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Feature article
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The Striped Bass Fisherman of the Year has arrived
By George Thwaites
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We are pleased to inform the readers of this erratically appearing entertainment column that the author has been named Striped Bass Fisherman of the Year for 2005.
“Good grief!” says the disapproving angel on my shoulder. “Son, act like you’ve won something before!”
Yeah, right. I reach over and flick the angel off of my shoulder.
Please forgive this bit of blatant self-promotion. It can’t be helped. In a moment of administrative lucidity, my newspaper may one day ask: “Just what are we paying you for, anyway?”
I will then point to my big, honking award and say, “Well ... this, for instance.” With any luck, it will divert the course of the inquiry.
Compared to Jeff Bobo, I have it fairly easy. He gets “Kingsport Times-News” painted on the side of a car and then proceeds to systematically scrape the paint off of that car, one lap at a time. Try explaining that in a staff meeting.
The Boone Lake Chapter of Bass Unlimited graciously bestowed this most recent honorific upon me, in addition to a nice meal and a gi-normous oak plaque replete with silhouetted striped bass and inset clock.
It seemed rather awkward, receiving this award in front of a roomful of people, any one of whom knows more about striper fishing than I do. Have I really done as much as any of them to promote the striper fishery? It didn’t seem quite right.
But then, I later reasoned, if a group representing that amount of collective knowledge and experience agrees that I deserve to be recognized for “exceptional work in supporting the striped bass and Cherokee bass program in East Tennessee,” it logically follows that I am what they say I am.
Gee. I guess I really am Striper Fisherman of the Year. Whether I think I deserve to be, or not.
As it happens, I really do like striper fishing. I really have written a good deal about it. I really do believe rockfish and hybrids are an asset to our diverse regional sportfishery. And I really do actually catch these things from time to time. This award has the ring of plausibility. It’s not like I was named “Moose Hunter of the Year.”
I’m not in this business for the awards — or for the money, evidently — but it really is nice when something like this comes along. I’ve had a good little run lately. Probably the best since my senior year of high school, quite frankly.
I got the East Tennessee Sportsmen Federations’ Outdoor Writer of the Year Award last year. It made me very happy. I also lucked into the RMEF’s American Outdoor Experience 2004 Media Challenge Archery Championship. And now this.
Of course, for even mentioning this stuff I fully expect to get skinned alive by my colleagues if Bristol Motor Speedway holds another Media Challenge.
Not that I was ever favored to repeat. Me shooting an arrow is equivalent to the Germans launching a V-2 rocket during the last months of WWII. It might land somewhere in the vicinity of metropolitan London. Gregg Powers, outdoors writer for the Johnson City Press, will probably show up this year wearing camo face paint, rising out of a kayak pool like Sylvester Stallone in “First Blood II.”
Clays? Please! Everybody already knows how mediocre I am with a shotgun. I grew up shooting what we called “West Virginia Skeet.” But hey, y’all! Put that little orange saucer on a fence post and watch what happens to it!
The casting competition is probably my last hope. Which is to say, not much. But the bull’s eye isn’t on my back for that one. Just ask Kenny “The Catfish” Hawkins. Fishing columnist or no, the pressure is off, as far as I’m concerned.
Ironically enough, I generally do not associate competitiveness with outdoor activities. I played organized sports as a youngster and in this context embraced the competitive spirit. I still have frequent dreams of playing football, baseball and basketball and in my dreams, I play to win. But fishing and hunting? Even as a kid, these activities were on a different wavelength. At best, it was me competing against nature.
That’s pretty much how it is for me now. I’m competing against nature. Right now, I’m competing against a colony of microbes that have decided to inflame my sinus cavities. At the moment I seem to be winning, but these guys aren’t exactly “Little Sisters of the Poor.”
My priorities are straight. You can rest assured that I won’t be running this Striper Fisherman of the Year thing into the ground.
Except in the case of certain people — and they probably suspect who they are. I assure you, they are never going to hear the end of it.
Not until 2006, anyway.
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George Thwaites writes about outdoor sports for GoTriCities. And if you haven’t heard — he’s Striped Bass Fisherman of the Year for 2005. E-mail him at gthwaites@timesnews.net
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