The Way It Was . . . A Little History
Nov/Dec 2007 Issue
As I get older, I find myself looking back and missing some of the good things that we used to have in bass fishing. Life was much simpler back then and I’ve seen a lot of changes take. Some of it has been good for tournament bass fishing. Some of it...well, let’s just say the younger generation don’t know what they’re missing.
Today’s bass fisherman has got way more variables in ways to catch fish. You’ve got techniques that a lot of people can’t even do; like swimbaits. Those big baits not only require special rods and reels but they require a certain mentality and physical ability to be able to fish them all day long. We’ve got quite a few in the sport that can do it. I’m one of those guys that can’t. I wished I could ‘cause I don’t think this swimbait thing has scratched the surface yet.
Take these kids in this Black Dog company. They are doing things with swimbaits and paints that haven’t been done before. That bluegill of theirs is the best looking artificial bluegill I’ve ever seen. You can’t tell it from the real thing. We’ve got guys now that are building tackle that is just unbelievable, and it’s just going to get better.
You’re probably wondering, why is Dee talkin’ about the future when this column is supposed to be about the past? The past always sets the groundwork for the present and future. If you lose sight of the past then you got nothing to build on for the future.
Take a look at our founding fathers; we still go pretty much by what they set in place for us over two hundred years ago. Today there’s catch and release. Where’d it come from? It came from guys like me in the past who realized we’ve got to protect this resource for the future. Livewells, kill switches, blasting off with running lights turned on - all these things go back to the 70’s. Without knowing stuff from the past, you got nothing to keep you from making the same old mistakes.
Here’s where we need to be looking at the past: Back when I was a young man starting out, the Delta was all Northern strain largemouth. That was back in the days when if you caught 13 to 15 pounds in the Delta you were a stud. I remember one long-ago tournament that Don Payne won with less than 8 pounds! It’s hard to believe that nowadays, but things have changed that much.
When I first started fishing the Delta, there was no such thing as clean water. Everything was stained and the whole Delta had a brown tint to it. For a lot of guys it was a tough fishery and that’s one of the reasons why I liked it. There were no weeds in the system to filter the water. Then, the weeds came in and cleaned up the water to where you can get in some places now and see down three to five feet.
Well, let me tell you, those weeds produced an unbelievable fishery and, it’s getting better every year. But, the weeds are a problem for some folks. Recreational boaters and government water projects down south don’t like weeds. So, along comes the state of California and they start killing off the weed beds. What’s going to happen to the forage and bass populations without that habitat? Are we headed back to the past? That lesson is already there in the history books. My generation of fishermen wrote it! Twelve pound limits, dirty water, tough bites. If young people don’t learn from the past and put a stop to all the weed killin’ then you can bet we’ll lose one of the best bass fisheries in the world.
Fishermen were different back then too. In the old days, we used to be able to hang out with the boys. You could call up your buddy and compare waters, talk about how you tweeked a jig or you tied some polypropylene rope onto a jig to make it totally weedless or maybe how you modified your crankbaits. I remember when the first Poe plug was built over in Modesto, the old cedar plugs. They took the bill off of some Bagley baits, DB3’s I believe, and they put those bills into the Poe plug to get it to run as deep as it did. Those first Poe prototypes were Bagley-lure billed. That cooperation represented what happened throughout the whole fishing community back then. Companies helped each other to make the baits better and fishermen were communicating. It honed everybody’s skills and made us all better.
Today, everybody’s got lockjaw. Nobody wants to tell anybody anything unless they can sell you something. Big money and bigger egos are changing the sport. I used to like staying to the last dog at a tournament because I could sit underneath a shade tree someplace, or in the back of my pickup, and shoot the bull with a bunch of guys. Ain’t like that anymore. Guys don’t come talk to you now because they’re your buddy. They come over to see what information they can get out of you to make themselves a better fisherman. And yet if they happen to have something going, they aren’t about to share it. That camaraderie is something we’re losing in tournament bass fishing.
