Jerky Boys
March 5, 2010
I don’t know why I like jerky so much, and I don’t really care to find out. There’s probably some deep primitive need that if fully unraveled would leave me in a fetal position crying like a baby.
I can go months without eating the stuff, but a mention of it, or better yet the first taste, and my salivary glands take over my brain.
As many have pointed out before me, it’s really an odd construct – let’s take our choicest cuts of meat,
season or marinate them to perfection, and then drain every last drop of ever-loving-moistness out of them. Oh, and on top of that, let’s charge more per ounce than for just about any meat this side of Kobe beef, bald eagle livers or manatee cheeks. In fact, rumor has it that the Jerky Council (there must be such a thing, right?) narrowly voted down as their slogan the following true-but-commercially-unsound slogan: “Never have so many paid so much for so little.”
Still, despite the intellectual case against dehydrated flesh, I can’t resist. So when on our trip to Falcon back in January troop leader Kelly Jones told us out-of-staters about a place called “Buc-ee’s,” home to more types of jerky than even Noah thought possible, we just had to make a stop. Of course on the way to the lake we were so consumed with talking about football jigs and ribbontail worms that we somehow missed this massive emporium of meat and neon, so that made the legend grow that much greater for the return trip, and Buc-ee’s did not disappoint.
Where else can you buy a slab of jalapeño elk jerky, some deer corn and a t-shirt with a mildly risque double entrendre?
Kelly sauntered in like an old pro, while the three newbies --- me, Clemons and Secules – didn’t know where to start. I opted for some peppered venison jerky, teriyaki beef jerky and a cup of banana pudding, along with a Diet Big Red (the Texas version of North Carolina’s Cheerwine – look them up) to wash it down (after craving that odd combination, kind of like pickles and ice cream, I forced myself to pee on a stick to confirm that I wasn’t pregnant). Two hours later I was on a plane back to DC. I pity the fool who ended up sitting next to me. If my breath didn’t kill them, then the resulting gas (on top of four days of gas station tacos and other Tejas delicacies) surely completed the job. My friend Bryant Copley occasionally uses the phrase “It was drier than a popcorn fart,” but popcorn ain’t got nothing on $22 worth of Buc-ee’s jerky.
Mateos, Revisited
March 5, 2010
See that tent made of vinyl signs? That’s someone’s house. In fact a couple whose age I’d peg at somewhere north of 50 spend all of their time there, guarding the tackle of the guests at the Aztec Lodge on Mateos. They cook, sleep and do who knows what else there. I didn’t ask, and probably didn’t want to know, if they ever leave to go “home.” I do know that I was able to leave valuable tackle in the boats overnight when we went back to the lodge and it didn’t disappear.
I’m not going to go all Barone on you. Tear jerkers and after school specials are not where my strengths lie. However, to drive home the obvious, it did make me think about how fortunate we are to have what we have and to be able to take these types of trips.
A Place To Keep Your Stuff
March 1, 2010
Our weather meter is still stuck on “dog crap” so another weekend has gone by with my new boat stuck in the garage. The Saskatchewan-grade snow seems to be over, but the weeks of consistent cold temperatures and occasional wintry-mix, sprinkled with days of 40 mile per hour winds, are not conducive to going out and breaking in the big Mercury.
This week my impatience got the better of me, though. If I couldn’t be on the water, the next best use of my time would involve getting the boat ready for that day when pigs started flying and our weather permitted me to run the boat. So I headed out to the garage, where boxes of tackle, boating equipment and other minutiae critical to my existence, littered the floor, walls and shelves.
Everything’s in its proper place now and I realize that there’s one thing that I’m addicted to above all else.
I may have enough Senkos to mount a hostile takeover of Yamamoto.
I own enough tungsten to sink an aircraft carrier.
Neither of those categories of products takes the crown, though.
After laying everything out and getting it as organized as humanly possible, it’s clear that my true addiction is to Plano boxes. I use the term “Plano” in place of the generic, much like you would “Kleenex” for “tissue,” “Coke” for “soft drink” or “Rat-L-Trap” for “lipless crankbait.” Within the collection, there certainly more than a few Planos, but I also have some Flambeaus as well as a smattering of the high-dollar and lure-specific versions from Falcon.
