BY MIKE STEVENS
Over the decades, I have come to a lot of conclusions and have formulated many theories —some of which are based on very little, but I stick to my guns anyway— on a vast array of fishing topics. To be honest, some of them I can’t even write about for various reasons, and most of them only come out in casual conversations of varying degrees of seriousness.
WON field reporter, Brady Garrett, has been on the receiving end of these rants more than anyone else because I’ve known him forever and I have fished, road-tripped, party-boated and even hitch-hiked with him. All activities that offer a high level of time for philosophizing. Garrett also has a knack for allowing these conversations to go on for as long as they need to (some have been running for years without resolution) even if he completely disagrees.
I don’t really know where I’m going with the current one, or if it’s even something that needs a final conclusion. It’s just something that occurred to me that needed to be talked about, so I sent the following mention to Garrett: “Think about all the true trophy (teener-plus) largemouth bass catches you are aware of. Take it as far back as you want. Now, while you are definitely flashing back to decades of photos, tell me two things: what are the anglers wearing and what are they standing on? Those are not trick questions.”
Now that you are doing the same thing, what do you see?
Hoodies, flannels, t-shirts, jeans and a baseball cap comes up quite a bit doesn’t it? And what were they standing on? How about a rental boat, a dock, dry ground, or some minimally-equipped, modestly-powered vessel?
What you don’t see (in many cases) are glitter boats, sponsor jerseys, nine more rod-and-reel combos in the background, multiple screens for electronics, brand logos and so on.
Just a dude, a rod-and-reel, a big-ass bait and maybe a backpack.
This isn’t a knock on the bassers on go-fast boats and tournament guys, and I really don’t feel like I need to get into how logo-jersey guy and trophy-bass guy have completely different mindsets. Whatever theory I may ultimately extract from this has nothing to do with one being better than the other. I think I will land on something more along the lines of how some of the most recognized anglers in the sport due to individual accomplishments are just dudes. Obsessed dudes, sure, but just dudes nonetheless.
There’s no room for a bunch of photos here, so just Google the word “bass” along with Bob Crupi, Michael Arujo, Jed Dickerson, Mac Weakley, Paul Duclos, Dan Kadota and even world-record holder, Manabu Kurita. You can take it all the way back to the late big-bass pioneer, Bill Murphy if you want to dig deep on this and even local guys with more recent trophy catches. These are just guys who rise and grind with little if any obligation to sponsor promotion, and it’s 100 percent for love of the game.
I think it speaks to the sport’s underlying accessibility despite the industry itself sending the opposite message at times, albeit inadvertently. A tackle company would never intentionally do something that would keep people away from the sport, but at the same time –and for obvious business reasons— they’ll suggest an angler needs a different rod for every technique, or 14 colors of every bait and that there’s no way to bass fish at a high level without a six-figure boat and real-time electronics.
At this point, I don’t really have a conclusion. Not even a funny dumb one. It was just something that occurred to me, the differences in the optics between tournament-style bass guy and local-lake wall-hanger guy. Both fish at a high level, one is definitely more business and competition minded while the other is more likely to be just fine if he went his whole fishing life without anyone else knowing about it.
Once I’ve come up with a takeaway here, I’ll be sure and let you know.
