Go fish!

Neil White finds out that championship bass fishing is hard work — and no one brought beer

By NEIL WHITE - nwhite@thestate.com

Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate.

Skeet Reese, the 2007 Bassmasters Angler of the Year, practices for this week's tournament on Lake Murray. He will participate in the Carolina Clash tournament.

• VIDEO: Fishing on Lake Murray with B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year Skeet Reese
• Carolina Clash: Three 'giants' sound good to leader Morris

If you go

WHAT: Bassmaster Elite Series Carolina Clash

WHERE: Lake Murray

WHEN: Today-Sunday

PURSE: Winner earns $100,000 and points for the season-long Bassmaster Angler of the Year race.

FORMAT: The angler having the most cumulative weight over four days wins. After two days, the field is cut to the top 50 and the final day to the top 12. During the first three days of competition, anglers are randomly paired with co-anglers or amateurs, who compete in the back of the boat in their own division.

DAILY WEIGH-INS: At 3 p.m. at the Lake Murray Marina and Yacht Club on Marina Road off U.S. 76 in Ballentine

ADMISSION: Free

Let me get this out right up front: I don’t fish.

The closest I can remember being near fish in recent years is the $3.99 lunch special at Long John Silver’s.

But with the Bassmaster Elite Series bringing its Carolina Clash tour stop to Lake Murray this week, I felt an obligation as a professional journalist to find out what the excitement is all about. I was hoping to see if this non-angler could catch a case of bass fever.

Fortunately, I was able to hook up — oh, sorry, that was a lame fishing reference, wasn’t it? — with Skeet Reese, the 2007 Bassmaster Angler of the Year, who was gracious enough to take me out on the water for a half-day during Wednesday’s practice session.

Now Skeet didn’t actually let me fish while he looked for a few of Lake Murray’s top fishing spots. I was on board strictly as his executive fishing assistant, where my duties included not falling out of the boat, not stepping on any of his fancy rods and not asking too many dumb questions.

(Two out of three ain’t bad.)

Of course, I learned my place as soon as I climbed onto the Champion 210 — a sweet $60,000 top-of-the-line bass boat. Painted right there were six key words of instruction for anyone sitting in the passenger seat:

“Sit Down. Shut Up. Hold On.”

Skeet wasn’t kidding about the holding on part either. When he got the boat cranked up to more than 70 mph gliding across the lake, I knew just how Tubbs felt the first time he rode on Crockett’s cigarette boat on “Miami Vice.” The G-forces had my cheeks flapping somewhere behind the back of my earlobes.

Fortunately, I didn’t fly out of the boat. It would have been embarrassing for Skeet to have had to fish me out of the water, although I would have really helped his numbers at the weigh-in.

It didn’t take me long, however, to learn a whole lot about professional bass fishing. First of all, I saw no worms, no canoes and no beer coolers. This is a serious sport that’s akin to NASCAR on water.

And Skeet, who could just as easily pass for a surfer dude or a rock star, is part of the new wave of anglers. Decked out from the top of his wind-swept blond-streaked locks down to his bright yellow Pearl Izumi running shoes, the California native has a style that, in his words, is “often imitated, never duplicated.”

“I wanted something that stood out, and I picked yellow. Everyone looked the same. It was boring,” said Skeet, who adds that his choice turned into a full-blown bonanza with signature apparel, rods, reels and — coming soon — boats.

“It has made an impact. It has turned into a whole marketing trend. The yellow and black is working pretty good,” he said, although conceding there might be some people in the sport who aren’t as enamored of his style.

I wore a yellow shirt that day to fit in while fishing with Skeet. But when I asked him to give me a cool fishing nickname so we could be a real team, he smiled like a guy who hoped I might fall overboard. I suggested Poot, Nub, Cooter or Stumpy, but he didn’t like any of them. Skeet isn’t a nickname. It’s his actual middle name taken from his grandfather.

Yet behind the modish Wiley X sunglasses and sponsor-laden, trademark yellow-and-black shirt is a guy who has even more substance than style.