As long as there’s still space in them, I’ll keep buying more tackle. When they’re completely full, I’ll just buy more boxes and keep on going.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
March 1, 2010
As a young child, my Sunday nights were reserved for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The mandatory post-dinner bath signaled that it was back to school the following morning, but there was one saving grace left to go before it was back to work -- that was Mr. Marlin Perkins instructing his trusty assistant Jim to wrestle with an anaconda, stare down an angry hippopotamus or try to grab a tiger cub away from his ferocious mother.
One Sunday when I was about six and my younger brother Mike was in the midst of the terrible twos, my Sunday night ritual was rudely interrupted. Mike had gone into my room, found a model airplane my parents had bought and grabbed the tube of Testor’s glue that sat beside it. He returned to the TV room, where I sat at rapt attention as Perkins narrated Jim’s tête-à-tête with an Alaskan grizzly. Suddenly yet gradually, I felt the glue dripping down my forehead and into my eyes.
My plea two years earlier, for a puppy instead of a brother, was now validated. Unfortunately, mom and dad seemed tone deaf to anything smacking of reason at that time, and nothing had changed. They kept the little fart.
Fast forward 33 or 34 years and my eyes have pretty much recovered and the one-time glue-pourer (not to be confused with a glue-sniffer, which to the best of my knowledge he was not) now lives in Tokyo. He appears to be a productive member of society, plying his trade as a management consultant. Every other person I’ve ever met who’s referred to him or herself as a “consultant” has been unemployed or underemployed, but he seems to bring home a healthy paycheck, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that point. He also has three little ankle-biters of his own – almost 5, almost 2 and one just a month old – none of whom (so far) seems to have demonstrated their father’s interest in contact adhesives.
As I may have explained four- or five-hundred times on this site, I’m an absolute freak for Japanese tackle, but the bitter irony of my brother’s current residence is that he doesn’t know Richard about bass fishing, nor does he seem to care. Six years ago we vacationed at New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee for a week in June, when it’s possible to catch a hundred hard-fighting smallmouths a day and he never found the time to go out in the boat. There’s a great tackle store about a mile from his home and to the best of my knowledge he doesn’t invent excuses to make trips there. Lake Biwa, where a 22-pounder was caught in 2009, is only a few hours away, and he doesn’t drool with anticipation to spend all of his vacation time there (for the record, he’s headed to Tokyo Disney next week). I’ll have to take my parents’ word for it that we are actually related.
I turned 40 two weeks ago, and while some people might not relish that milestone, for me so far it’s been nothing but good news, including the package that arrived from Japan while I was in Alabama for the Classic. I didn’t expect a gift, but Mike, perhaps remembering his glue transgression of the late 70s (along with the hundreds of others since then, both real and imagined), went whole hog at the Shibuya Sansui tackle store.
All is forgiven (but I still plan to give his kids drum sets for their birthdays).
Kriet, Interrupted
February 25, 2010
Reason #857 why you can’t consider me a true journalist: I play favorites.
There are good guys on both the BASS and FLW Tour who’ve labored in obscurity and deserve wins, and I cheer them on. There are also a few who could perpetually do poorly and it would not hurt my feelings one bit.
Jeff Kriet falls into the former group. He’s a class act.
Lots of anglers – essentially anyone who has fished against him – have been defeated, humbled or disappointed by Kevin VanDam over the years, but perhaps no one as openly as Kriet. First it happened in an Elite Series event on Oklahoma’s Grand Lake, where KVD mounted a final day charge to overtake Kriet’s lead. It was déjà vu all over again this past week at the Lay Lake Classic.
I have no ill will towards VanDam. He is the consummate professional and a joy to work with. One of my most valued and cherished on-the-water memories was my opportunity to fish with him for three days at the California Delta in 2007. For most people, that’s not a once-in-a-lifetime deal – it’s never-in-a-lifetime or never-in-your-wildest-rub-on-a-bottle-and-spring-a-genie dreams.
