Around the office here at B.A.S.S. I’m known as a high-stakes gambler.
But trust me, that’s a whale of a misconception.
While I do place a lot of legal wagers during college football season — and some of them, from time to time, are sizable — the majority of the bets I make are in the neighborhood of $20, placed on the Tuesday-night Mid-American Conference games, just to keep them interesting.
It’s much more about competing against myself and the oddsmakers than it is about any misplaced hopes of striking it rich.
That’s something thousands of bass anglers can whole-heartedly relate to.
I see memes all the time on the internet poking fun at anglers for spending $60,000 on a boat, $10,000 on fishing tackle and buying a $100 tank of gas just to win a $250 jackpot in a Friday-night wildcat tournament.
Besides wanting to tell those folks to mind their own business and let people spend their hard-earned money as they please, I want to scream at them that they just don’t fully understand those anglers’ motives.
While some anglers truly do have aspirations of fishing professionally someday, the majority of the field for every evening pot tournament is just out there to enjoy the added thrill of competition. They could easily just go fishing from 6 to 10 p.m. on a Tuesday, but they want a little extra spice.
And trust me, plunking down an entry fee to be part of a tournament field — no matter how big or small — provides just that.
For a bass angler, there are few bigger thrills than a largemouth blowing up on a topwater bait at dusk.
Unless, of course, that largemouth puts you in contention for a big-bass prize and sets you up for a double-digit five-bass limit that might very well outpace the other folks in the tournament.
I’d wager my paycheck that every angler on the Bassmaster Elite Series who’s ever held up one of those oversized checks got his first big tournament rush from being handed a few $20 bills inside an envelope with “First Place” scribbled on it.
Besides the money, which is often peanuts, that crumpled envelope gives you a sense of accomplishment — and something to wave in the faces of your buddies, who believe me, wanted the envelope every bit as badly as you did.
I’ve been in that situation many times.
My dad, Mike Brasher, worked for a company that held an annual tournament every March for more than three decades. I teamed with my dad, and my Uncle Harold and grandfather Clifford Brasher always paired together.
The four of us took the entire week off and many times fished five or six straight days in preparation for a tournament with a $45 entry fee and a first-place prize that never once topped $300.
My dad and I won three times and had the big fish nine times, including seven years when we had the second-biggest fish as well. I shudder to do the math because, despite our winnings, I know we still finished drastically in the hole for the life of the tournament.
But given the opportunity, I wouldn’t trade one day of the times we had with that little company event to wipe all of those debts clean.
For most of us, fishing a tournament is not about getting rich.
It’s about outwitting the fish. It’s about surviving the elements, whether it be cold, rain, heat or mosquitoes. And yes, it’s about breaking your buddies’ hearts at the weigh-in scales.
One thing that makes professional bass fishing so fantastic is its relatability.
Spend all the time you want watching football, basketball or baseball. But your chances of competing in any of those sports past your high school days are slim to none. The statistics say less than 4% of high school athletes will ever even see a college field.
But you can turn on Bassmaster LIVE on Thursday, listen to pearls of wisdom from the LIVE crew, watch the pros do their thing and then go do it yourself later that evening.
You won’t have a shot at $100,000. But if you’re like most anglers, you won’t need nearly that much to understand the joy of competition.