In the past 10 years, he has $1.3 million in career winnings and has participated in the Bassmaster Classic, the Super Bowl of bass fishing, nine times, which included a second-place finish last year. He currently is third in points in the 2008 Angler of the Year standings.

He clearly enjoys busting the old stereotype that angling is “a beer-drinking, pot-belly Bubba sport. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s so far from that now.”

Fisherman like Skeet also are showing up in nontraditional media outlets spreading this new gospel. He’d love to be featured one day on the cover of Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine — or even GQ.

“My goal is to promote the sport,” he said.

Promote it he does simply by driving his massive custom-made Ford F-650 truck adorned by sponsor logos — especially the big one of his primary benefactor, Lucky Craft lures — into the Lake Murray Marina parking lot.

He grins. “It’s not your average pickup.”

The only endorsement he doesn’t have is one for his magnificent head of hair. It seems like Vidal Sassoon would be a natural to have a sticker on his boat, given the varying weather conditions Skeet’s lovely mane has to endure on the water. But Skeet believes that hasn’t happened because women wouldn’t be interested in purchasing a bass-scented shampoo.

Skeet knows a thing or two about females. He and his wife of eight years, Kim, have two daughters, Lea, 5, and Courtney, 2. He calls the only downside to his career the 200 or so days he must spend on the road away from his family. In his younger and more carefree days, though, he used to do whatever he could to get the attention of the fairer sex.

“I learned guys who knew how to dance got girls. I liked girls, so I learned how to dance.”

He got so good at it that he became a cage dancer in nightclubs. And, no, he’s not embarrassed to admit it.

“I love to dance,” he said, sort of sheepishly. “It’s one of the things I really enjoy.”

Could he parlay this into a stint on “Dancing with the Stars?” The show’s routines are a little too structured for the former cage occupant.

“I’m definitely a freestyle guy.”

Still, don’t expect a Terrell Owens-style routine on his boat after he pulls in an eight-pound bass. He’s too focused on winning to do that. The one athlete who truly inspires him is Tiger Woods.

“To do what he has done is mind-boggling. His mindset and ability to win is phenomenal.”

I learned many other more general things about fishing at the Pearl Izumis of this bassmaster. For instance, I discovered that top fishermen these days come from across the country, and more than ever, they are conscious of staying fit and working as hard as any golfer, tennis player or race-car driver.

“The bar has been raised the past four or five years,” Skeet noted. “You have to perform at a higher level than ever before.”

Other offerings:

• The technology of the GPS has made finding secret spots a second time a little easier.

• Catching between 15 and 20 pounds of bass each day is a good way to win a lot of money.

• He enjoys seafood, but he never eats bass.

Then he passed along a couple of things that might hamper my potential pro fishing career. One, he goes to bed during tournament weeks at 9 p.m. and rises at 3:30 a.m. “If you don’t like to get up early, it’s not the sport for you,” he said.

The second tidbit was a bigger disqualifier.

“Patience is really important,” he said. “It’s one of the most important things when things don’t go right. Some days you fish hard all day long and only get five bites. Staying poised and focused in the tough times is what separates the greats from the goods.”

I don’t have much patience. Just ask my family when they’re in the car with me, and we get stuck at a red light. It’s pretty ugly.

Here, however, is what I really got out of watching Skeet drive from spot to spot and casting over and over again for several minutes in each of them all day long. It’s way more physically and mentally demanding than I realized.

“Anybody who has ever said this isn’t a sport, I challenge them to come out and do this seven days straight,” he said. “We’ll see how they hold up at the end of the week.”

He’s right. He caught just four fish with me assisting him. And after about five hours on the water, I nearly passed out from exhaustion, heat stroke and the lack of beer.

But here’s the good news. The winner of the Carolina Clash takes home $100,000.

Wow, a hundred grand! Now that’s what I really like about bass fishing. Say, Skeet, if you win this thing, how about sharing some of that with your yellow-clad practice partner?

He gave a slight sideways shake of the head.

“You’ll have to ask my wife about that.”