A big catch

Fantasy fishing tournament offers $1M grand prize

Getting Reeled in

I hate fishing.

It all started when I was 5 years old and my father and uncle took me on a deep-sea charter from the South Carolina beach where my family vacationed.

As the boat bobbed away from the shore, the pungent odors wafting from piles of bait and chain-smoking deckhands unsettled my stomach. On top of that, I was bored to death, staring at my line, waiting for it to jerk.

Funny thing was, I hooked the biggest fish of the day, the one that became dinner that night. I still have a picture of me hefting it on the dock. You'd think a twist like that would have sealed my lifelong devotion to the craft.

It didn't.

I remembered the smells, the queasiness and the boredom more than the triumph.

I tried to mend my relationship with fishing over the years.

I loved the movie A River Runs Through It. The poetry of a man standing in a stream, rhythmically casting his line in the middle of a great forest, spoke to me.

So did the deft words of John McPhee and Thomas McGuane, when they wrote about American shad or tarpon.

Ted Williams, one of my heroes, fancied himself the greatest fisherman alive.

But anytime I tried to transfer the abstract romance to the tactile experience, the effort broke down.

If you're wondering whether this is still a fantasy sports column, don't fret. Here comes the connection.

The other morning, my outdoors writing pal, Candy Thomson, plopped a folder on my desk.

"That's got to be a column," she said.

I'm always hungry for material in this time between football and baseball, so I seized the slick package, with an open-mouthed bass staring at me from the cover.

"You don't have to fish like a pro to win like a pro," it shouted at me.

As we've established, I don't fish like a pro, so it seemed I could be the target audience.

I've written about fantasy cricket, fantasy politics and fantasy celebrity watching in the past, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to learn there is fantasy fishing.

I had some peripheral awareness that professional bass fishing had expanded in recent years. So a fantasy symbiote almost had to follow.

The $1.7 million in cash being offered by FLW Outdoors, however, caught my attention. It's billed as the biggest prize payout ever offered in fantasy sports. I'm not sure that's true, but we can agree it's a lot.

To play, you log on to FantasyFishing.com, set up a free team and pick a squad of 10 anglers for each of the seven events on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour. You can start picking now, but the tour doesn't begin until Feb. 28.

The owner who picks best over the seven events will get a $1 million grand prize. For reference, that's as much as the winner of the tour's signature event, the Forrest Wood Cup, receives.

As it turns out, FLW is not the only tour with a fantasy game. Through ESPN.com, you can pick anglers from the Bassmaster tour.

The big daddy of that circuit, the Bassmaster Classic, is coming Feb. 22.

So I'm thinking ... maybe this is the sort of fishing I can appreciate. No smells, no long waits, no sea sickness. It wouldn't be man against nature. It would be my ability to research the fishing world against a vast, computerized network of similar handicappers.

Somehow, it seems less romantic, but that's modern living. No use fighting it.

I entered this column expecting the second half of it to be an early scouting report for fellow novices.

I know that a Californian named Skeet Reese, who likes to dance in addition to fish, generated more fantasy points than any other angler in the ESPN game last year.

I know that Ish Monroe, a charismatic angler who was the subject of an excellent article I read a few years back, finished 15th last year.

I know that these guys wear ad-covered suits that, save for the helmet, look just like the attire of NASCAR drivers.

OK, I know squat.

I have a long way to go before I can find fishing redemption through fantasy sports.

But, hey, at least I'm not sick after writing this column.

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