It seems like just yesterday they were telling us that Kim Kardashian’s behind was going to break the Internet, but Mrs. West didn’t come as close to achieving that feat as Keith Poche and Ish Monroe did at Toho. On the bass forums it’s been all Toho, all the time lately with “Lockapalooza” falling just one Vince McMahon short of absurdity.
Although I’m paid to have opinions on such matters, I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t have one about the disagreement between the two Elite Series pros. Wasn’t there, don’t really know the details, and each retelling of the story seems to contradict the last one. Accordingly, I’m going to let B.A.S.S. and the judicial system (and hopefully not any sort of vigilante justice) sort out the players and resolve the issue.
In considering whether to opine about the topic, I read the piece that Randall Tharp wrote about it and felt that summed up most of my feelings. Over the course of the last year, I’ve really been impressed with Tharp, first at the Guntersville Classic, and then through both his fishing and his writings, and his Toho piece solidified that perception a little bit more. With that in mind, I started looking back through his Bassmaster.com archives, in search of further wisdom, and came across the piece he wrote about Brandon Lester.
If Tharp says that Lester is the “right kind of rookie,” I’ll take that as pretty good evidence that he is, but I’m enough of a skeptic that I need to get some level of confirmation. After all, a lot of what Randall wrote about dealt with the on-the-water “unwritten rules” that only a hundred or so guys ever get to see in action. Those of us who aren’t on the water every Elite Series day don’t get to experience that. Accordingly, I wanted to know what motivated Lester, what drove him to get to this point and to excel. Going into the second day at Cayuga, he was outside the Classic bubble, but unlike a traditional rookie who’d fold up like a taco under those circumstances, he came through with a big bag and got back into it. So I picked up the phone and called the young pro, who I’m sure was a little surprised to get a rambling call from an outdoor writer on a random weeknight.
We talked a little bit about his “past life” driving a forklift in a factory, and he admitted that his rookie season went even better than he’d envisioned. “A dream come true doesn’t begin to describe it,” he said.
We talked about sponsorships, too, and the difficult road for anyone born without a silver spoon in his mouth to make it as a bass pro. Typically, I don’t put a lot of stock into which companies sponsor which pros. Sometimes a pro’s endorsement will inspire me to consider purchasing a product, sometimes it won’t, and in some cases it might even lead me not to buy it. As mentioned above, I also know that finances can be precarious enough that many pros have no choice to take whatever title deal comes along, whether they use the product or not. Something about Brandon’s title sponsor – Mudhole Custom Tackle – seemed significant, however.
Let me say this out front: I’m not mechanical in the least. Give me something to fix that’s not working particularly well, and two hours later it won’t be working at all. Send me into Build-A-Bear, and after the 3-year-olds run circles around me I’ll have the most abstract rendition of a mammal you’ve ever seen. It’s just not in my DNA. That’s why I’ve always been impressed by the pros who not only can catch fish, but can invoke some sort of mechanical ability or “craftiness” to get the job done.
In the old days, anglers like Tom Mann and Stan Sloan had no choice but to make their own lures – there simply weren’t good options otherwise available. But I’ve also admired the stories about Roland Martin, who constantly pushed the B.A.S.S. rules with his creations, whether it be a flipping deck or some other contraption meant to give him a competitive edge. When I fished with KVD a few years back, he mentioned how Terry Scroggins was handy with tools and performed all sorts of little tweaks to improve his boat. If he’d said that Scroggins was a good flipper, which of course he is, I would’ve put that away in the memory bank, but when he mentioned those additional skills, my interest was piqued. It’s those additional off-the-water tricks, that add a fraction of an extra percent or so over the course of the year, that intrigue me most.
Lester admitted that his deal with Mudhole was partially the result of good fortune and geographic coincidence. The company’s vice president of customer relations used to own a custom rod shop near Lester’s home and ran a small tournament trail that he fished. Lester had never built a rod before teaming up with the company, but quickly he saw the advantages. For a non-opposable thumb type like me, the concept of building a rod when so many good ones are available seems counterintuitive. I don’t believe that I have the time or the steadiness of hand to produce something better than what I get off the rack, but Brandon explained why I should reconsider the custom route.
“You can buy a store-bought rod, and it’ll be good,” he said. “But there’s always something you don’t like about it, something you wish was a little bit different. Maybe you wish the handle was longer, or the butt cap was different or it had bigger guides. Maybe you prefer a new Winn grip and it has EVA foam.”
Most of the money he’s won over the years has come flipping and pitching, even though he “doesn’t consider [himself] a Biffle.” It’s not surprising, therefore, that the rod that got the most usage this year was a 7-foot, 6-inch heavy-action MHX that he built himself on the Mudhole house blank.
“It’s a good all-around rod,” he said. “I use it whether I’m throwing a 3/8-ounce jig around wood or using a 1-ounce jig in heavy grass.”
He’s certainly not a one-trick pony. Brandon caught 24-02 on the first day of the AOY championship at Escanaba to touch in second place, despite the fact that he’d “never even seen a Great Lakes smallmouth before.” After days of waiting around for the competition to resume, he eventually finished ninth, thus securing his place in this year’s Classic.
I have no idea how Lester will do in this first Classic. True rookies tend to get swallowed up by the event’s demands, but he doesn’t seem like the type to get spun out by the pressure – at least it didn’t affect him in getting to this point. Even if he bombs, I have no doubt he’ll be back, better prepared. He’s building a career the right way, one step and one rod at a time. In the old “give a man a fish…teach a man to fish” parable, I tend to favor the guys who fall into the latter category over the ones who want to fast track their success, store bought or not.
