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By Ray Scott

Bass Fishing’s Future: “Carpcasters”

Hooking Youth On Fishing Is The Goal

 PINTLALA, AL –– The year 2000.  The new millennium.  Where will the sport of bass fishing be headed in the future?  Some doomsayers forecast a downhill slide.  True or false?

 Is the sport of bass fishing at the highest level of interest in any millennium?  Answer:  You bet. 

 Next question:  Did more youngsters go fishing in 1999 than any time in the last 1,000 years?  Answer:  Don’t bet on it.

 Truthfully, the odds are that bass fishermen, in the future, will never experience the honey hole years--the 1967 to 1999 period--that happened at the tail end of this passing millennium.

 To recite the milestones of the past three decades is like watching the “History of Bass Fishing” in fast forward.  More major events were recorded and proclaimed since Dr. J.A. Henshall’s famous words “pound for pound…the smallmouth bass is the gamest fish that swims.”

 As the founder of the Bass Angler Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.), I’m flattered to be given the credit for spearheading the modern-day evolution of bass fishing.  Since that brainstorm--during a rainstorm--in a Jackson, Mississippi motel room in 1967 for the idea of a bass fishing tournament.  My desire to elevate the sport of bass fishing to the level of others has been the true goal.

 The truth is that the idea continues to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest, off-the-wall imagination:

 ¨      Bass fishing as a profession.  Big-money tournaments with winner’s shares over $100,000.

 ¨      State-of-the-art bass fishing boats with price tags to match.  Yesterday’s Sears johnboat replaced by a high-tech fishing machine marked at retail for over $30,000.

 ¨      Space-age fibers in rods, so sensitive as to detect any pickup or strike.

 ¨      Laser-sharp, needle-point hooks with special bends and wide-gaps for fishing varied soft-plastic lures.

 ¨      And, so many scents.  So many “strike oils” and worm dunks that you almost need be a chemist to decide on the crawfish flavor, or the salt-added formula, or the tacklestore’s flavor-of-the-week.

 ¨      Now, there’s GPS.  Use of a global position system can park your bass rig back within 10-feet of a known “X” on a fishing map.

 For the bass fisherman, the Neiman Marcus catalog has been upstaged by the Johnny Morris Bass Pro tackle catalog.   Thirty years ago, Johnny figured anything a fisherman needed could be hung on a pegboard inside his father’s Brown Derby store.   Today, shopping mall size Bass Pro stores anchor the retail centers from Dallas to Atlanta and elsewhere.

 The bass fishing boom is being heard around the planet.  Organized bass fishing clubs are sprouting up in Japan, Spain, Italy, and South Africa.  In the wilds of Zimbabwe, a bass club stocking of Florida-strain largemouths supplied twenty years ago by the stateside BASSers, may provide the next great trophy bass quest.

 The “Holy Grail” of bass fishing remains the 22-pound, 4-ounce record credited to George Perry in 1932 on a wooden Creek Chub Wiggle-fish pulled from an oxbow lake in Georgia.  From this viewpoint, the unlikely authentication of the reported catch of a largemouth bass over the 22 l/4-pound barrier would be the last and final achievement of any angling millennium.

 In such an unlikely happening, bass fishing’s newest super hero would scramble to the heights of the angling Mt. Olympus only to learn that bass fishing’s future has slipped off the narrow precipice.

 But there is a “safety net” for saving the future of the sport.  It’s carp fishing!

Yes, “Cyprinus carpio,” the Old-World minnow introduced into our fishing waters

by the United States Fish Commission in 1876, can rise above the uniform label of “trash fish” to be the miracle of the new millennium.

 Why would the founder of the world’s largest, organized bass fishing organization suddenly jump ship and proclaim the lowly carp as the solution to the Y2K bug of bassin’?

 The idea is simple:  If we fish for carp, new fisher folks--I’m thinking of youngsters--will come.  Let’s face it, lifestyles of the 21^st century have eroded the passing of the angling baton from father to son or daughter to instill the fun of fishing.  We’ve got to create the next generation of bass fishermen.  And then, we’ve got to nurture them.

 Today’s youngsters indeed do have an opportunity to go fishing, but it’s strangely more likely to be in the form of a CD-rom game or another toy simulating the thrill of fishing.  Get “reel.”  A game’s joy stick is no substitute for holding a fishing rod…the true-to-life experience of that tell-tale “Thump” and pull on the end of the line.

