Building A Big, Wonderful House

This past week at the FLW Tour Championship, I sat in the Audience at The Birmingham , Alabama , Convention Center and watched with thousands of other people as Luke Clausen of Spokane , Washington was crowned FLW Tour champion.  The award, prestigious in title was accompanied by a check for $500,000.  Watching Luke’s stunned look of appreciation, my mind began to wonder, thinking about how many anglers it took making cast after cast to get us to this point.

This commentary is not meant to take anything away from today’s great young anglers, on the contrary, it is a testament to how good today’s anglers have actually become.  But I cannot, in good conscious continue to report on today’s events, without considering the foundation that has been laid.

When you build a strong house, you need a strong foundation.  Brick by brick, nail by nail, each component of that house is equally important as the rest, and yet, you would have to understand if the chimney of that house didn’t know the hardwood floor, or if the last nail pounded didn’t know the first nail pounded, again, each with equal importance, but the last nail of course would be the one most recent in our mind.

Bass fishing has built a strong house, and Luke Clausen, and Takahiro Omori are just the latest nails pounded into this hypothetical bass fishing house that we continue to build.

Now folks know Bill Dance, Roland Martin, Hank Parker and Jimmy Houston.  People also know and appreciate the innovations and imagination of men like Forest Wood and Ray Scott.  But what people may not know about is the countless other men and women who have fished and invented and provided us with what we have today.

Lets, for the next minute or so, consider some of the things that you and might take for granted when ever we go fishing.

How many of us have the confidence in our bass boats to make long runs through grueling conditions.  We never have to worry about our boats tracking safely through rough water.  Where did that come from?  Someone had to have the nerve and passion to attack rough water in the primitive early bass boats that were available.  Surviving, living through the experience if you will, that bold angler undoubtedly reported to a boat manufacturer that “we better do something to make these boats track straight when they come off of a wave.”  

While we are talking about boat performance, do you take for granted that your boat can run 75 to 80 miles per hour.  Where did that come from?  Years ago, professional bass anglers, looking for every advantage they could find, begged outboard motor manufacturers to increase the horse power in the modern bass boat motor.  Back then most boats were 16 feet long with 115 hp motors.  Can you imagine those first few 16 foot boats that had 200 hp motors on them? Scary.

How about catch and release.  It became apparent at an early stage that if bass fishing was going to become a sport that would be acceptable to a wide range of Americans, we were going to have to find a way to protect the resource.  Tournament organizations are generally given credit for bringing catch and release to us, but where did that idea come from?   Fishermen.  Anglers who realized that if something to protect the fish, the resource, wasn’t done quickly, the resource would become depleted.  And those who might criticize our sport, would have plenty of fuel, to light the fire that would see our sport dashed on the rocks.

What about electronics?  The passion of anglers who wanted to get better and better led to developments of fish finders, Liquid crystal graphs, GPS and now, underwater cameras.  All of this, not mention the development of new lures and new techniques.

Passion:  It’s the common thread that all bass anglers share.  It links us to our past.  It is the characteristic that makes bass fishermen my favorite kind of people.

We are all building a wonderful big house here. Bass fishing is bigger now than it has ever been.  Luke Clausen, the FLW Tour Champion and Takahiro Omori the BassMaster Classic Champions are but the latest nails in this great house.  But when build a house, it is important to remember that all of the nails are important equally.  It is great to celebrate our champions today, but lets not forget the great men and women that have provided the innovation and inventions that are enjoyed by everyone.  Remember, we are building a big wonderful house.