Virgil Ward

[Mitch f]

What BASS did he buy? Do you mean the Bassmasters?

Speaking of Hollywood dickering with the program reminded me of a story in the St Louis Post years ago. Someone wrote in and said he and his wife were fishing a lake somewhere and saw Roland Martin taping a show. Said he saw a scuba diver out of view attaching big bass from a wire cage to his hook to appear that he was catching them. I always suspected Bill Dance used the same tactic. He catches more five pounders in a half hour show than I do all season!

Dave

It appears to me like Bill Dance mostly fishes private farm ponds, not taking anything away from his ability to catch fish though

[exiledguide]

You guys are showing your age here. I used to watch his show, but that was soooooooo long ago...

Hey, that was only 40 years ago, oh that was a long time ago and I guess the worst part is that I wasn't a kid when I watched it.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Beetle spin was one I believe, but I can't remember the other even though I should.

I was on Ensley's show one time and I watched him religiously when I could. My aunt called him and told him I had caught a big bass and he invited me to come on the show. He wasn't thrilled that I wouldn't tell him where I caught, but I couldn't, I had sneaked in.:rolleyes:

[Smalliebigs]

It appears to me like Bill Dance mostly fishes private farm ponds, not taking anything away from his ability to catch fish though

Gone fishing with Bill Dance todayyyyy.... I totally agree with ya there Mitch, he's fishing a private set of lakes in Western Tenn in most of his shows.The gentleman that owns them lives on my dad's street @ Kentucky Lake.The fishing is more than good in those smaller privately managed lakes, but in some ways is kind of boring after awhile, it get's too easy.

[rangerz21]

The reaper was one of Harolds favorite lures. His son dusty lives across the street from a friend of mine. He is still reping the reaper and stanley baits i beleive.

[zipstick]

Very good. Ensley's Reaper was one of his standby lures, and the other that was sold a lot in these parts was the Pomme Special, a single spin with a short wire leader presumably for those toothy critters at Pomme.

[zipstick]

By the way a few years ago BASS sponsored an old timer's event to coincide with some anniversary of the first BASS event. All the older named pro's were invited. I'm thinking of Tom Mann, Bill Dance, Bobby Murray and others. I believe it was held on Beaver Lake. Most of the older fellows caught very few if any bass in that event with the exception of Hank Parker who did pretty well as I recollect. Obviously, and certainly based on the catch, this reunion tournament format gained very little traction. I think it lasted just 2 years. Poor old Bill Dance wasn't used to going all day with just a couple of bites.

By the way most fishing shows stage their catches to some degree and obviously edit the show bigtime. It was Tim Renken of the St. Louis Post Dispatch who broke the story about Roland Martin's shenanigans.

Once I called Renken up and told him he should do a winter bass catching article around St. Louis. He said he hated to get outside for long in winter, and had no idea it could be done close to here, but h'ed go along with it. We traveled to St. Clair to fish the Meramec out of my squareback with the idea of getting in, out, and over with the trip in a few hours.

First bend in the float he says, "Park the canoe." I want to get a picture for the paper of this snow on the gravel bar." I replied, "Tim, we haven't caught any fish yet."

"If we don't, he went on, "at least I'll have a picture to put with the article."

I felt like I was challenged to produce at that point." I motored down to my best winter hole where I instructed him to put on any dark maribou crappie jig he had. Bang, bang, bit the bass. I think we caught 16 bass from that first hole. I think he actually began to like fishing in the cold that day. He wrote a nice article about our trip dated January 22, 1987. I believe that was about the 3rd winter I had begun to fish through the winter for smallies.

[dave potts]

You're right Zipstick, it was Tim's article I recalled about the Roland Martin show. Tim had a lot of good articles in the paper. I ran into him a few times at Mark Twain Lake. Sadly there are very few hunting or fishing articles in the paper anymore. Some girl had a few articles after Tim, but she didn't last long.

Guess they couldn't figure out how to put a liberal slant on hunting and fishing so they just dropped it.

Dave

[Al Agnew]

Actually, Kathy Etling does a semi-regular column in the Post on hunting and fishing...guess you don't read that "liberal rag" much.

Never was much impressed with Tim Renken's fishing knowledge, but he was a nice guy. Took him on a float on the Meramec below St. Clair back when the whole spotted bass issue was first rearing its ugly head. Fishing was pretty bad, even for spotted bass, but I did manage to hook one huge smallmouth and got it up close to the canoe before it got off...which wasn't what I was going for because I wanted to show him how the spotted bass were exploding in that section. He wrote an article on the issue afterward but I don't remember much about it.

I've still got an old book that George Carson put out on fishing hotspots. It has maps of a bunch of lakes and river sections with notations like "fish right bank, cast, fly, limblines". It inspired me to produce my own book on upper Big River (and I drew better maps in mine). Tim Renken even wrote a nice little article on the book, and I think we sold all of several dozen copies.

[dave potts]

Actually I read it every day. Guess I just missed her articles.

Your description of the paper is pretty accurate.

Dave