Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
There may be a million things to love about bass fishing. I’ve never tried to list them all, and I’m not sure what purpose would be served by doing that. Instead, I often think about the things that make our sport special, but which seldom get considered … at least not by the anglers I know.
Here are three of my favorite things about bass fishing that don’t get the attention they deserve.
1. The sport meets us where we are and moves with us
Whether you fish for bass with a cane pole and nightcrawler from the bank of a muddy creek or have a $150,000 bass boat and all the latest equipment, you can catch a bass and have fun doing it. What’s more, the bass doesn’t care or know which of those anglers you are.
We all start somewhere in the sport … usually at some form of “Square One.” We are given a cane pole or a spincasting rod and reel, and we are taken fishing. Our dream is to catch a fish, any fish. Eventually, we “graduate” to bass fishing and accumulate gear along the way in an effort to make it more fun or more productive.
Some of us chase trophies—whether it’s hardware or lunkers—but all of us chase the bite, and bass fishing embraces us on every step of our journey.
That is not true of very many pursuits.
2. Common denominators
The American artist Andy Warhol once said
What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.
I think of that quote often when looking at fishing gear.
Assuming I can afford them, I can use the same rods and reels, and the same lines and lures as the best anglers in the country. I know this is true because I have fished with many of those anglers and have used with their equipment.
Yes, they may get prototype lures before the rest of us, and they may make modifications to lures that we don’t always see, but the stuff they use is stuff we use. The great differentiator is not the gear. It’s time on the water or skill with the gear.
A Coke is a Coke.
3. Anglers are never pessimists
Here’s another quote I love. This one is from John Buchan, a Scottish novelist, historian, politician, and angler who said, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”
Doesn’t that sum up what we love about the sport?
You’ve probably heard the old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, I believe there are no pessimists among true anglers.
If you’ve been bass fishing more than a few times, you’ve experienced slow fishing—a day when nothing seems to work, no fish seem to be active, and nothing you throw at them draws any interest.
Near the end of one of those days, as you cast your spinnerbait or buzzbait or squarebill or whatever past another laydown log for the 500th time, do you tense up? Does your grip on the rod tighten as the bait deflects off cover?
If it does, you are a bass angler.
If not … there’s always golf.
