LookBack #5 “Diary of a Bassmaster Virgin.” July, 2007: Lake Champlain

…here's a quick test you can do at home to see if you can be one of the best on bass. 

The next time you want to go fishing, gather up all your gear, your favorite hat, that raggedy lucky shirt, go out in the garage and pull the car out.

Then hand your wife the keys. 

Because to get to that favorite fishing spot, you're going to sit on the roof of the car, while wifey drives at 70 to 80 mph down a gravel road. 

And halfway there I'm going make her spray the windshield wiper fluid — with it squirting on high. 

Then I'm going to make you STAND UP for the next six to eight hours, casting about every 45 seconds or so, at the end of which I'm going to strap your butt back on top of the car and make your wife RACE home on a pothole filled road. And if she doesn't make it by 3:40 p.m., EXACTLY … not one freakin' minute of the whole day will count. 

Welcome to the Pro's, dude.

And now 13 years later of covering the Best of Bass tournament fishing, yep, I got it right back then.

…when I told one of my thousands of bosses at ESPN about the co-angler thing, well wait, here’s the direct quote…

He continued the conversation but if if quoted all of it there’s a better than good chance i’d be in fb prison for some time because of it.

First Safe Light…when I was told that…

…I was thinking, cool, for me, then, 1st Safe Light was around 11…maybe 11:15am…could make a Dunkin Donuts run and still get the game in, no problem.

So, sometime around the ungodly hour of 6 A freaking M…we launch…

In The End…

…Timmy Horton won the gig, did so sitting at the dock eating a pizza, that was a new concept for me but I was told he had a big enough lead that to stay out on the water and have something go wrong could knock him out of the gig altogether. Upon hearing that, I just sort of smiled.

I want to with your permission to copy and post here how I ended the story on the mother ship: Here ya go

“The bruises I took away from this event will someday go away, hopefully. One sight will not.

Took place not on the lake, the dock, the bass stage or cement auditorium, but in an almost empty Holiday Inn parking lot. I was writing down notes for this story, and looking out my fourth-floor window, watching an angler who obviously didn't make the cut, pack up his tackle, store his reels, and tightly put a tarp over his boat. Have no idea who he was, a big guy in green waders.

The boat was completely covered, just another wedge on a trailer. Back and forth he went, doing this and that for at least 45 minutes. In a corner of the parking lot, all alone, except for the fish that got away. To be honest I thought nothing of it. I was closing the drapes so I could see the laptop screen better when I saw a father and his young, maybe 4-year old son, walk up to the guy. 

I watched as the guy stopped what he was doing, shook dad's hand, and patted the boy on his head. He signed the big Bass cap for the kid, went back to his secured down boat, undid a corner, snagged a rod and knelt down and put it in the child's hand.

After a bit, dad and son walked back into the hotel, and the man climbed into his dually truck and drove off presumably to Buffalo and Lake Erie to do it all over again. As I pulled the curtains closed, all I could think of was what James Niggemeyer had said to me (that his father did for him), “he took the time to put a fishing pole in a little boy's hand." 

And I was glad the hotel room was suddenly dark.”

It was that quote from James, at my very first BASS Elite tournament, my ONE and ONLY “CO” angler gig, that quote and a couple of others that guided me through the next 13 year writing gig with Bassmaster. Not one story I’ve ever done does not that quote run through my head to remind me, that you never know how the little things you do may lead to something very big, and that EVERY WORD COUNTS as I put every story in your hands. Click Diary of a Bassmaster Virgin to read the original story.