“Life is really up to you…”
Dateline: Your grail
“When you are not practicing, someone else is getting better.”
~Allen Iverson
“db, I just want to become a better Bass angler.”
~Roy Bilby
The dude who so far has caught 25,000 bass
There came this email from Bassmaster boss, Chris Mitchell: “What do you think?”
I’ve had emails from bosses like this before and they have gone bad pretty quick. I was halfway through typing my usual reply, “Wasn’t me…” when I noticed there was other stuff under the boss’ loaded question.
Check it out: “My name is Roy Bilby. I am a Lifetime member of B.A.S.S. In 1985 I started keeping a detailed journal of all my fishing trips. In 1986, I started keeping a running tally of all bass caught & released. It started as a quest to improve and I have done it religiously since that time, every trip. Some 3,000 entries. On August 6th of this year, I recorded my 25,000th bass!”
There’s some other stuff, but I kept it out in case I have to lawyer up, then this at the end… “I am a huge fan of Don Barone. If you think this story has merit, I would love to have him involved. It's kind of a bucket list thing for me to do a story with him.”
My reply back to Chris: Me a bucket list item? Dude, I’m not on my wife’s bucket list, don’t even think I’m on the dog’s bucket list…
Chris: “So you’ll do the story…”
Me: “Yep.”
Chris: “Oh by the way, he’s caught a bunch of fish you know.”
Me: “Huh. He did?”
“…you must choose what to pursue…”
Yeah.
He did.
“I’ve kept fishing journals for 30 years now, can’t imagine fishing and not writing it down, I even bring a voice recorder and talk into the microphone right on the spot after the catch so as to not mix things up.”
Here’s Roy’s 30 years of journals:
Here’s some of what he writes down:
Here is where I’m supposed to take a photo of all the stories I’ve written printed out but to be honest, I never in my life have printed out one of my stories.
Never.
I lose stuff I keep so I stop keeping stuff which means I don’t lose as much stuff as I should be losing.
Kind of balances out in the long run.
Roy is a member of the Mohawk Valley Bass Anglers Club, a New York Nation group, fishes about 100 times a year around his home in Richmondville (50 miles to the left of Albany) and when not fishing is the Supervising Carpenter & Locksmith at SUNY/Cobblestone.
Me: “Are you a detailed oriented kind of guy, Roy?”
Roy: “Oh yeah, oh yeah, are you?”
Me: “Huh…um”
Roy: “No huh.”
“…set your mind on what to find…”
Me: “So, so, so, you know, um…”
Roy: “What I do with them, all the journals, in January the first big snowstorm we have around here, I make a pot of coffee, get all comfortable in my recliner and sit back and read the journal from the previous year, I get to relive every catch all over again.”
Me: “Hey Roy, is your wife there with you? (we are talking on the phone, forgot to mention that)…”
Roy: “Yep.”
Me: “Put her on.”
Roy: “Hey Rebecca db wants to talk to you…yes you…really…”
Shuffle, shuffle, conversation I can’t understand then softly, “…hello.”
I’m obviously not on HER bucket list.
Small talk, then, “So Rebecca does he really do all of this…”
Rebecca: “Yeah, I think it’s great, its his passion, his love, and I know that him keeping track makes him a better angler and if that makes him happy, it makes me happy as well.”
Me too, Rebecca, me too.
“…and there's nothin' you can't do…”
Back on the phone Roy tells me exactly this: “I once went 235 trips, almost three years without getting skunked.”
I write down exactly this: “Ask how he got the smell off.”
Then comes this, “db I know exactly how many bass I have caught, exactly, db how many people do you know who could tell you exactly how many bass they have caught?”
And then Roy goes silent.
As do I.
Roy: “Don’t know no one right.”
Me: “Um, yes I do..”
Roy: “You do, who.”
Me: “Um, me…I’ve caught, um, four, yeah four bass.”
Only 24,996 behind.
Roy: “Good for you.”
And so, at that moment, that, “Good for you,” began my quest, my quest to this year…learn to fish…
…and bring you along with: db’s Fishing 101.
“…so keep right to the end…”
Turns out Roy getting “skunked” had nothing to do with a varmint, for those of you out there like me, getting “skunked” is the equivalent of an airball in basketball, wide left in football, a whiff in baseball.
db’s Fishing 101 is going to clear up some of that weirdness, some of those words that be the language of the angler…I’m going to open the door and let you into the club.
In a couple weeks I’ll be heading out to Spirit Lake, Iowa, “The fishing line capital of America,” according to Mark Sexton, Pure Fishing’s Manager of Research & Measurements.
Me: “So Mark, this fishing line pound test stuff, two questions, How come I can hang the fancy framed 10-pound family photo of Barb and I and the kids on 6-pound test line on the wall and it hasn’t crashed yet…and two…if I want to catch a 20-pound biggin (big bass fish that you would be hanging up on your wall to produce fish envy in your fishin’ friends) why don’t I just throw out a 20-pound line…seems simple.”
Mark: “Hmmm…”
Then came this email: “Coming to our facility would be awesome. You would have access to all the experts here at once and get to see how it all works. We will lay out the red carpet as it were.”
Yep, carpet or not, I’m going to Iowa and Pure Fishing to see just exactly the how and the why behind the science of making line.
And I’ll translate it, db way.
“…you'll find your goal my friend…”
Yeah, blame Roy for all that.
To be honest, even though I’m not like Roy, I get Roy and what he does. This keeping track thing.
It all comes down to two things, getting better, and making memories.
In the end of all of this fishing writing gig stuff I may end up catching 25 fish, give or take, but I hope to have hundreds, maybe thousands of memories of the quest.
Fishing doesn’t have to be about tournaments.
It doesn’t have to be a numbers game.
It should be about memories.
Should be about fishing with gramps, should be about your kid’s first catch, should be about taking that girl, that guy, fishing for the first time and then on your honeymoon, it should be about that dog who so loved to stand on the bow of that old boat.
I’m going to learn to fish, but I already know, it ain’t all about the fish.
And, oh, hey Roy, remember when I was talking with Rebecca and she told you she couldn’t tell you what we talked about, here it is…
…I told Rebecca, I may not be around when you hang up the fishing pole with your something-thousand bass, but I am here now and this is what I want to do, I want to lay out the groundwork so that you can donate those books to the library here at B.A.S.S.
Donate them for all future anglers to pour through, to maybe connect with a spreadsheet because it is my belief that in those journals of yours there is magic to be found.
Magic, once sorted through, once inputted.
Those journals my friend belong to all the anglers who come after you and who “just want to be a better bass angler.”
Magic my friend.
“…you won't fail.”
Find your grail
Monty Python
And for me, I’m going to start lookin’ for bass…number five!
db
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
~George Eliot
