Lateral Lines

I haven't been following the world of professional bass fishing as closely as I have in years past. Maybe it's my better half's pursuit of her PhD, my own foray back into the world of academia, or the fact that it costs like a bazillion dollars more to go anywhere to fish this year compared to last, but I've just been keeping a fair number of irons in the fire and something had to take a back seat. This year it was fishing for the first part of this year.

While I still subscribe to all of the feeds from sites like Bassfan, ESPN Outdoors, and the like I mostly mark them as read in my RSS Feed Reader and go back later to catch up when I have spare moment.

Don Barone sent me an email back in April announcing his new site and some articles he had posted as he travelled on the road following the Bassmaster and Women's Bassmaster Tours this year. I took some time to catch up on the older articles this weekend and, in true Barone fashion, his commentary kept me in stitches. For posterity and by way of an apology to him for not keeping up, here's a few of the highlights from the past six months:

North of The Creel Limit - Barone Takes Ride on the WBT Release Boat

"Then Chris reaches inside the bass bullies' holding pen, finds a rope and pulls. The pen goes nuts, with bass jumping all over the place. The rope is attached to a trap door and when Chris pulled it, river met bass once again and in seconds, all that was left was an empty pen.

And about a 100 yards downstream, two guys sitting quietly with lines in the water, were about to have a very good day."

Through the Wringer - Brian Clark has a Unique Boat Security System

"She guards my boat at night from people coming by thinking they can snatch up something. I put her food out and her water and lay her dog bed down on the front deck and she sleeps right there all night, and man, you ain't getting near that boat."

KVD & the caveman - Meet "Happy" White

"Happy" came from a CAVE. An underground CAVE!

For the past 28 years "Happy" worked for the Schreiber Cheese Company. "For the first 12 years I ran the machine that made those individually wrapped cheese slices."

At this point I'm pretty much speechless, me and my tape recorder just sat there listening.

"db, it was a pretty complicated device & the cheese would come in one end, mix all up with the wrapping, and come out the other end as individually wrapped slices."

He stops talking, we're sitting in his truck, it's about 95 degrees out with what ever the most humidity can be without flooding. There's silence, "Happy" being the interviewee quite naturally is expecting me, the guy asking the questions, to SAY SOMETHING.

Here's my follow-up question: "So what did you do the other 16 years."

"I worked in the cave."

Bass Babies - db gets invited to a... baby shower?

I'm shuffling down the hall when I run, actually sort of bounce off, Elite Pro Paul Hirosky, who's all perky-like AT THIS TIME of what I still consider LAST NIGHT, and he says to me, "So what's up with you today," or something like that. I say exactly this, "I'm going to a Baby Shower later."

Silence.

db: "They have Cake."

The Elite Pro guy: "Ohhhhh."

The Elite Pro guy is out the door in a flash with a big bag of ice that I'm assuming has to do with something fish-related

biscuits and crankbaits - db explores a southern tradition

But here's the SERIOUS part: later, when I asked someone who lives just down the road here, "What the hell was that?" and we got to talking about eating biscuits and something called "turnip greens," he told me EXACTLY this, I wrote it down: "It's SOOOO good that if you go to getting any of the food on your forehead, your tongue will slap your brains out getting to it."

Enjoy! I always do. Thanks, Don. I'll do a better job keeping up from now on.