Stanching the Bleeding

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”
--Harry S. Truman

Welcome to the economic downturn that we all knew would come eventually, even if few of us expected that a pandemic would be the cause, or how substantial worldwide the impacts would be. It’ll be a while before we know if we’ve bottomed out and whether any stimulus efforts worked. Of course, many of our individual conclusions will be seen through our personal political lens and, as Truman noted, by how directly we’ve been affected by all of this.

While there’s never a good time for something of this nature, it could not have happened at a worse time for the fishing industry. It’s springtime, when we all want to do is fish and we’re ready to spend money on it – or at least we were ready to spend. Companies are expecting to make a substantial portion of their yearly sales right now, which means many are heavy on inventory and low on cash. Just think about how lucky B.A.S.S. was to schedule the Classic when they did and not a week or two later.

Even within the sport, the impacts don’t affect us equally. For those of us still able to drive and fish, low gas prices are a godsend. For those of us tied to the oil industry, they may be a financial death sentence.

Despite all of that negativity, some good may come out of this. It may realign our priorities, make us safer for the next pandemic, and bring us together. While none of us celebrated 9/11, it also (at least temporarily) brought us together as a country. I’ve seen similar acts of kindness now, from neighbors helping the elderly, to anglers offering to take grocery workers and first responders fishing when all of this is over. In addition to those sorts of acts, I’ve also seen a commitment from those who still have disposable cash to spend money with the fishing manufacturers and retailers who support our sport. That’s not going to stem the spread of the virus, but a concerted effort to keep the good guys in business may allow them to come out solvent on the other side. There’s not necessarily a “right” answer about how to support the industry, but I can assure you that inaction is the most wrong answer of them all.

One of the great things about the sport of bass fishing is that if you’re involved in it long enough you meet all sorts of people who would otherwise be outside of your orbit. If you don’t know someone who is hurting right now, you’re not looking hard enough.