Record Hunting

There are no limits.

--Rick Clunn 

Big week in sports: when we learned that Yamamoto not only wins bass tournaments, but also World Series titles.

But I digress.

Is the Guinness Book of World Records still a thing? Do kids care about it the way we did in the spring, when we pored over the newest additions annually. We all knew the details on the world’s fattest man and the world’s tallest woman, and so on.

And for boys of certain age, we were particularly interested in the sports record book, where some stood out more than others. One was the all-time NFL field goal distance mark of 63 yards, set by the Saints’ Tom Dempsey in 1970. It wasn’t just the number – which seemed inconceivable to us at the time – that mattered, but also the fact that Dempsey was born without toes on his kicking foot or fingers on one hand. That’s what really made it memorable.

But throughout my adolescence in the 80s it seemed unlikely that Dempsey’s record would be broken. Forty yarders were iffy back then, and fifties were monumental. Today, it seems, the expectations have changed – you should hit almost all forties, many fifties, and sixties aren’t out of the question. Demspey’s record was tied three times over the years, first in 1998 and then not for nearly a decade and a half, before it was finally broken in 2013.

The record has been broken several times since, most recently on November 2^nd by the Jaguars’ Cam Little. Sixties are certainly still impressive, but they aren’t the oddities that they used to be. Now, in certain stadiums and weather conditions, and against certain kickers they’re something you have to plan for.

I know it’s cliché to say that records are made to be broken. Perhaps, in the fishing context, it’s more apt to say that eventually they will be broken. I have no doubt that eventually Little’s new field goal record will be broken. The only limitations  on that are human physiology and the length of the field. Similarly, the world record bass mark will fall but perhaps not as soon as most of our tournament records. Remember when Dean Rojas tallied 108+ over four days at Toho a century ago? It seemed inconceivable that someone would average 27 pounds a day again. But then the record was broken by Steve Kennedy at Clear Lake in 2007 – and by a healthy margin. But wait, there’s more. Kennedy’s record lasted just about a year before Paul Elias broke it again. It’s only a matter of time – the stars, the moon and the right angler on the right fishery lining up – until that one is broken, too. The only true limitations are the size of the bass that exist in a given tournament lake.

That’s what makes our sport exciting. Just when we think we know everything about bass we’re surprised. Love it or hate it, that’s when true benefit we’ve gotten from forward-facing sonar – the realization that as much as we think we know, we really don’t know nothing at all. Our sport is at a difficult juncture – the combination of light-speed technology, an economic speedbump, and perhaps too many unnecessary distractions. But it’ll just take one great new record to wow us, to set us back on the path of remembering why we first got into the game in the first place. A new Tom Dempsey record, which will also eventually get replaced in the record books