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by Steve Bowman
When I was in college I had a completely different mindset than the one I have today.
Just 20 years later and after spending a week with some of the top collegiate bass anglers in the country, at the College Smash-Mouth Bass Championship, I've found that the younger generation thinks about things differently as well. And the sport of bass fishing is set to reap those rewards.
Watching those young anglers compete sent me on several little trips back in time.
When I was of the age, with apologies to my Mom, beer and girls were about the only thing I really concentrated on, which was evident by my graduating Summa Cum Thankye Laudy. If it wasn't the aforementioned, then I was hunting or fishing. But bass fishing wasn't necessarily at the front of those thoughts.
To be truthful, I didn't even know any bass tournament anglers. There were certainly none in my college at Arkadelphia, Ark., just a few miles from Lake DeGray. When we fished, we had a Bomber 6A tied on or jig. Just a jig, none of my friends or I could afford the pig as a trailer. We used a 12-foot flat bottom and a poor man's Minn Kota, better known as a sculling paddle.
My first realization that tournament angling was even a big part of anyone's life was in 1983, when I met Ricky Green at his home a week after he had lost the Bassmaster Classic to Larry Nixon by a mere 10 ounces. We were there because he had a cool boat, the Ricky Green Fishing Machine. I had no idea that folks traveled all over the country, in glittery boats, caught fish and made a living doing it.
I was moved to say the least. Inspired might be a better description. But besides me, the news that an angler from my college hometown had almost won the World Championship of bass fishing went completely unnoticed, just about everywhere. Still, within the next few years I would be covering the Bassmaster Classic as a cub reporter and making this exciting sport a part of my life.
I can remember covering those first Classics almost 20 years ago, and being the youngest person on hand. All the competitors were guys who had first become successful in the guiding business and with the exception of Gary Klein, there wasn't any of them who had grown up with the ambition of being a bass tournament angler, James Bond maybe.
This round about little story came back to me last week while serving as the tournament director of College Smash-Mouth Bass Championship. I remembered being that young. Despite the fact that they addressed me as ÒSir,Ó it really wasn't that long ago.
I also remember how something like a College Smash-Mouth Bass Championship would have never even been a fanciful idea at that time.
This struck me as the growing, and sometimes tiresome, chatter of the Internet boards was heating up. In simple terms, despite what the naysayers, would want to believe this is called ÒGrowing the Sport.Ó Which means anglers like those college students competing last week are doing it at a younger age than some of us old guys they call ÒSirÓ were doing it. Most of us started fishing at an early age, but we didn't play the game to much later. The teams of College Smash-Mouth Bass Championship are all part of clubs and organizations organized within their respective universities.
That's a good thing. An awesome thing. Bass fishing's roots just got deeper and in a way we couldn't imagine even a few years ago.
What's more, these guys are good. Hailing from Arkansas and covering the outdoor beat for so many years, I've fished with some of the best there is in this game from Bobby Murray, to Nixon, George Cochran and the list could go on and on.
During that time, I have had on two occasions a group of mentors in the state tell me that I needed to watch specific anglers because they were going to be super stars someday.
One of those was Mark Davis, who was just a kid struggling to build a guide business on Lake Ouachita and hopefully to bigger things in the future. Since those days his record speaks volumes for his talent. But even before he built that record, I was watching him and realizing what those old timers were seeing. The second angler was a young angler I started watching when he was 16 years old. Most know him as the Hack Attack. For me Greg Hackney was an extremely talented skinny little redneck kid. But his talents spoke for themselves, obviously. It was neat watching them develop.
Watching the 12 anglers in the College Smash-Mouth Bass Championship I was reminded of watching those two from years past. I felt at one time that I was watching Greg Hackney and Mark Davis all over again. Some of them were that good or had the foundation for becoming that good.
In a time frame when negative vibes from the naysayers seemed to be permeating the sport, 12 young men from colleges all over the country who were focused on a sport in way we once could only dream about energized me.
The reality is bass fishing is healthier than it's ever been. I couldn't help but think: Thank God it's changing.
