Pete Weighs In
"Welcome to My World"
Feb 1, 2008
I may not be the most prolific outdoor writer in the country, but over the course of a year I definitely put a lot of words down on paper, or on a computer screen, as the case may be.
But unless there's someone else out there who spends as many hours pouring over websites, calling pro anglers and committing his thoughts to publishable words, I bet I'm one of the top ten wordiest outdoor writers who also have other full-time jobs. On further reflection, I probably publish a lot more total prose than a lot of those guys who do consider it their full-time living.
Not to say my work is better than anyone else's, and while I recognize that my opinion is completely subjective, I think some of what I write is pretty damn good. But if I consider this a job, I'm a pretty poor businessman because I get a lot less money (at least on a per word basis) and a lot less recognition than many of my peers.
So what lesson can we take away from the fact that I recently committed to write this Blog? (strike that – recently begged GYCB's Heidi Roth for the opportunity). The bottom line is more words, more ideas, more time, but no additional compensation and probably no additional readership beyond my editor (who has to read my stuff) and my mother (who thinks that all I touch is gold, even though she doesn't know the first thing about fishing).
As one of my favorite sportswriters, Bill Simmons (of espn.com) would say, the lesson is, once again, that I'm an idiot. I'm way overextended as it is, and every time I take on another one of these "opportunities" it ends up taking more time than I originally envisioned.
With that said, I'm ecstatic to have this opportunity. A year ago, I wasn't quite sure how to pronounce "Blog," and now I have one (I'm still not sure whether it's supposed to be capitalized). I have so many ideas and questions about the world of fishing that don't necessarily merit a complete article, but that I want to memorialize in some way.
I don't promise that it will always be exhilarating.
I don't promise that it will always be crystal clear.
I don't promise that it will always be one hundred per cent about fishing (although I'll try to connect the dots somehow).
But I do promise that it'll always be straight up honest and will occasionally make you laugh (either with me or at me) and shed a bit of light on my on-the-water and on-the-keyboard experiences.
"Let's Go to Videotape"
Feb 6, 2008
Boxing fanatics love to trade tapes of their favorite fights. They have favorite events, favorite boxers and they always want to share evidence of their passion with other fight fans.
Even worse are the hockey fight fanatics. Check out sites like www.hockeyfighters.com, www.hockeyfights.com or www.dropyourgloves.com and you'll see there's a bizarre subculture based on voyeurism of Canadian goons beating the crap out of each other.
My question is why there's no such service for bass fishing fans.
Any bass fanatic who was into the sport during the 80s and 90s remembers the distinctive opening music of the Bob Cobb era Bassmasters shows. Even though today's show is pretty good, those older ones provoke a Pavlovian reaction. I'm sure there are other fishing shows from the past that have similar effects on my fellow addicts.
Certain scenes from that era are permanently seared in our minds – Fritts rolling out of the boat trying to land a crankbait fish, Nixon with the jumping Megabucks lunker.
Fortunately, my good friend Kevin McCarthy has many of those old shows on video. Unfortunately, his kids taped over some key episodes with their personal video game exploits. I'm not exactly sure why. A few winters ago, he loaned me the tapes and I worked my way through them.
A personal favorite is Randy Blaukat's win at Buggs Island in the early 90s, where he pulled the drain plug out of his boat to sink it so that he could get through a culvert to an unmolested backwater. Some people have since told me that he didn't really need to sink the boat. I don't know whether that's true, but I do know it was an awesome show and the stuff legends are made of. Even when he got back into his fishing area, the willows were so flooded that he pitched his jig over them. When he'd hook a bass, he'd muscle it to the surface, pin it against the bush and drive his boat like an ATV into the thick stuff to retrieve it. Combat fishing at its very best.
I'm sure there are more of these moments that I've forgotten. Gotta call Kevin and borrow his tapes. Anyone else have some I can check out of your lending library?
"Air Brauer"
Feb. 9, 2008
He's the Tiger Woods of bass fishing.
If you know jack about our sport, you know who "he" is. KVD to the fans. Kevin Van Dammit to the other pros.
I'm tired of hearing the comparison.
