Ray Scott, founder of BASS
It’s a winning catch, and fans spring to their feet with a roar as photographers jockey for position, trying to get that front-page shot or 10-second prime-time sound bite. But no end-zone dance ensues, and instead of spiking an oblong spheroid into the grass, the athlete hoists aloft a football of another sort, a wriggling, thick-shouldered fish with a gaping mouth, bulging eyes and flaring, blood-red gills.
Another bass fishing tournament has reached its climax, and the epilogue follows shortly: presentation of a prize that can be as much as $500,000.
Something about bass fishing lights a fire in the bellies of young and old, rich and poor, men and women—and it’s not just about money. “It is a challenging pursuit, and no matter how good you are at it, you are always trying to be better—and you never really get there,” says Ray Scott, founder of the Bass Angler Sportsman’s Society, or B.A.S.S. “You’re constantly trying to work the puzzle, and the bass is a provocative critter. There is a hunger for knowledge on how to catch that fish, an affliction shared by the poorest and the richest people in the world.”
Scott was the first entrepreneur to recognize the potential bass fishing held as a competitive, money-making enterprise, but it was a Waco sportswriter who came up with the idea of pitting angler against angler to see who could catch the most fish on a given day. The only prize? Bragging rights as the best bass angler in Texas.
In the mid-1950s new reservoirs were beginning to come online in Texas, providing fishing opportunity theretofore unknown in a state with just one natural lake. One new water body was Lake Whitney, impounded in 1951 and centrally located in the state. It was a magnet for anglers, and coffee-shop arguments about who was most adept at catching fish from the lake reached the ears of Earl Golding, outdoor writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald. Sensing a story, he got his editor’s permission to stage a bass fishing tournament on Lake Whitney in 1955. The Central Texas Invitational drew 73 teams, and the next year Golding dubbed the event the Texas State Bass Tournament, the name it carries today.
This mother of all bass fishing tournaments celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in April 2005, and Carl Knox was there, just as he has been for every single one since the beginning. “We don’t have any money involved, just friendly competition among a great bunch of people,” Knox says. “It’s turned into a big family, and the tournament is like a reunion. Our bull sessions around the campfire at night are out of this world.” Knox counts among his most treasured memories getting to know Earl Golding, his wife Martha and their dog. “What nice people Earl and Martha were,” Knox muses. “Even the dog was nice. They had no children, and that dog was their kid.”
Although he didn’t know it, Golding had started something whose effects rippled across the nation and touched the lives of millions of people who never heard of Golding or the Texas State Bass Tournament, yet owed much to both. As new lakes continued to open in Texas, bass clubs sprang up around the state. New lakes in other states were attracting attention, too, and an Alabama insurance salesman with an addiction to bass fishing decided a hot new lake in Arkansas Beaver Lake was the place to try out a crazy idea he had: Get 100 anglers to pay $100 each to fish for a top prize of $2,000.
The insurance salesman was Ray Scott, and as he tells it, he had no thought of starting a bass fishing organization in the beginning. “I was busy trying to get to next week and keep my head above water,” he recalls. His first tournament almost didn’t happen. The chambers of commerce in Rogers and Springdale, Arkansas, declined to sponsor it. But a local doctor from Springdale who also owned a marina came to the rescue. “He asked if I could get 100 people to come fish,” Scott says. “I told him I was certain I could. He looked me in the eye, wrote me a check for $2,500 and said, ’ If you do it, pay me back. If you don’t make it, don’t ever tell my wife I gave you $2,500.’”
That grubstake paid for a WATS line for a month and a secretary named Darlene Phillips, and she and Scott started working the phone. “When they came to yank that phone out, I had 106 entrants,” he says.
An event at that first tournament started wheels turning in Scott’s head. “One boat had the trolling motor mounted on the bow instead of on the stern, where everyone put them in those days,” Scott says. “People were standing around in the parking lot looking at it, and the owner, Stan Sloan, explained that he figured it was easier to pull a chain than to push it. Sloan won the tournament, and at the next one, all the trolling motors were on the front. I realized we don’t learn new things from our usual fishing partners. We only learn when we fish with a stranger. So I started thinking about some kind of organization where people could learn and share skills.”