 Indigenous to Asia, carp were so abundant on the European continent that they were mentioned by Aristotle as early as 350 B.C.  Since its introduction in U.S. waters, the carp has become widely distributed from coast to coast.  Known to survive under a wide range of conditions, it prefers warm streams, lakes and shallows containing an abundance of organic matter.

 The carp is tolerant of all bottom types and clear or turbid water conditions.  In other words, it’s a species highly suited for inner-city recreation lakes or fishing ponds with easy access to young anglers.

 And access is a problem.  Today’s urban sprawl has long since drowned out the lyrics to the whimsical suggestion…”you get a line and I’ll get a pole and we’ll go down to the fishin’ hole…”

 As a young boy growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, one of my fondest memories is going fishing…riding my bicycle with my fishing poles and bait strapped aboard.  An angling adventure each Saturday to “Pirtle’s Pond,” more like a “puddle” I realize now, but an exciting fishing opportunity within reach.  That worm-dunkin’ in a small pond, no doubt, forever kindled the fishing fever and aroused my desire to be an angler that continues to burn today.

 But let one thing be absolutely clear about these early expeditions:  it did not matter whether I caught a cat or a carp or a bluegill.  It’s interesting to know that a recent survey shows that of the legion of America’s top fishing pros more than 90% recall their very first fish as being a specie other than the bass.

It’s this burning feeling, the opportunity to light up the eyes of boys and girls kindled with the joy of actually catching a fish, that offers “carp lakes”  as the piscatorial panacea.

 This is not a fishing fantasy.   Carp can be corralled, simply by chumming an area in a pond or a cove in a larger lake.  A few B.A.S.S. Federation friends helped me with such an experimental testing for a kid’s carp outing in central Alabama, not long ago.  From the bank in just eight hours, twelve youngsters caught 76 carp weighing 837 pounds.

 You’d be hard pressed to convince a youngster hooked up to a 10-to-15-pound carp that there’s no “sport fish” yanking on the end of the line.  Sure, there’s a measure of give and take.  Black bass are the glamour guys and gals in the showcase.  For sure, there’s nothing up-scale yet for the carp’s image.  Not, when the bait selection includes “dough-balls,” worms, cheese dips or shelled corn.  And yet, carp is Europe’s number one sport fish.  If you think we hate to kill bass, talk to a European carp angler.

 In its forage habits, the carp frequently muddies the water giving itself a bad reputation among bass anglers.  But, “there’s no evidence that the carp preys on other fishes or their spawn,” according to McClane’s Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide.

 An upside to the carp’s character is its size.  Adult carp grow to 30 inches in length and can average in the 15-pound class.

 As mentioned, bass anglers dream of catching a 22-pound, 5-ounce largemouth  bass to break the world record.  Such a feat would not impress a true carpin’ angler.  A carp--weighing 58 pounds--has been reported from Lake Erie, according to the McClane’s Encyclopedia.

 So, will the golden days of bassin’ vanish…tarnished by a so-called “trash fish?”  Hardly.  Bass fishing’s place in angling history is ordained.

 As long as mankind fishes, there will be bass anglers.  The black bass has reached the status of the Major Leagues.  And, within bass fishing, there are stages.  The drive to:  (1) catch a bass, (2) catch a limit of bass, and (3) catch the biggest bass.

 And here’s the point of my stand on the soap box--the fishing seeds must be implanted in the minds of new fishing spirits.  And, there’s nothing so mind-boggling as the black bass.  Don’t put the bar up so high that there’s no hope or reward for a beginning angler.

 Let’s get back to the basics.  This is a rod.   This is a hook.  This is a bait.  And, here’s how to catch a fish.  If that bite comes from a carp, believe me, the kid on the other end of the line will be thrilled.

 In 1845, a practical philosopher--Henry David Thoreau--moved into a lakeside “shack” near Walden pond where he lived a simple life that, perhaps, catches the simple basics of this passing angling millennium. Among many passages penned by Thoreau this thought, surely, applies into the next angling ages:

 “Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.”

 So let’s share the experience of fishing.  Let’s kindle the spirit of bass fishing’s future.  And that future may well begin with the carp.  Believe me, the bass will follow.