I'm sure others are too.
Not sure what Kevin thinks of it.
Somewhere I heard that Señor Woods is a fisherman, but I don't know if he has any clue who KVD is. If I could ever get past Tiger's phalanx of handlers, I might be inclined to ask. To tell you the truth, if I could get to him that probably wouldn't be my first question. It's pretty damn boring and limiting.
Typically, I dislike this type of comparison. The KVD fanatics will claim he's a better angler than Tiger is a golfer. Others will say that Le Tigre has the upper hand. Golf geeks and fish dorks will point out the hundreds of other ways that they don't line up. To me, it's like a group of first year medical students watching "ER." They end up looking at the trees instead of the forest.
These comparisons suck because they're manufactured and typically no one cares. It's the domain of roto-geeks and fish freaks like myself. Tiger is Harvard. Every other school says they're "the Harvard of so-and-so…" – Duke and Vanderbilt each say they're the Harvard of the south. Stanford says they're the Harvard of the west. Michigan says they're the Harvard that lost to Appalachian State (oops, did I let that one fly?). And Harvard doesn't give a rat's behind about any of them. They never say: "We're the East Goober State of Massachusetts." They just sit on their multi-billion dollar endowment and eat brie or bon bons or whatever they like up there. It's good to be the king, even if you have to wear an ascot, and regardless of whether the title is merited.
The reason these comparisons are so limiting when you compare athletes or performers from two different sports or even within the same sport is because we typically seize on one characteristic that they share in common and ignore the rest. Every white goofy-looking basketball player who comes along is going to be compared to Larry Bird, even if his game is more like Magic Johnson's. And every muscle-bound, gigantism-head-afflicted baseball player is going to be assumed to be 'roiding it like the yet-unconvicted Barry Bonds, even if the other dude looks like Tarzan and plays like Jane.
But with all that said, I still like to use the cheap comparison as a lazy writer's crutch in my articles. It's a pathetic literary trick, but it's one that people can relate to. Besides, I have a lot of time on my hands to play these little games in my head. Who is the Barry Bonds of fishing? Who is the Muggsy Bogues of fishing? Who's our Mike Tyson? And it doesn't have to be just athletes, either. Who is the Madonna of our sport? Picasso? Larry Flynt?
Bringing this back to the center a bit, who could we characterize as the Michael Jordan of professional bass fishing? I guess KVD is an obvious choice – most agree he's head and shoulders above everyone else when it comes to competition. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let him be Tiger and MJ. Might as well let him be Joe Montana and Babe Ruth, too.
My choice for the Michael Jordan of bass fishing? Denny Brauer.
It has nothing to do with gambling debts, signature shoes (I'm guessing Denny wears something unfashionably orthopedic) or tongue wagging. It has everything to do with the will to win.
Jordan, you may remember, was famously known for hating to lose. Not just at basketball – they said he was equally hyper-competitive at everything. It could've been ping pong, checkers, video games, whatever. I recently met someone who golfed with Jordan at a suburban Chicago country club. His theory was that Jordan was a six handicap golfer who was convinced that he was actually a two handicap and that the five, six (and seven?) figure sums that he gambled were additional motivation to will himself to win. When opponents were dumb enough to trash-talk him, he made them pay. Even when they were silent, he made up slights in his head and made them pay just the same.
Which brings me back to Brauer.
At last year's Elite Series event at the California Delta, I spent the practice period fishing with Kevin VanTiger. Brauer happened to be staying in a cabin a few doors down from Kevin, Scott Rook and Davy Hite. As I got in the car to drive back to my hotel one practice day, I saw Denny working on his boat so I stopped and got out to chat for a while.
Fast forward to Day 3 of the tournament. I've drawn Denny. We've fished together before, but never on a competition day. I've also been around him a fair amount in social settings. He's never been anything but cordial but I've always tried to maintain an appropriate amount of distance. I don't want to be the Chris Farley character – "Remember that time you won the Classic? That was awesome." Occasionally I have to bite my tongue to prevent that from happening.
