Thursday, August 05, 2004
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Bassmaster Classic: is this really fishing?
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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You don’t have to look any further than the Bassmaster Classic to see that the American dream still is up for grabs.
The $200,000 first-place prize, and the gobs of notoriety and prestige that go with it, was claimed by Takahiro Omori, who grew up in Japan dreaming about becoming a bass fishing pro in America.
The 33-year old Tokyo native gave wings to that dream when he came to this country in 1992, knowing just one person and not many more words of English. What he did know was how to catch bass. Pro angling doesn’t reach a higher peak than a Classic win.
Omori’s victory -- with a three-day, Lake Wylie total of 39 pounds, 2 ounces -- is one of several examples of how pro bass fishing is evolving. It no longer is a sport of the good old boys of the South, as it was when I began covering it more than 30 years ago. It now is global.
Even a bigger change, as I see it, has been how the media covers the Classic. It was a print-media affair when I worked earlier Classics in Richmond, Baltimore and Greensboro. We newspaper kind would send our stories over phone lines and they would be relegated to the back of the sports pages. Detailed TV coverage would come weeks later.
Now the Classic is a live, made-for-TV affair. Little wonder. BASS is owned by ESPN, purchased in 2001 for a reported $40 million.
No longer do fans have to open their morning paper to get tournament results. At the 2004 Classic in Charlotte there was 11 hours of TV coverage on ESPN and ESPN2, a huge increase from the three hours of last year. Viewers would know the weight of a pro’s catch the same instant the pro did. They even could see some of the bass being caught.
In many instances, newspapers covering the Classic didn’t bother to try to compete with daily statistics; rather, they concentrated on features that appeared after the event. In some cases, they got much of their information by viewing TV, like everyone else. Or they ignored the whole thing.
I watched a couple hours of the ESPN coverage and for the most part gave it a good grade. The network was successful in developing drama with story lines and live action, but it was at its best when Shaw Grigsby, a man of class and integrity, expressed his deep knowledge of the fishing techniques being used and the pros using them.
Grigsby is a consummate professional who has qualified for the Classic 10 times, and probably would have been in this one had it not been for his triple-bypass heart surgery in May. If you want to read one of the best book written on bass fishing, get a copy of his National Geographic book titled “Bass Master Shaw Grigsby Notes on Fishing and Life.”
Apart from the good, I thought there was too much glitter, hype and noise; but then, maybe you have to do something to jazz up weighing fish. Weigh-in host Fish Fishburne was too loud and his efforts to create excitement appeared superficial at times. The earrings that Jason Quinn wore were way too big for my taste. Contenders like Skee Reese spent too much effort trying to work the weigh-in crowd into frenzy, as if an applause meter determined the outcome of the contest. Michael Iaconelli’s first day bellowing would have been more appropriate at a hog-calling contest. You had to wonder if his disqualification for fishing off-limit water the second day of the tournament was a PR stunt. Maybe the same can be said of Quinn’s ear-dangling hardware.
But this is TV. Watching the Classic is meant to be fun, and it was for me. The question: Is it really fishing?
One of the good things about all the Classic TV coverage, it may draw new recruits to angling. Let’s hope they understand that tournament fishing is only a small part of the sport, that angling always has been, and still is, more contemplative than competitive. It is Mon and Dad taking the kids fishing. It is two friends each wanting his buddy to get the big one. It is doing, not watching, where the payment is a day with nature and friends, not a chase for money and fame.
It is not what pro Dean Rojas would have you think. After decking a fat bass and holding it to his face he said, “This is the smell of money.”
For many of us, catching a nice bass is payment enough. But maybe that’s no longer cool. During the Classic, several fishing industry leaders met to ponder why angling recently hasn’t seen growth. It needs more Mike Iaconellis, was one conclusion. His wild antics have attracted a new following among young television viewers.
Come on, guys. Are you saying the next time I round a cove to see some guy breakdancing in a bass boat, I’ve seen the future of fishing?
