On paper, the lure was perfect: a balanced oval, a neat tail and a line through its centre. On the bench, it looked like a spoon somebody had stepped on. I considered starting again, then decided the inlet could judge it more fairly than I could.
The prototype pulled hard to one side. I bent the tail a little. It pulled the other way. After the third adjustment, it travelled in an uneven little zigzag that was too interesting to discard.
Nothing on the workshop drawing
A bass followed it out from beneath the old floating dock. I paused. The lure fluttered downward; the fish turned and took it in a single movement. The rod bent, and my beautiful drawing blew off the bench behind me.
The catch was not the largest of the season, but it was the first fish I had ever met that approved of a crooked prototype. I let it go, rescued the drawing from a puddle and added a new instruction in the margin: do not straighten everything.
A flaw can become the part that makes an idea work.
