A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 43

A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 43

“Well after awhile one of the guys got up to use the bathroom and he noticed it was light outside. You should have seen everybody move. Us fishermen all scrambled to get to our boats and the tour- nament guys hauled butt down to the launch ramp.” “At the California Delta, (don’t remember the year) Jody White was pre-fishing on Friday prior to the Saturday/Sunday event. He set the hook on a decapitated body (we found out later it was a drug deal gone bad) and brought it to the surface,” continued the stories from Naslund. “Officers were called and they transported the corpse down the ramp adjacent to the scales and left it on a tarp for several hours. It was an awesome sight (terrifying) to many of the fishermen who were returning from pre-fish. At the meeting that night, I told the group that this was one of the few tournaments I ever ran in which any one person with a single cast could ‘get a head’. It didn’t stop there; the next morning Above, Don Seifert of Lowrance , a fixture in Western bass after the boats went out Bill Rice Directors Mike Kennedy and Wally Augst both died too soon. and Hal Huggins and I went over to a novelty shop and bought a slip-over ugly there before a tournament and gave him the mask‚ then on to a grocery store where we key so he could pick it up whenever he bought a watermelon and fitted the mask needed. Harvey and I drove out there, went over it. Then we put it in the holding tank through the gate. I saw a dog dish and said by the scales waiting for the response from ‘Harvey, there’s a dog.’ He froze and then those weighing fish. The biggest response slowly stepped back out of gate. Turns out the was Gary Dobyns who was talking to other dog was a teacup poodle. fishermen as he got to the tank. He set his “One tournament he was at a table hav- bag in the water, looked down‚ and jumped ing dinner with the gals helping him out, about three feet backwards.” Bev Payne was one of them, and I asked him Harvey was on the other end of jokes, too. do you smoke after sex? He said, ‘I don’t Don Lee, the longtime Ranger rep, set up know, I never looked,” recalled Lee. “After Naslund more than once. one of his big fundraisers, Harvey was out- “Harvey went back to Ranger and sat side the Airporter Inn in his undershorts down with Charlie Hoover to renegotiate smoking a cigarrete at 2:30 in the morning. their contract,” said Lee. “‘What’s this I hear A couple cocktail waitresses who just got off about you signing with Skeeter,’ Charlie asked work walked by and he said ‘Girls, this is not him right off. Harvey went through the ceil- what you think,’ and they said, “You don’t ing, because of course he never did that. I told know what we’re thinking.’” Charlie to say it. Charlie said the next thing The way some people remember things is Harvey said was, ‘Where’s that goddam Lee?’ different than others. For instance, going to “Bobby Ellis, a great guy whose been Pat “bass fishing school” with Fred Ward. Donoho’s team tournament partner for years, “I’ve always said that I became a pro fish- owns a wrecking yard with 20 acres of cars on erman IN SPITE of drawing Fred Ward on it,” continued Lee. “He let Harvey keep a boat my first tournament day,” recalled John

Murray. “I was 13, and I drew him in my first Arizona Bass Club tour- nament (the biggest and toughest club in AZ at the time, 1979). Everyone told me when you draw a ‘pro’, he will help you learn to fish and answer questions before launch. Fred was my idol, and I could barely talk as I got in his boat. Finally, I got enough courage to ask him what pound line he was going to use? He immedi- ately answered, “I don’t know” and continued to ignore me. After a while, he asked me if I knew how to net. I said yes, just put the net in the water, and you’ll lead the fish in. He screamed ‘no,’ and took the net and jabbed it in my face and yelled ‘Get it, get it! When the fish comes up, you go get it wherever it is! When I yell fish, you jump!’ From that point on, I quit worry- ing about catching a fish, just net- ting his! This was August at Apache Lake, HOT. At the start, Fred ran his overpowered Ranger downlake to a shady wall and started pitching a clear-sparkle Garland jig. In no fishing. more than 5 minutes, he screamed ‘net.’ I sprang from the back deck to get the net, the problem was that I landed in the middle of his huge styrofoam cooler, spraying styrofoam, drinks, water and ice everywhere. When I looked up, he had a 3- inch sunfish. I feared the worst, but all he said was, ‘At least you got the net!’ He went on that day to catch 20-plus bass and win the tournament. I never caught a thing, but netted all his fish. At the fire pit that night, he told my parents that I wasn’t much of a fisherman, but I could be an Olympic netter! As I said, I became a pro angler in spite of Fred Ward.” Yes, you really have to want it to be a part of the sport we call bass fishing and it’s easy to look back and think things were simpler years ago. It was soon after I started covering the sport in the early 80s that I was sitting around with Bill Rice and Okie Vaughn and they were already talking about the good old days. “I sure do miss those times Bill,” said Okie. “Sitting around the motel room in our shorts smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze.” If that visual didn’t scare me away from bass fishing, I guess nothing could.

July 2011 _ SILVER EAGLES 43