I give him my usual pro-am song and dance – "I recognize that this is your job….I don't want to get in your way…..blah blah blah." We're making the long idle from the ramp to the take-off point talking about this and that in the pre-dawn darkness. He innocuously asks what I thought of fishing with Kevin. "It was unbelievable," I said. "He clearly is in a class by himself." I didn't even stop to think that here I am, sitting with someone who has a claim to that title himself. I didn't even think what I said might've been offensive or questionable. Kevin is in a class by himself, right?
We blast off, make a long run and start to fish. Denny is mostly fishing a spinnerbait, although he works a tube and his namesake jig into the rotation occasionally. He catches the first fish. And the second. And the third. And so on.
What the #%@%& is going on? If we were flipping precise targets I could understand, but we're mostly throwing out over submerged grass in murky water. I watch him and replicate his retrieve. I tie on a spinnerbait similar to his. I ask him what I'm doing wrong. He watches me and says it appears I'm doing everything right. He gives me his rod/reel/spinnerbait, picks up another, and keeps whipping my butt. At twelve-zip, I finally connect and put a three pounder in the boat. I must've looked pretty exasperated.
"That'll teach you not to brag so much on Van Dam," he says matter-of-factly.
The whole time he'd been thinking about how I'd slighted him. He never let on, never commented, never did anything but smile, but he had internalized my comment and used it to focus his efforts. He probably couldn't even explain how it motivated him or changed his fishing style, but it worked. He had his best day of the tournament and moved up in the standings.
A few years earlier, I'd pre-fished with him for a day on Guntersville. As we drove to the ramp, I asked him how he managed to stay motivated. After all, he had won AOY, a Classic, certainly had the bucks in the bank to retire, didn't have to prove anything to anyone. On top of that, he was experiencing a lot of back pain.
"I still like kicking ass," he said.
A few more back surgeries and a new knee later, he's still at it. I've heard rumors that he's on the verge of retiring, a bit burned out, doesn't enjoy it as much now that Chad's not traveling with him any more. BS. One day they'll move him into a retirement home – where he'll still race the other old farts at Jello-eating, take their money in poker, and see who can stay up to watch the most episodes of Matlock in a row – but they're going to have to take the old man kicking and screaming, trying to fend them off with a flipping stick. Until then, be careful what you say around him.
"No Such Thing as Vacation"
Feb. 12, 2008
Back in the early 90's, my wife worked for a business owned by her second cousin Terry. Terry is six foot nine and very closely resembles basketball coach Phil Jackson. You can tell that they're not any more closely related than second cousins because my wife is five foot nothing and doesn't resemble any hall of fame coaches from any sport.
Terry lives in the Chicago area, where Jackson won a whole bunch of NBA championships. I know he's been approached for autographs, but I can't quite figure out why he doesn't milk this tremendous freak of nature coincidence for a little bit more in terms of free drinks, hard-to-get restaurant reservations and the occasional groupie.
Terry is also one of the most brutally honest (read: crude) people I've ever met. As a result, we've always gotten along extremely well. So when we were invited to his daughter's "destination wedding" in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic over the New Year's holiday, it seemed to be an easy choice – stay in cold Virginia drinking cheap liquor with friends we see all the time, or hop on a plane to drink cheap liquor in relative warmth with the portion of her family that we like.
Fast forward to December 29th, and we're on a plane to the DR. I'm excited. I've packed some flowery shirts I rarely get to wear, a few pairs of shorts, a Yamamoto visor and a spare pair of underwear. The catch? No fish talk. I'm not to check my email or voicemail all week. I don't bring even a single fishing magazine or book. And I'm not supposed to look into the possibility of a saltwater charter. On this last prong I cheated. One night before we left, I looked into the possibility of chartering a boat. Under the cover of darkness, I quietly snuck down to my home office, turned on the computer, and investigated. Some men sneak to their computer to check out porn – for me it's all about fish. Yes, I'm a little off. I knew that we probably wouldn't fish, but if someone else in the wedding party asked I needed to be ready with information.
