for fishing are early morning and late evening, when temperatures are cool—these are both times of reduced light above and below water. When it rains and the cloud cover darkens the sky and the water, the fish may be tricked into thinking that it is actually late evening. This theory is hard to prove—we were unable to get a fish to comment on or off the record.

4. It’s the Water!

A light rain aerates the water, which has the effect of naturally oxygenating the water in the same way that those little bubble machines do in an aquarium. Jack Kulpa notes that the combination of cooler water temperature and increased oxygen seems to give bass (and other fish) a burst of energy, sort of the fish equivalent of a cup of joe.

In his book
Keeper of the Stream
, author Frank Sawyer notes that the water seems to come alive after rainfall, partly because flies hatch in profusion, possibly because of the aeration. If flies are hatching, fish are trying to eat them, and fisherman are trying to capitalize on their prey’s increased biting.

5. Hear No Evil!

Water is an excellent conductor of sound, so any noise generated will travel through the water. Johnny Hickman, an avid fisherman based in West Texas, shared a theory with
Imponderables that posits that
audio might be a key component in the answer:

6. It’s the Humans, Stupid!

Could the human psyche play a role in success in fishing? One authority, Lesley Crawford, writes in his book,
The Trout Fisher’s Handbook
,

But more than positive thinking might be involved. If it rains, less hardy (or less crazy) fishermen retreat to their campsites or automobiles (or nearby tavern) and there is less competition to catch fish, accounting for more success per active fisher. The fish may be more likely to feed when fewer humans are afoot and fewer boats are mauling the serenity of the water.

Fishermen, with luck, are a little brighter than the average trout, and anglers have gained knowledge about the predictable habits of fish during rain. If fish are known to retreat to an isolated inlet when it rains, hardcore fishermen will brave the elements to drop lines there. If they know that a storm will cause fish to withdraw to the lower depths, then fishermen will cast lower than they normally would.

The Dissenters

A minority, but a vocal one, isn’t so sure that fish do bite more when it rains, at least not consistently so. One group, the Forest Preserve of Cook County (Illinois), tabulated daily records of catches over a twelve-year period, from 1932 to 1943, with over 15,000 pounds of hook-and-line fish caught by its members.

The group’s conclusion? There was a slight increase in catch rate when it rained at least one-half inch, but not at all on the days after. Surprisingly, bass bit almost twice as much when the water cleared up two or three weeks later, but it didn’t seem to matter whether the weather was fair or cloudy, from what direction the wind was coming, whether it was day or night, or whether the barometer was high or low, rising or falling. The group also found no significant difference between the catch rate of men versus women:

Others who have conducted more limited experiments have issued conflicting reports about the role of barometric pressure, cloud cover, temperature, and rainfall on biting patterns of fish.

All these different theories make our heads spin, and since we can’t seem to catch fish in any environment other than a stocked pond, we identify more with the sentiments of “Mudcat,” a fishing hobbyist who preferred to theorize about the effects of rain upon humans, or at least one human:

Submitted by Professor Elizabeth Goldsmith
of Tallahassee, Florida.