A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 29

A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 29

at that time he contacted me and made an offer I couldn’t refuse. My fishing experiences precede memory; I was perhaps two the first time my father first took me out fishing in Michigan. It wasn’t until I was stationed as a drill sergeant at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, that I fell in love with bass fishing. After reading an arti- cle back home in Michigan on Dee Thomas and how to make flippin’ jigs in BASS mag- azine, I was a flippin’ jig with rope weed guard pouring fool! I moved to Sacramento in the late seventies for a career as an art director at a TV station. Having fished tournaments in Michigan, I gained some notoriety in team tournaments in the West Coast Bass circuit and other northern events. I partnered up with Rich in 1982, mainly to help with a magazine and promotional event flyers, but also to put my TV background to use, gaining media cover- age for our events. In those days, Merle Haggard hosted an incredibly popular tournament at his Silverthorn Resort in Lake Shasta. The event drew a huge number of anglers, amplified by the celebrity presence and the houseboat party atmosphere. At the fourth annual Merle Haggard tournament in March of 1984, Rich Bryant entered and won using the jig and pig as his primary weapon. Rich’s win was timely for West Coast Bass, bringing acclaim and credibility to the organization we’d only been promoting together for about a year at that time. But it was the legitimacy of the anglers we could draw to our events on which our ulti- mate success would depend. I wanted to meet Dee Thomas, the father of flippin’, and his protégé, Dave Gliebe, who had smashed com- petition overall weight records using that flip- pin’ technique. I’m sure Dave did not know it then, but he was flippin’ and inventing his own offshoot technique—one which is very popu- lar today—when he was “punching” through weed mats in Florida at a B.A.S.S. event. I was determined to attract those guys to West Coast Bass events if at all possible. The fanfare of Rich Schultz and Don Doty had paved the way by attracting large fields of anglers in the West. Mike Folkestad, Don Iovino and Rich Tauber and Dave Nol- lar from the south, Renaud Pellitier and Dub La Shot from the Northwest, Frank Scofield from Sacramento, John Bedwell from Stock- ton and Don Payne from Modesto, are the

Phil Mitsueda, top, used his West Coast Bass tournament victory winnings to found his Redding business. Robert Lee gladly accepts $50,000 in Delta Big Bass Derby money from Larry Viviano.

early names that come to mind. Our mission was to offer draw competition at a level that would attract the top sticks along with some of the tough team fishermen we already had fishing West Coast Bass in huge numbers. In my mind, innovative concepts were the key. In January 1984 we started the West Coast Bass One Day Draw tournaments. The events grew in popularity and some of the fisher- man wanted more events and more days of competition. We grew our team circuits

and they spawned some exceptional anglers. Gary Dobyns and Ron Hillock, for example, were winning more than their share of events in the Sacramento Valley Region. Hard though it was to accept that two an- glers were that good, they simply were, pri- marily by perfecting the rippin’ technique. We hoped that new innovative pro level concepts would convert some of these team anglers and interest some of the top sticks from the south.

July 2011 _ SILVER EAGLES 29