It’s a winning catch, and fans spring to their feet with a roar as photographers jockey for position, trying to get that front-page shot or 10-second prime-time sound bite. But no end-zone dance ensues, and instead of spiking an oblong spheroid into the grass, the athlete hoists aloft a football of another sort, a wriggling, thick-shouldered fish with a gaping mouth, bulging eyes and flaring, blood-red gills.
Another bass fishing tournament has reached its climax, and the epilogue follows shortly: presentation of a prize that can be as much as $500,000.
Something about bass fishing lights a fire in the bellies of young and old, rich and poor, men and women—and it’s not just about money. “It is a challenging pursuit, and no matter how good you are at it, you are always trying to be better—and you never really get there,” says Ray Scott, founder of the Bass Angler Sportsman’s Society, or B.A.S.S. “You’re constantly trying to work the puzzle, and the bass is a provocative critter. There is a hunger for knowledge on how to catch that fish, an affliction shared by the poorest and the richest people in the world.”
Scott was the first entrepreneur to recognize the potential bass fishing held as a competitive, money-making enterprise, but it was a Waco sportswriter who came up with the idea of pitting angler against angler to see who could catch the most fish on a given day. The only prize? Bragging rights as the best bass angler in Texas.
In the mid-1950s new reservoirs were beginning to come online in Texas, providing fishing opportunity theretofore unknown in a state with just one natural lake. One new water body was Lake Whitney, impounded in 1951 and centrally located in the state. It was a magnet for anglers, and coffee-shop arguments about who was most adept at catching fish from the lake reached the ears of Earl Golding, outdoor writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald. Sensing a story, he got his editor’s permission to stage a bass fishing tournament on Lake Whitney in 1955. The Central Texas Invitational drew 73 teams, and the next year Golding dubbed the event the Texas State Bass Tournament, the name it carries today.
This mother of all bass fishing tournaments celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in April 2005, and Carl Knox was there, just as he has been for every single one since the beginning. “We don’t have any money involved, just friendly competition among a great bunch of people,” Knox says. “It’s turned into a big family, and the tournament is like a reunion. Our bull sessions around the campfire at night are out of this world.” Knox counts among his most treasured memories getting to know Earl Golding, his wife Martha and their dog. “What nice people Earl and Martha were,” Knox muses. “Even the dog was nice. They had no children, and that dog was their kid.”
Although he didn’t know it, Golding had started something whose effects rippled across the nation and touched the lives of millions of people who never heard of Golding or the Texas State Bass Tournament, yet owed much to both. As new lakes continued to open in Texas, bass clubs sprang up around the state. New lakes in other states were attracting attention, too, and an Alabama insurance salesman with an addiction to bass fishing decided a hot new lake in Arkansas Beaver Lake was the place to try out a crazy idea he had: Get 100 anglers to pay $100 each to fish for a top prize of $2,000.
The insurance salesman was Ray Scott, and as he tells it, he had no thought of starting a bass fishing organization in the beginning. “I was busy trying to get to next week and keep my head above water,” he recalls. His first tournament almost didn’t happen. The chambers of commerce in Rogers and Springdale, Arkansas, declined to sponsor it. But a local doctor from Springdale who also owned a marina came to the rescue. “He asked if I could get 100 people to come fish,” Scott says. “I told him I was certain I could. He looked me in the eye, wrote me a check for $2,500 and said, ’ If you do it, pay me back. If you don’t make it, don’t ever tell my wife I gave you $2,500.’”
That grubstake paid for a WATS line for a month and a secretary named Darlene Phillips, and she and Scott started working the phone. “When they came to yank that phone out, I had 106 entrants,” he says.
An event at that first tournament started wheels turning in Scott’s head. “One boat had the trolling motor mounted on the bow instead of on the stern, where everyone put them in those days,” Scott says. “People were standing around in the parking lot looking at it, and the owner, Stan Sloan, explained that he figured it was easier to pull a chain than to push it. Sloan won the tournament, and at the next one, all the trolling motors were on the front. I realized we don’t learn new things from our usual fishing partners. We only learn when we fish with a stranger. So I started thinking about some kind of organization where people could learn and share skills.”