It was a great vacation. Eighty five degrees every day. Nothing required of me except to sit by the pool and occasionally move from a lounge chair to a raft. And I found out the meaning of "all-inclusive." In addition to the numerous restaurants and bars throughout the resort, there was poolside bar service and round-the-clock room service included. If you wanted a cheeseburger, some nachos and an El Presidente cerveza at two in the morning, it would be at your room in less than thirty minutes. Beat that, Dominos.
The one downside to the trip was the transfer from the airport to the resort. While they're in the process of building a new highway from the airport to the resorts, for now the roads leave a little bit to be desired. There are not yet potholes that would completely engulf Terry, but there are more than a few that would leave the wife invisible to oncoming traffic.
What makes road travel there great (and nausea-inducing) is that there are no rules of the road. Eighteen wheelers do their best to pass three guys on a moped carrying a crate of scrawny chickens. Cars swerve around each other at breakneck speeds on blind curves. And the occasional donkey in the middle of the street is a nuisance to everyone. The bus drivers take the cake, though. We rode in what would be considered by grade-schoolers everywhere to be a "short bus," albeit one with air-conditioning and loud merengue music. The bus drivers are a unique breed, so much so that my six rides during the week convinced me that there's an unmet need for a video game called "Dominican Bus Driver" – maximum points are attained by getting each of the four wheels in a separate pothole at the same time. We rode with a couple of guys who would continually battle for high scores.
The lesson learned from that is that I was loathe to leave our resort unless absolutely necessary. But midweek, my wife suggested we go on what was ambitiously described as a "James Bond Experience" – "race on speedboats out to the coral reef, then snorkel amidst the schools of tropical fish." We had really enjoyed past snorkeling experiences, so I was game for this one.
After a hellacious ride over in a bus without shocks, they loaded about fifty of us in a Carolina Skiff that may have been used to during the Mariel boatlifts. Water wasn't quite coming over the sides, but one ill-timed wave and we might have filled the craft. They took us out to where the "speedboats" were moored and loaded us pair by pair onto what can most charitably be described as fourteen foot fiberglass bathtubs with 25 or 30 horse Yamahas on the back.
Unfortunately, we were put in one of the boats with a 25. Even more unfortunately, we were in line behind a doo-rag wearing guy who spoke neither English nor Spanish (we later found out he was Brazilian) and had even less experience piloting any sort of watercraft. As they lined us up, he had trouble getting his kill switch attached, trouble getting the engine in gear, and so on. The two rules written on our consoles were:
"No the zig zag in boats";
"No passes other boats in front of you boat."
These proved harder to follow than you might expect, largely because the doo rag doofus couldn't get his act together. They had us snake line around in a big circle as we waited for everyone to get situated. Then the guides would lead us in succession out to the reef to snorkel, but we were warned that we had to follow them carefully, because deviation from there route might cause us to go aground on any one of a number of underwater obstacles. Not likely to scare any of us who have crossed creek mouths on the James River, navigated stump fields on any one of a number of lakes, traversed a low Okeechobee, let alone set out on the jungle of Toledo Bend. Oddly enough, most of my fellow tourists looked as if they had no such experience.
After 5 days at the pool getting fat(ter) and tan, the competitive spirits were coming back to me. As we circled around, it felt just like getting ready to go by the check-out boat at a tournament. I was ready to floor it and get there first.
When they instructed us to take off, the guy in front of us just sat there. Then he gave it a little gas. Then a little more. By the time he got his tub up on plane, he was about a half mile behind the boat in front of him (we had been instructed to stay 30-40 yards apart). But now he was going, and although he had been assigned a 30HP boat and all I had was a 25, I couldn't stay up on plane without passing him. How could he possibly be so slow? Twice, I had to set the boat down and wait for him to create some distance. Another time, he pulled his kill switch free and died in the water.
One of the guides was trying to help him, but he bordered on un-coachable. After a few miles of this, I had to choose between my sanity and the two semi-understandable rules listed above. Mr. Doo Rag was putting along in a straight line painfully slowly. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any more. The tournament angler in me came out, and I swerved around him, obstacles be damned, and passed his pathetic self. Our guides just smiled. See you at weigh-in.
You can take a bass angler out of his element, but his spirit never dies.