No one wants to end the year on a negative note, but a bubble needs to be burst and it looks like it's up to me, so here goes.
Bass fishermen, relax! Sit down, calm down, settle your nerves and stop with the phone calls already! There is no truth to reports, rumors, hints or allegations about a largemouth bass more than twice the world record weight being hoisted from a lake in California recently by a 10-year-old boy. Not true, not true, not true.
Some of you say you saw a picture of the 46-pound behemoth on Channel 4 early this month and heard anchorman Jim Vance cackling about a world record. Vance should know, you say -- he's a bass fisherman.
Well, Vance denies he said it, although if you call Channel 4 and get his assistant to read back the text of the Dec. 3 broadcast, it sure sounds like he said it.
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"I did write it in the copy," admits Vance, "and that's the problem. They're reading back what I wrote, not what I said. I don't know why I wrote it. It was a bass and I guess I was just thinking about largemouth. But when I read it on the air I didn't say 'largemouth,' I just said 'bass.'
"Anybody who fishes knows that a 46-pound largemouth would be the eighth wonder of the world. I couldn't have said it."
Vance had his staff combing the files for the actual videotape to prove it, but they hadn't come up with anything late last week, which seems a bit odd.
The fact is that early this month a boy in Los Banos, Calif., landed a 46-pound striped bass, which is the species Chesapeake Bay folks call a rockfish. That's no record striper -- not even close -- but the story made it onto the local TV news there because it was such a little kid for such a big fish.
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NBC then moved the tape on its national wire in case any other affiliates wanted to use it, and it evidently caught fisherman Vance's eye. He played the tape on WRC-TV and said whatever it was he said.
The text says he said it was a largemouth, and it stands to reason that's what would have started all those phones ringing, including mine and the ones at the headquarters of the 500,000-member Bass Angler Sportsman Society in Montgomery, Ala.
"Is it true?" the callers asked, breathless at the thought. "A 46-pound largemouth?"
No, no, a thousand times no.
It got so bad in Montgomery that BASS assigned one of its magazine editors, Matt Vincent, to find out the truth. He called Los Banos and determined the fish was a striper.
Vincent said he called WRC to advise the station about the apparent mistake. "I told the editor it wasn't a largemouth bass," said Vincent. "It was a striped bass. He said, 'Oh, there's a difference?' "
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Said Vincent: "The whole thing is just ridiculous. I'm comparing it to Orson Welles's hoax in 1938 when he did 'War of the Worlds' on radio. Bass fishermen didn't just swallow it, they got gut-hooked. Our phones went nuts."
Small wonder. The world record for largemouth bass is 22 pounds 4 ounces, set by George Perry at Lake Montgomery in southeast Georgia in 1932. That was back in the days when largemouth was an unheralded species, denizen of rural backwaters where country boys in overalls fished, chewed tobacco and fell asleep on the banks.
In the years since, an industry has developed around the lowly largemouth, with tournaments blooming across the nation and $20,000 bass boats roaring at breakneck speed across lakes from Maine to California. Touring professionals who cast for cash can win hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
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Against that backdrop, BASS founder Ray Scott reckons the angler who finally beats Perry's record, if anyone ever does, stands to make at least $1 million through promotions and endorsem*nts. If anyone caught a 46-pounder, they'd probably just name him king of the world and be done with it.
But it didn't happen, okay?
On a happier note, I'd like to report a really significant occurrence right here in our own bailiwick. Last Sunday I was sailing a race on Chesapeake Bay near the mouth of the Severn River when a gust of wind piped up and knocked one of my favorite hats off and overboard. The skipper offered to turn back and fetch it, as it was riding high on the surface, but we were racing and I told him to press on.
I was sorely disappointed to lose that hat, which was one of a kind and a sentimental favorite. But though we kept an eye out the rest of the day, we never saw another hint of it.
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The following morning I took Kramer, our Labrador mock-retriever, for his morning walk to the beach at the end of our road. I let him off the leash once we were clear of the street and he scampered ahead. When I saw him ripping at something in the sand I hurried to see what it was, lest he gobble a nesting turtle or something.
It was my hat, wonder of wonders, buried to the brim in sand but otherwise undamaged, having survived a three-mile, open-water journey back home. I laughed out loud.
"If you belonged to a primitive culture and something like that happened, they'd probably declare you a god of some kind," my wife, Fran, said.
I'm feeling pretty good anyway. It's the first thing of value Kramer ever retrieved, and not a bad way to wind up a mighty pleasant year.
Let's hope it's an omen and 1993 is even half as good. But please, enough with the bass calls!
