Tough Final Day

Today I was invited to a broadcast of "Hooked Up," a series of fishing information on ESPNOutdoors.com.

There I met Kevin VanDam, Timmy Horton, Davy Hite, Scott Rook, Paul Hirosky and Skeet Reese, and I got to thinking that if you were to ask anybody the question of which pro athlete does not belong in the above grouping, I believe a majority of them would say bass fisherman.

I would say they are very wrong. Granted, I never played professional hockey, though I had aspirations to when I was in high school and college. I've also played baseball almost as long as I have fished.

However, I love fishing, I've been fishing ever since my family's first trip to the 1,000 islands region in north central New York at the tender age of 5. My whole life I have told people I wanted to be a pro fisherman but until today I was naive to the amount of dedication, hours, and time away from family these men put themselves through.

For the past few weeks I have been telling everyone I know that I was fishing this event. The response from most of them was, "Fishing for a living? How do they do that?"

The answer is, they get up at 4 a.m. every morning for a week. For the first three practice days they fish until or close to dark (amounting to more than 13 hours on the water each day) while maintaining all their equipment to keep it in running order. They constantly study maps and reading about lakes, and they probably spend more time cataloging GPS coordinates than I do photographs.

All in all, fishing is a very demanding sport. It's also the only sport where there is an "I" in team. These guys have to be mentally tough in order to make it through an eight-hour day of fishing.

Back in the day, almost three years ago I fished a tournament while in college. It was the same type of deal: three days of practice fishing and three days of survival. It was during summer break so free time was easier to come by. I was landscaping and I was able to score the whole week off.

The guy I worked with, also a college student, fished the tournament with me. He and I opted to fish out of our 16-foot aluminum boat with a little 9.9 hp engine, which I will refer to as the Dinger from here on out.

We launched the dinger at a sturgeon point marina, two crazy guys with a 16-foot tin can in the lot amid trailer after trailer of bass boats. We had fished that lake all summer together and had become very adapted to catching some of the monster smallies it has to offer (the biggest of mine being a 6 pound, 3 ouncer that remains my biggest to this day).

So we make our way out in the Dinger and start fishing one of our honey holes when a bass boat rolls up and a man with a strong Southern accent asks, "You guys fish out of that thing a lot out here?"

We told him only when conditions allowed, and that day happened to be one that was pretty close to our limit. The man (whose name I do not recall) was bundled up like it was the dead of winter. He asked (yes, he asked two guys in a tiny boat) if he could fish next to us.

Man, was he in for a treat. It started off a slow day and then started to pick up. We were making drifts to a certain point then running back up (should say walking, compared to the bass boat) to start our drift again. I had been having bad luck snapping off fish, and it came to the point where it was really annoying.

Mind you we watch too much bass fishing on ESPN2, so we both were standing on the wooden seats that ran across the Dinger as we drifted. As we came across some structure, I popped my 3-inch pumpkin seed Senko on a 3/8 oz naked jig off the bottom and felt a hug on the other end.

One thing about the smallmouths up here is that as soon as you hook them they come right to the top, almost as if they've been shot out of a cannon. I dropped my rod down into the water (to prevent them from jumping out of the water) but he just kept jumping. He went up and back down about three times before he ended up snapping my line. All this while Mr. Bass Pro was watching.

Out of a fit of frustration — and I do not recommend this to anyone — I threw my favorite rod and reel into the drink. After thinking about it for about a second I remembered I was not a pro, did not get free stuff and worked hard to buy my equipment.

So what did I do? As fast as I could, I emptied my pockets of my cell phone and camera and jumped in after it. Man, I thought Mr. Bass Pro was going to have a heart attack. I made one swipe out of desperation at the sinking rig and ended up catching it. I re-surfaced to a round of applause from my buddy and the pro. I went on to do well in the tournament, placing 12th out of 200-something.

So, yeah, dedication. I have it, but these guys display it on a whole other level. On that note I am going to try and get some sleep before Day Three of my Elite Series debut, which I'll be fishing in Chris Lane's boat. Wish me luck.

- Charles Waldorf