Knowing some of their previous shenanigans, Mark Zona and Greg Hackney will probably produce at least one momentous moment of levity on Tuesday, and more likely a boatful.
They’ll be fishing together on the debut of “Zona Live,” a four-hour webcast on a lake not far from Hackney’s Gonzales, La., home. Bassmaster.com will air the action from 8 a.m. to noon CT.
It’s anyone’s guess if anything as memorable as the “Sexy Man Dance” will come out (that will make the show in some form or fashion). And you know something else off the wall is gonna happen. It is Zona, after all. But also expect fish catches and some education.
“Now, we may have scouted the lake, but what you see – whether we catch ‘em or not – will be happening in real-time,” Zona said.
He adds that he hasn’t been this excited about a project for some time, and of course his week kicked off with some travel worries. He had to leave his Michigan home early to get in front of a winter storm. While resting in Memphis, sleet hitting his windows woke him and sent him scurrying the rest of the way to southern Louisiana.
Hackney and Zona even found time to scout some Sunday. Monday, they will shoot footage for an episode of Zona’s Awesome Fishing Show, which will aid in scouting for Tuesday’s Zona Live webcast. Expect an unscripted four hours of fishing with three sponsor breaks of five minutes or so.
Zona will open up the final 10 minutes of each hour for viewer questions, and to elicit top-shelf questions he’s got three “awesome prizes” to award to the best ones. Any topic can be broached in queries.
“I definitely want to have the ‘Viewer udda Day, udda Week,’” he said. “I want our viewers to feel comfortable asking anything to me or our guest … no matter how off the wall it is.”
Sounds appropriate. Join the conversation and pose questions at #ZonaLive on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This hashtag will be monitored to bring the best posts onto the show.
Zona will have a camera crew that regularly works Bassmaster LIVE as well as Mike “Da Sooch” Suchan (that’s me, how cool?) who will serve as a conduit to viewer questions and try to keep track of the fish catches.
FISH SKIN USED TO HEAL BURN VICTIMS
From Fortaleza, Brazil, comes a medical procedure that looks creepy but is aiding burn victims. Skin from tilapia makes patients look something like the creature from the black lagoon, but the sterilized patches promote better healing and less pain than traditional burn treatment there.
Without resources of human and pig skin that places like the U.S. possess, Brazil relies mostly on silver sulfadiazine cream and gauze, which requires painful redressing daily. Plastic surgeon and burn specialist Dr. Edmar Maciel has been running clinical trials with tilapia skin, and patients like Josue Bezerra Jr. are enjoying the benefits.
“I thought it was weird,” Bezerra said for this article in Statnews.com. “Man, I look like a mutant. Even though I thought it was weird, the fact that he said it would take less time (to heal), and with less pain, I said I’m up for anything, use whatever you want.”
BIG BASS OF THE MONTH
Now we saw some huge bass from the Elites at Lake Okeechobee in February, but how about this gal?
Start thinking about how much it weighs. Give your best estimate. She has some belly on her, doesn’t she?
It just so happens that Austin Vowell there in the photo, who lives in Philadelphia, Miss., caught this big-un from Neshoba County Lake, like the sign in the background reads.
This fish will break that lake’s largemouth bass record, but isn’t even close to the state record. Back in December of 1992, Anthony Denny caught an 18-pound, 2.4-ounce largemouth from Natchez State Park Lake that stands as Mississippi’s largest.
Vowell can be proud of his 14.3-pound fish he caught February 28, which eclipsed the lake record by 3 ounces.
“Our state fishing lakes offer excellent fishing for largemouth bass, bream, crappie and catfish,” Jerry Brown, state lake coordinator said in a press release. “Each lake maintains a list of the record fish and we encourage anglers to let us know if they believe their catch might be a new record.”
Dang. Word musta got out as two more lake records were announced in the next week. On March 3, Wesley Bass of Columbia caught a 7.2-pound bass at Lake Mary Crawford, and two days later Brandon Hughes of Prentiss caught an 11.6-pound bass at Lake Jeff Davis.
For more information regarding fishing in Mississippi, visit its website at www.mdwfp.com.