Buckshot George

I got nothing to hide. I have never fished with buying a license first.

Actually I read that one last week. It's a well-written piece although I'm a little skeptical of the "approval seeking" motive. Coming from a fairly small town south of Louisville KY (it was small when I left home anyway), I can easily imagine a community shunning a guy over something like that. He'd probably have a pretty hard time finding a business that would be willing to sell him a fishing license. Well, maybe an indifferent teenager working in Wal-Mart sporting goods might...

I'll check him out. Muddy mentioned this Craig Baugher dude too. I couldn't find as much on him. He must be underground or just not have much internet presence. Of course, humorist Patrick McManus is really good too.

Quinn, I would agree this is not one of the more educational threads I've read on the site. I did think I received a lot of valuable responses and really walked away with an idea about bass fishing culture and people in the sport. I met some guys on this site that were funny and creative. I think this has actually been a fun thread but I can also see that there is certainly a more conservative element to the sport too. I checked out another site on tournament catfishing that was a lot of fun. Talk about a sport that seems a little jealous of bass fishing and they are fighting really hard to earn credibility for their favorite fish. Who knew? I'm buying a fishing license this weekend though. Regards.

Here is the honest truth. There is no weird agenda here. I am a dude living in Arizona where I sell mail order V*agra and Cialis for a living and play bass guitar in a rock band. I signed up for this event called National Novel Writing Month for fun. There is no prize money. I just get a little certficate saying I finished writing the rough draft of a 50,000 word "book". I based a lot of the subject matter on growing up in Bullitt County, KY. I enjoyed bass fishing with my Dad. We never cheated and we never won that much $$ either but we had a good time. I saw an ad for a big tournament at the bait and tackle store once that said all applicants must agree to take a polygraph test if they win. Hmmm... A liar detector test? I remembered that for some reason. Plus my company advertises in the fishing magazines so we get courtesy copies which my boss gives to me and I don't know a lot of stories where the hero is a bass fisherman. Anyway, if you guys ever try to write a book, it's a lot of typing and you have to sit down and write every single day for a month. Ouch. Thanks for the responses. There was a lot of good feedback for me. Cheers BG

Daniel, your story rules.

There is a company called Lion's Den that has been opening porn businesses along interstates. I saw a lot of them on a road trip through the midwest last year, particularly through Kansas and Missouri. I do know of one across the river from Louisville in Indiana that was the cause of a lot of protest.

Hey guys Thanks for the comments today. It really is a fictional story and when you write a story, there has to be a villain for any plot to work and you have to put your hero through trials and temptations and have to make awful things happen to them and they have to make decisions. Bass fishing has a very limited history of corruption within the sport (Compare to baseball or wrestling... Steroids won't help you catch fish). The most famous example of cheating in bass fishing is Paul Tormanen, which I was AMAZED that he pulled that off with a non-boater watching him and it almost hurt reading forum posts from early 2005 where people thought he was the best bass fisherman alive. There have been a couple of other guys too. I was pretty impressed with some things I read by Ray Scott, the founder of B.A.S.S., and I remember reading about him in fishing mags when I was a kid in Kentucky. He seemed to be almost paranoid about cheating with the polygraph testing from way back when and he was really anal about keeping it clean from the beginning. Anyway, I haven't fished in a while. I once won $500 as a 17-year old in a father and son tournament. I brought in a 12-inch bass (barely legal) on a rainy day at Nolin River Lake in the late 80s. I spent a tiny bit of the money on an RC Cola and a Moonpie on a bad fishing day when no one caught anything except me. Anyway, here is my novel synopsis: The story takes place in the fictional town of Booger Hollow, Kentucky where a nearby porn war is raging following the opening of several adult entertainment businesses near the interstate off-ramp. The conflict when the porn war's most outspoken religious opponent attends a wedding ceremony held by a secular humanist minister for his stripper daughter's 4th marriage, this time to an ex-soldier with atheist and anarchist beliefs. The family's pipe dreaming loser uncle, a fallen-from-grace ex-pro bass fisherman whose career was destroyed by a cheating scandal in a big money tournament, gets duped and loses borrowed family money to a country music song shark outfit in Nashville. Family feuding and fighting threatens the family's annual Turtle Soup Day tradition which dates back to the family's ancestry in Portugal. Cheers, Buckshot George

Hey Guys I'm participating in the 2008 National Novel Writing Month and just need to make sure my facts are straight and the plot will be believable to real bass fishermen plus I have some questions. I really want to make this plot work and the research I am doing seems to tell me that it might not work. I want my fisherman character to be pressured into cheating in a bass tournament. This would be done by tethering fish to stumps or using a submerged basket or cage. Would there ever be a motive or reason for a sponsor or endorsing company to encourage an angler to cheat? I want someone working for a fictional lure company or other fictional sponsor to place these fish in certain locations that the guy is supposed to retrieve during the tournament... then the angler rebels, wins the tourney anyway with his own catch of fish... but the person who hid the illegal fish has been caught in the act and he was traced back to the angler, who was disqualified. So actually the angler is the innocent but goes to jail (you actually go to jail if you cheat at fishing for money, I learned). I want to figure out a way to exonerate the angler later in the story. I'm not sure this is going to work though. Your thoughts? And it's quicker if you email me with a reply jasmith22@gmail.com I'd appreciate any feedback you might have. Thanks in advance. Buckshot George