Bass fishing on the tube

By Paul Ruffin

Now, I have done a fair amount of fishing in my life: in my youth in ponds and rivers in Northeast Mississippi, later on down on the Mississippi Coast. See, I married into saltwater fishing. It was just part of the package, lucky me.

I’m not going to go into surf and deep-sea fishing right now — that’l come later. And I’ve got a few stories to tell. What I want to talk about is the kind of bass fishing you see on television, the kind we'd all like to get in on: a fish every third or fourth cast — good fish, lunkers.

If things were as easy as those guys make out, I’d swear off saltwater and go back to bass fishing just after lunch today.

Now, let’s consider these shows a minute. Did you ever notice that the primary fisherman always has someone else in the boat with him?

Yeah, I know somebody’s holding the camera. But he's not in the same boat and he's not fishing. Or if he is, he’s amphibious (that's a Dizzy Dean term for ambidextrous). I’m talking about the companion in the boat with the guy who’s catching the fish.

He may be a celebrity of some sort or common as dirt and he may or may not be fishing. But he’s always there. The primary fisherman has to have someone to talk to.

Otherwise he has to talk out loud to himself or yell over to the cameraman. People won't sit half an hour listening to the sound of a reel whirring and a bait sputtering through the water.

These guys would have you believe that they catch a fish, unhook and release him, fling the lure back out, and snag another fish within a maximum of half a dozen casts. From all appearances the camera never stops recording.

However, if you watch closely, you’ll notice significant changes between the two scenes. Sometimes the shadows of the guys will be on the left side of the boat when fish number one comes in and on the right side of the boat when the next one arrives.

Now, that suggests to me serious movement of the sun. Or the wind is laying the grass hard over to the right in scene one and hard over to the left in the next. Or a guy's face will look like the bottom of a flouder when he hoists the first fish and like a red party balloon when he lands the second — six hours in the sun will do that to you. Or there’ll be one Coke can beside the seat when the first bass comes on board, and the guy’ll be rolling and stumbling around on a case of empties when he fumbles the second one over the gunwale. Or you might pick it up in the voice of the men.

Early on their voices are fresh and powerful; by the time the second fish gets there, they’re hoarse as Bill Clinton. See, that’s why the second guy is there: he’s to talk to. Otherwise the guy fishing would go out of his mind with boredom.

As my grandmother used to say, they aint a-foolin’ nobody here. Anybody with a modicum of observational skills can tell that these guys have gone through what we all go through when we go bass fishing: hours of hellish waiting for a strike, 450 flings of the bait, 22,220 revolutions of the handle, and at least a six-pack.

And then, when the guy does manage to catch a bass, he eases him alongside the boat, hoists him up by the gills, swings him over the boat, holds him high for the camera, removes the lure, and, giving us his helluva-nice-guy-here look, puts him back into the water.

One flick of the tail and the fish has reversed his position on the food chain. What is wrong with this scene, folks?

He’s just released a fish that these guys have spent maybe a thousand dollars in travel, film, and fees and at least one long day to catch. A nice fish. Eight, maybe 10 pounds. And he's put it back in the water.

Now, let’s kill the camera at this point and consider the probable scene that ensues.

Primary Fisherman is sitting hunched over on his seat, his teeth clenched, fists white-knuckled, moaning.

“Nice fish, Earl,” his companion says, reaching and patting him on the shoulder.

“Don't I know it?” he mumbles, eyes toward the brushtop where he snagged the fish.

“One of the best I’ve seen in awhile,” the cameraman says,

“maybe ever.” He’s come alongside and tied his little boat up to the big one.

“Oh, boys, boys, what have I done? I ain’t had a fish that big in my hands in years. A good four or five pounds of fillets there. I’m wore out from thrashing that water six straight hours. Damnation! I might not —”

“You done it for the show, Earl,” his companion interrupts.

“Show, shmo. This boat wouldn’t hold what I don’t care about that show compared to that fish, Billy Ray. I done it for the $300 y’all gon’ give me. But it wasn't worth it.

I am too old for this kinda foolishness. The next time I land one that big, you can turn that damn camera off or do some kinda trick with it, flash a Technical Difficulties sign. I don’t care if I blow the show for good and scald every animal-rights advocate out there.

Hold a big-caliber gun to my head and see’f I turn him aloose. I brang in another one like that and the fish goes home with me, and he’ll spend what’s left of eternity swimming across my den wall.”

See, folks, Earl’s no fool. He knows that in what is a woefully short lifetime a guy’s not going to have in his hands many fish that big.

You’re allotted just so many by the fates. He’ll have lots of money pass through his hands, but not many fish that size. So old Earl’ll go on back home and curse his fate, get drunk and beat his wife and kids, while all across the country people’ll be talking about what a great bass show they saw today and admiring Earl for the gentleman the camera made him out to be. Such is the life of the television fisherman.



Paul Ruffin, 2009 Texas State Poet Laureate and Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University, has never turned a decent fish loose in his life.

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