Kriet is another one of the gems, but for somewhat different reasons. I spent the third practice day before the record-setting 2008 Elite Series whackfest on Falcon in the back of his boat and it was simply one of my most enjoyable fishing days ever. Not only did we catch a bunch of fish (he encouraged me to set on them because he was trying to weed out “small fish spots,” which on Falcon means anything 4 pounds and under), but he gave me some critical pointers that really helped me during the tournament – advice about casting angles, targets that would give me an advantage while not pissing off my pro, and a few tackle tweaks. In the dozen or so pro-ams I’ve fished I don’t remember any other pro doing that, at least not with that kind of depth, and certainly not unsolicited. 
He’s also one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet. Besides, he had plenty of Diet Dr. Pepper in the boat, elixir of the gods.
Since that date, Jeff has always had a friendly smile and a firm handshake at every event. Whenever I’ve called, he’s gone out of his way to make the interview informative and memorable. Even after falling to VanDam’s final day charge on Sunday, he was excessively gracious at the post-tournament press conference. He had to be dying a death of a thousand slowly twisted rusty knives, but he didn’t let on. Repeated questions that had to tear at his brain and tug at his heart, and he manned up and answered them one by one, with humor where appropriate, solemnity where it was not.
If I hadn’t been cheering for him to win before (and I was), I’d certainly be rooting him on now.
I hope at some point in the future to get the opportunity to spend another day in the boat with the Squirrel. This is a cruel sport, one where it’s possible to have a stellar career but where you often worry about the holes in your resume. Gary Klein doesn’t have a Classic win. Nor does Roland Martin. Other stars have never earned an AOY title. Jeff Kriet has lots of good years left in his game and if he wasn’t a star already, then Lay Lake put the public on notice that he’s here to stay, whether he wins or not, and he seems convinced that he’s going to win one.
I hope so. I remain, as always, a fan first, a writer second.
[Cue Up the Twighlight Zone Music]
February 25, 2010
In June of 1997 I fished the amateur side of an FLW Tour event on Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka. It was memorable for a couple of reasons, most notably because: (1) I came in 14th and won $2,000, still my largest single tournament haul to date; and (2) on Day 2 I fished with the legendary Ron Lindner. But that wasn’t why it was on my mind this past week.
I recalled my visit to Walleye-land while I was in Alabama for the Classic because one of this year’s Classic contenders was Don Hogue of Pasco, Washington, who qualified through the Federation.
At the Minnetonka event, I practiced one day with a competitor named Don Hogue, not the same one who competed this week. Hogue 1.0 was actually leading the AOY race at that point and he won an FLW Tour event at Toho the next year, but shortly thereafter he seemed to fall off the face of the fishing map.
Oddly enough, he hailed from Columbiana, Alabama, which is where I stayed at Lay Lake. Not sure if there’s some cosmic circular significance to that or if it’s just a coincidence of the “Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy and Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln” variety, but a little odd, don’t ya think?
Word on the Street
February 24, 2010
If you don’t recognize the dude in the picture, it’s because typically he’s looking through the viewfinder
and snapping shots of others, not getting his picture taken. He’s James Overstreet, and if you’ve ever checked out Bassmaster.com and marveled at the pictures, it was probably his work you were ogling.
He may look like he’s three-quarters silverback gorilla, one-quarter manimal, but there’s nothing to be scared of. I’ve worked several BASS events with James and most recently we spent three days together in a boat at the Lay Lake Classic. He snapped pics, I blogged for Bassmaster.com via Blackberry and filmed videos for BassCam – that “work” gave us a front row seat for the show as KVD, Kriet, Faircloth and others lit it up in Beeswax Creek.
Sitting in the boat not making a cast has the potential to be grueling but he kept it entertaining throughout. I’m guessing no one else in Bryant, Arkansas does a Brooklyn accent quite so well.
I want to be like him when I grow up.
Hmmm . . .
