“There’s a lot of talk about how we’ll overlap,” said Kessel, who then divulged the dream of BASS tournaments on Lake Lloyd (the artificial reservoir within the Daytona 500’s 2.5-mile track), bass weigh-ins before car races, anglers and drivers posed together with twin logos for Yamaha and Busch. “That’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about,” said Kessel.
His attention turned back to the TV. A camera mounted inside one of the vehicles showed a helmeted driver.
“I see a guy in a car,” I said. “What do you see?”
Kessel stuck his finger on the screen. There, beneath his pointer, on the lower left of the racing helmet, had been printed a single word: Reese’s. As in peanut butter cup. The sponsor.
Then I, too, began to see. There was UPS and FedEx and Lowe’s and ...
“I see opportunity,” said Kessel. “A lot of these drivers love to fish and—”
He stopped to watch the last three laps of the race and, when it was over, expounded on the challenges of filming fishing tournaments, which have no last out, no last inning, and no last lap. “You can only see half of the playing field,” he observed. “But I’m thinking about new technology.”
Like what?
He paused.
“Put a camera in a lure,” he whispered. “How cool would that be?”
At lunchtime I met Don Rucks, vice president and general manager of BASS. We convened at the Celebration Town Tavern, where Rucks sat on the patio, sucked a Nicaraguan dollar cigar, and gazed at the perfectly rectangular, man-made Celebration Lake. “You can catch a ten-pound bass right there,” he told me, at which point I felt a craving for some Florida largemouth James Beard–style, the whole fish stuffed with onions, bread crumbs, tarragon, and Tabasco. So I suggested we order some bass.
“No, no, no,” said Rucks. “Can’t do that.”
The Ojibwa water monster and the Cherokee father of all fish were propitiated in the context of a profound spirituality. But today’s bass are the opposite of spirit: They are pounds of living asset. Once lifted out of the water and captured on videotape, they go on life support within aerated livewells, to which the anglers may add doses of a fishy feel-good additive called Aquahol. At the end of the day, after elaborately staged weigh-ins (total weight of live bass caught decides the tournament winner), the fish are returned to the reservoir to fatten and await the next hook. Without a secure stock of bass there could be no BASS tournaments, no BassCenter on television, no Bassmaster website, no Bass Times newsletter, and no Bassmaster magazine. Which would mean no paycheck for Don Rucks.
Instead of bass, we ordered scrod.
“We can legitimately become the next big-league sport,” Rucks said. “There’s only one Bassmaster Elite Series with this media machine behind it.”
Then he explained the next step: “We’re trying to get anglers to build a personal brand.”
A personal brand?
“Everyone has a personal brand, but they don’t know what it is.”
And how does one discover his or her personal brand?
“You have to know, ‘Who am I?’ ”
And how does one discover who they are?
“You do that by checking with your friends, with your wife,” said Rucks.
And what would be the Don Rucks brand?
“Oh, man,” he groaned. “I don’t know. Innovative. Challenging. Direct. Colorful. Animated. Know who you are,” Rucks declared, “then find your matching brands.”
What brand would match Don Rucks?
“Red Bull. Johnnie Walker. Cohiba.”
But isn’t there someone out there whose identity lies beyond a brand?
“No,” said Don Rucks. “I believe everybody has a brand.”
Peter Thliveros hauled up his second largemouth of the day from a mess of submerged trees. By noon he had reeled in two more lunkers, then trolled into some bad luck. The mercury hit 100 degrees and there were no clouds and no breeze, and after a few hours of watching someone not catch any fish, I acquired newfound respect for the challenges facing Don Rucks: Here was a spectator sport sublime in its monotony.
Finally, Thliveros zipped his life jacket, settled behind the wheel of his Ranger, and floored it across the lake. The driver of my boat gunned his 225 hp in pursuit, and as we hurtled through gas fumes and space, the slightest ripple slammed us out of our seats, the rushing air forcing tears from my eyes. Thirty-eight seconds of terror later, we pulled up behind Peter T. at the 9,000-foot-long Benbrook Dam, where among the logs and tumbleweeds he fished for another hour—with no success.
The morning’s crowd of photographers and spectator boats had gradually drifted off: no more old men in khaki shorts and Jack Daniel’s T-shirts; no more sunburned dads with crewcut kids; no more young men in wraparound shades and basketball shorts. No more helicopter. Thliveros could see none of his competitors, had no idea what anybody else had pulled out of the reservoir. Still, he never showed a sign of worry or exasperation. The day before, his bass had come off riprap with that same rattling jig he was using now, and he would stick to his analysis, to the pattern he had discovered in the wind and the waves, the water temperature and the stain, the depth, the current, the time of day, and the season of year.
But Peter T. could catch no more. By late afternoon he had been left with no one but Wes Miller, his onboard television cameraman. (As it turned out, Miller was a big Thliveros fan: At a party a few years back, the chef had smoked an entire wild hog and made a point of inviting Miller to the feast.)
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