Tournament circuits have changed a lot over the years. In the beginning we only had one circuit out here and everyone knew each other. We all traveled up and down the west coast together fishing tournaments. I could go from here (Northern California) to Mead on two tanks of fuel that cost me eight or ten dollars a tank. I could run down there, get a motel room for the week and do the whole thing for less than $400. That’s everything - gas, food, motel, fishing...everything. Today, it costs you $1,500 to $2,000 to make that same trip. With all these circuits, the fields are too small to create a decent payback. It’s possible to win a team tournament now and lose money due to your overhead! If we still had 120 to 150 boats in each event, the payback would make the expenses worth the cost, but, we don’t. Instead, we got lots of 30 to 40 boat team circuits with lousy paybacks.
Even the tournament formats have changed. When I started fishing tournaments, every event was a straight draw. Two guys got paired together for the day and they fished against each other as well as the rest of the field. He was basically your watchdog and you were his watchdog. That kept you honest.
They had a rule that if you brought a non-boater with you to the tournament you were guaranteed the use of your boat for the event. In the draw, they would start out pairing the guys who signed up with a non-boating partner with the guys who didn’t have a boat. But if you didn’t have a signup partner, then you and the other guy with a boat had to sit down and talk about who’s boat you were gonna use.
The decision was based on things like the newness of the boat, the condition the boat was in, how fast it was, who was on fish, who wasn’t on fish, how much fuel it held for long runs - all that stuff came into play. And if you couldn’t resolve it by talking it out then you had to flip a coin. The guy who won the coin flip, got the right to use his own boat. Then, you had to decide who got to pick the first fishing location and the time of day for each guy to run the bow. If you couldn’t resolve it, that was another coin flip.
When we got paired up together, nothing was automatic. You didn’t go off after the pairing and leave your partner there without talking like sometimes happens today. Before you left the pairing meeting, you had your game plan all worked out with the guy you were going to fish with the next day. You didn’t have to tell him how you were going to catch ‘em, that’s the last thing you wanted to do, but you had the fishing schedule set.
The communications didn’t end there. Once I drew a guy at Berryessa and I got to use my boat as well as making the decisions the first part of the day. I told him not to throw in front of me and I’d leave him a lot of water. I caught the first fish and he thought that since I caught a fish in front of him I was catching all the fish and leaving him nothing. He started throwing long up front and then I couldn’t throw to the bank. He cut me off.
This went on for about 15 minutes until I pulled way off the bank. I got out a 7’ ½” flipping stick (that was a long rod in those days) and put a reel on it with 12 pound test line and a half ounce jig. I got so far off the bank that he couldn’t even reach it. When he complained, I said, “I asked you not to throw out in front of me.” I kept catching fish and he finally said if I I got us back over to the bank he wouldn’t throw over me any more. “Alright,” I said and we got back over to the bank.
I think I weighed 13 pounds that day and he weighed 11 1/2 pounds. We both had a good day. That was the way you fished a tournament back then. It was just dealing with each other and there was no help from either individual to beat the rest of the pack. You caught your own fish. Period. In my opinion,these shared-weight western style Pro-Ams now just aren’t right. A real pro should never add an Am’s fish to his weight, and no Am should get a check when he didn’t catch a fish! I would love to see it go back to where each guy catches his own fish. FLW events are that way and I like it. Make the guy on the back catch his own fish, and vice versa.
I gotta admit, I do like some of the things that have developed out of the past. I hated spotted bass when they were first introduced at Oroville and a few other lakes. Now, I’d rather catch a five pound spot than a 10 pound largemouth any day. Those spots can flat out pull!
Today’s improved technology has helped me keep fishing competitively at age 70. I don’t have to do those monster hooksets anymore now that I’m using braided line. All I ask is that fishermen remember one important thing about the past; the future depends on it. If we let the government kill all the weeds in Clearlake and the Delta, what’s going to happen to those incredible fisheries? I CAN answer that! I got to fish both those bodies of water before they had weeds. If we kill off that habitat, then we’ll go right back to the 70’s!
I could go on all day talking about the way things used to be. What I miss most is the camaraderie and the good times with buddies I had back then. I personally wouldn’t mind if we returned to some of the old ways. You young guns, you better pay attention to the past or get ready to repeat it!