If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
– Journalism adage
That goes double if your mother is a tournament bass fisherman, or at least that’s the way it sometimes appears.
In yet another example of what has been a ceaseless series of events involving contest chicanery, a Poplar Bluff, Mo., man stands accused as a, gasp, bass cheat. Imagine that.
As reported recently by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Gary Lee Jones got caught wet-handed while attempting to hype his catch at a local event on Lake Wappapello, about 150 miles south of St. Louis. Jones, a 60-year-old tournament regular, finished second and pocketed $886 after winning a similar event just two weeks earlier.
His glory was fleeting. Authorities clamped Jones with handcuffs and a charge of theft by deception, just another in a growing line of bass pro wannabes who wound up on the wrong end of the hook. A week earlier, a Kentucky duo that won a $30,000 boat were caught hiding bass in a submerged basket. Just good ol’ boys, never meanin’ no harm.
Whether trying to fabricate world records for big bucks or simply rig small-time tourneys, some anglers can’t seem to resist a little larceny in their bait box.
Stuffing a hunk of lead down the gullet is a particularly popular technique. Jones chose the old hideout trick, parking a couple good fish beneath a floating duck blind to be retrieved conveniently during the tournament next day.
That’s when his luck turned sour. Someone reported his suspicious behavior to officials, who subtly marked the fish, then lay waiting in the weeds with a video camera to observe Jones’ return to recover them. When the hapless angler brought the same fish to the weigh-in, sheriff’s deputies moved in with the ‘cuffs.
It’s not quite certain what there is about bass tournaments that tip some anglers over the brink. Certainly there is the element of money. The top tour offers a total of $9.5 million in prizes, and smaller events routinely pay out in higher five figures.
Then we have the celebrated 75-year chase for the record largemouth, a catch widely estimated to be worth a cool $1 million.
Bass tournaments also come with a heaping helping of hullabaloo, a NASCAR-type atmosphere complete with the same display of mass promotion that smacks of intense monetary involvement. As we’ve also learned, the bumper brigade isn’t above boosting a fuel additive or two or modifying the odd suspension spring. Perhaps temptation just comes with all those decals.
Conversely, walleye contests seem relatively immune to such shenanigans, perhaps because they haven’t been chasing big money quite as long and therefore lack practice.
In their pursuit of gold and glory, tournament anglers resort to all sorts of trickery. Some, like Jones’ gambit, are patently illegal, others merely examples of extreme gamesmanship. Occasionally, things get completely out of hand.
Several years back, a bass contest in Texas took a nasty turn to murder. Seems a cheat who pulled the old lead belly stunt plugged a partner who threatened to spill the beans.
While tournament hijinks rarely go that far, history teaches us to expect a certain amount of fraud in almost any endeavor as long as there’s money and fame involved.
As for bass tournaments, maybe there’s just something in the water. Or mother’s milk.
