Weekend anglers are fond of noting that the largest bass ever caught was not landed by a tournament fisherman. It was taken by a nineteen-year-old Georgia farm kid named George W. Perry at an oxbow slough called Montgomery Lake. Fittingly, young Perry had never heard of Lowrance fish-finders or Thruster trolling motors or Fenwick graphite flipping sticks. Perry went out fishing in a simple rowboat and took the only bass lure he owned, a beat-up Creek Chub. He went fishing mainly because his family was hungry, and he returned with a largemouth bass that weighed twenty-two pounds, four ounces. The year was 1932. Since then, despite all the space-age advancements in fish-catching technology, nobody has boated a bass that comes close to the size of George Perry’s trophy, which he and his loved ones promptly ate for dinner. Today an historical plaque commemorating this leviathan largemouth stands on Highway 117, near Lumber City, Georgia. It serves as a defiant and nagging challenge to modern bass fishermen and all their infernal electronics. Some ichthyologists have been so bold as to suggest that the Monster of Montgomery Lake was a supremely mutant fish, an all-tackle record that will never be bested by any angler. To which Dickie Lockhart, in closing each segment of Fish Fever, would scrunch up his eyes, wave a finger at the camera, and decree: “George Perry, next week your cracker butt is history!”
There was no tournament that weekend, so Dickie Lockhart was taping a show. He was shooting on Lake Kissimmee, not far from Disney World. The title of this particular episode was “Hawg Hunting.” Dickie needed a bass over ten pounds; anything less wasn’t a hawg.
As always, he used two boats; one to fish from, one for the film crew. Like most TV fishing-show hosts, Dickie Lockhart used videotapes because they were cheaper than sixteen-millimeter, and reusable. Film was unthinkable for a bass show because you might go two or three days shooting nothing but men casting their lures and spitting tobacco, but no fish. With the video, a bad day didn’t blow the whole budget because you just backed it up and shot again.
Dickie Lockhart had been catching bass all morning, little two-and three-pounders. He could guess the weight as soon as he hooked up, then furiously skitter the poor fish across the surface into the boat. “Goddammit,” he would shout, “rewind that sucker and let’s try again.”
During lulls in the action, Dickie would grow tense and foul-mouthed. “Come on, you bucket-mouthed bastards,” he’d growl as he cast at the shoreline, “hit this thing or I’m bringing dynamite tomorrow, y’hear?”
Midmorning the wind kicked up, mussing Dickie Lockhart’s shiny black hair. “Goddammit,” he shouted, “stop the tape.” After he got a comb from his tacklebox and slicked himself down, he ordered the cameraman to crank it up again.
“How do I look?” Dickie asked.
“Like a champ,” the cameraman said thinly. The cameraman dreamed of the day when Dickie Lockhart would get shitfaced drunk and drop his drawers to moon his little ole fishing pals all across America. Then Dickie would fall out of the boat, as he often did after drinking. Afterward the cameraman would pretend to rewind the videotape and erase this sloppy moment, but of course he wouldn’t. He’d save it and, when the time was right, threaten to send it to the sports-and-religion network that syndicated Dickie Lockhart’s fishing show. Dickie would suddenly become a generous fellow, and the cameraman would finally be able to afford to take his wife to the Virgin Islands.
Now, with the tape rolling, Dickie Lockhart was talking man-to-man with the serious bass angler back home. Dickie’s TV accent was much thicker and gooier than his real-life accent, an exaggeration that was necessary to meet the demographic of the show, which was basically male Deep Southern grit-suckers. As he cast his lure and reeled it in, Dickie Lockhart would confide exactly what brand of crankbait he was using, what pound line was on the reel, what kind of sunglasses (amber or green) worked better on a bright day. The patter carried an air of informality and friendliness, when in fact the point was to shill as many of Dickie Lockhart’s sponsors’ products as possible in twenty-four minutes of live tape. The crankbait was made by Bagley, the line by Du Pont, the reel by Shimano, the sunglasses by Polaroid, and so on. Somehow, when Dickie stared into the camera and dropped these bald-faced plugs, it didn’t seem so cheap.