Just Another Week With Rods and Reels

I was beginning to think that the fishing world was in freefall. We had two semi-major professional events recently – a Bassmaster Open on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula and a Tackle Warehouse Invitational on my home waters of the Potomac River – and as far as I could tell there was not a whimper of dissent. No allegations of cheating, no gray area innuendo, no videos of boats skidding across six-lane highways, and no one throwing barbs at the tournament organizations.

In this day and age, if there’s a tournament and the story isn’t something other than the fishing itself, did it really happen?

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the boys at the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament put us all to shame. One of the boats in the derby caught a 600-plus pound marlin, which would have won the a total of over $3.5 million – including a bonus of over seven hundred grand for exceeding 500 pounds – except it had been chewed on by a shark. Apparently, subject to some interpretation, that disqualified it, although some argued that the rule had historically been applied inconsistently.

I’m not an expert on billfish tournaments, the application of rules thereto, or much of anything that’s worth $3.5 million bones, but regardless of how the eventual lawsuit plays out, I guarantee that this is one the Big Rock cognoscenti will remember for a long time – and while I’m drawn to bass tournaments for the information and techniques they reveal, we remember them for the extracurricular shenanigans.

If you’re a longtime fan like me, I bet you remember “Boyd vs. Langill” and “Ike in the Sabine woods” and “Kevin, come get your boy,” and Timmy Horton eating pizza on the dock much more vividly than a random Top 150 event in 2000, or a one of 812 Beaver Lake FLWs back in the day.

We come for the fishing, we stay for the stories. And stories derive from personalities. There are multiple great anglers, guys who’ve won four, five or more major professional events, who you’d be hard-pressed to pick out of a police lineup. More people remember Jason Quinn -- who hasn’t fished a BASS event since 2016, and hasn’t fished an Elite since 2013 – than some of those multi-time winners. Right now, we’ve seen Seth Feider, once a lightning rod, move into the mainstream, replaced by Keith Poche and Matt Robertson in the crosshairs of the keyboard junkies. Their stories still have time to play out.

Twenty years ago, Ike was the man in the crosshairs – one writer referred to him as “the Yankee even the other Yankees don’t like.” Today (well, in the coming months), he’s preparing to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. It takes time for certain behaviors to become normalized. Some people will never forgive Ike for smashing the flagpole at Toho, regardless of how much additional good he does. Others think he has the potential to have the greatest impact on the sport writ large of any pro who’s ever lived. The truth may be somewhere in between, but he’s no longer an outcast. He may occasionally still have fits or outbursts, but on the whole, he’s part of the community. I can live without scandal, disputes, and the clutching of pearls, but I can’t live with boring tournaments. It’s part of why they play the games.