February 18, 2010
Entries from the BASS 2010 Media Guide that caused me to take a second look (all verbatim):
Brent "Brody Broderick: In the early 1990s, Broderick was a runway model for a national brand of hair care products.
Alton Jones: In his time away from pro fishing, Jones is a professional securities trader.
Pete Ponds: A gymnast in his teens, Ponds likes to ride a unicycle.
Matt Sphar: When he was a kid, Sphar made about $500 a year selling earthworms he found on land around his house.
J Todd Tucker: Tucker is deaf in one ear and his dog has three legs.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
February 18, 2010
Nice Friends. Thanks, I Made Them Myself
February 15, 2010
Hey, my brother. Could I borrow your “Hey Soul Classics”?
No, my brother, you’ve got to buy your own.
When I was a child, mom had to strap a pork chop to my back just to get the dog to play with me. Even then, once the meat itself was gone and only the residue was left it was pretty much fitty-fitty on whether old Fido would continue to play with me. Actually, that’s a lie. My parents wouldn’t let me have a dog, so I was left at home by myself to play with the lawn darts and lick lead paint off the walls.
Today, it’s more of the same. I put out an offer to the tour pros a while back – offering up straight cash to any of them in exchange for a simple little plug for my blog. None of them took the bait, so I took my cash and headed to Mexico. They’ll regret their laziness when it hits midyear and they’re licking the top of the Vienna Sausages can dry, trying to decide if they can make a long run in tournament number five or whether they should just stay around the ramp and fish for retreads. Bitter? Me? In the interest of fairness, I’m going to leave the offer open for the time being. So tour-level pros, if you’re out there, check out my January 28, 2010, blog – the offer stands . . . for the time being . . . until I revoke it. Cash value (other than the dollar being offered) is 1/20 of a cent.
In the meantime, I’m putting a new offer out there, to you the faithful reader slash fishing freak. If you’re suffering from an overdose of snow right now, like I am, there’s no place you’d rather be than some warm weather bass factory. I came home from one (Lake Mateos) on Sunday and wish I had stayed. I went to El Salto, Falcon and Mateos this winter and all it did was make me hungry for more.
That’s the problem with this sport – it’s the game of more. If you catch 20 pounds, you rue the fact that you should’ve had 25. If you win two out of three tournaments, you regret your failure to obtain perfection. And if you take three vacations in a winter, it becomes a matter of regret that you can’t be there 24/7/365. I’m betting that if Rick Clunn never wins another Bassmaster Classic he’ll die pissed off.
So with all of this regret in mind, the best antidote is to start planning for the next big thing. I know for a fact that I will go back to Mexico next year. Of course, the 200+ tour pros could suddenly sack up and drain me of a few hundred dollars. I could lose my job. Mexico could fall off into one of several oceans. But so long as it’s possible and the fisheries are among the best in the world, I’ll be there again.
Who’s coming with me?
Is there a need for a “Pete Weighs In” themed trip (kind of like a Disney cruise, but not so retarded - sorry, Sarah Palin)? What is it that’s preventing you from starting to plan a trip for next winter? Is it finances (sell your blood once a week)? Is it family (do like I did – alienate them all)? Is it a judge’s order preventing you from leaving the country (sorry, can’t help you with that one).
If I do the legwork, get the details set and call the shots, how many of you would realistically consider joining me in 8 to 12 months? Email me at pete_robbins@hotmail.com if that sounds reasonably appealing (if it doesn’t don’t bother emailing me – you’re an idiot).
I don’t know if I could get us a group discount (remember, this is all stream of consciousness at this point), but I’m guessing we could work something out. I know that I could get a fair amount of tackle and other giveaways for the group (nothing like committing others to contribute, right?). I could put together tackle packs for everyone, get some prizes, maybe a free rod or reel for the person who catches the heaviest (confirmed) bass of the trip or the five that cumulatively weigh the most. I know that this is just a latter day version of strapping a pork chop to my back, but really, I’m not that bad.
Think about it. Write to me with your ideas. I’m serious and I’m going whether you all go or not, but we might as well take over a fish camp for a week. Mexico will never be the same and it’ll be one more notch on your bucket list.