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Benefits of Bass, Both Big and Small: One Group Puts the Sport on National Stage, and the Other Puts Fish in Water

Posted on: Sunday, 5 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Dave Golowenski, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Mar. 5--While BASS and the Ohio Bass Federation have had a bitter and likely irrevocable breakup, the former partners apparently are moving on, each doing what it appears to do best.

In regard to BASS, a subsidiary of ESPN, that means turning fishing into a spectator sport through which sponsoring corporations can market plenty of product, some of it having little or nothing to do with angling but much to do with working the sales angles.

It hardly seems coincidental that the Bassmaster Classic, promoted with some truth as tournament fishing's biggest show, has been moved from being a summer event to a late-winter, multicamera extravaganza that even fans of The Price is Right would find to be a bit overblown.

Late summer, the time of glittering classics past, is not a particularly propitious period to expect fishermen to watch daytime television or to buy gobs of gear, but late February is the right time for both.

Such season-adjusted outdoor marketing is old news, even during an era in which cable TV has made outdoor-show viewing a year-round pastime. Before cable, fishing and hunting shows traditionally got bunched together during that bleak period after the football season and before the walleye spawning runs. In short, when both fish and fisherman, after a long layoff and with a short attention span, are most ready to bite.

Nor should the setting of the classic last weekend come as a surprise. Lake Tohopekaliga is situated a couple of long casts from Disney World, and the Walt Disney Co. happens to run both the Magic Kingdom and ESPN/BASS.

So what if the wife and kids aren't much interested in how Mr. Clausen flips tubes at Mr. Bucketmouth or how Mr. Iaconelli flips out? Let them go visit Goofy while you test waters that make champions. By prevailing American cultural standards, this is clearly a win-win-win-win-win-win situation. You win, the family wins, pro anglers win, Disney/ESPN/BASS wins, advertisers win -- and your credit-card company stands a good chance of winning.

The fish in Florida don't necessarily win, but that brings us back to Ohio, where finding large largemouths can be so tough inland that BASS hasn't even threatened to hold a pro tournament here.

However, clubs belonging to the Ohio Bass Federation, newly wed to the FLW Tour -- BASS' formidable competition on the national stage -- will hold local tournaments and sponsor youth events and conservation projects as they have in the past.

The federation's breakup with BASS, for example, didn't hinder fishy work scheduled for completion yesterday at Buckeye Lake. The work involved placing 100 nest boxes at strategic locations where, the hope is, largemouth bass will adopt them as homes during their procreative spring fling this year and for many to come.

The goal is to make the highly bothered bottom of Buckeye more suited to produce bass. Similar efforts in Kentucky impoundments have shown enough success to be worth a try, said Scott Hale, supervisor of the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Inland Fisheries Unit.

"Habitat is essential for a strong bass population," he said.

What is essential to move forward such a project is official blessing, which has come both from the wildlife division and Ohio State Parks, and volunteers willing to do some heavy lifting.

The bass boxes, which are constructed from 35-gallon, food-grade plastic drums lined on the bottom with gravel and impaled with landscape timbers to make them easier to move and place, weigh about 100 pounds apiece.

To construct and sink 5 tons of nest boxes requires planning, diligence and strong hands. Beginning a year ago, federation volunteers, Boy Scouts and others got together to work on what in a matter of weeks could well become 100 nurseries for bass. The wildlife division will monitor results by taking electrofishing surveys during the coming years.

No television cameras were on hand yesterday to tell a true tale to the nation about how some fishermen pay respect to a fish and to a sport. That's to be expected. This was about making bass, not bucks.

outdoors@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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