Today we’ll look at the correlations between tournament bass fishing and the greatest game in America, football.

As a former coach and player, and a longtime angler, I can say nothing comes close to matching what football and tournament fishing gives you. Football is a team sport that has 11 guys on the field working together as one. But if only one guy does not do his job, the other team will make you pay. Bass fishing, on the other hand, is all about one guy — the angler holding the rod!

No other sport requires the emotional level that football does but tournament bass fishing is a close second. There are just as many emotional highs and lows on tournament day as there are in a four-quarter football game. One play or one cast can completely change the outcome.

Another word that describes both sports and is often overused: momentum. One minute you have everything going your way, scoring on every possession, but then your quarterback throws an interception, and everything goes south. Same goes for bass fishing as you get an entire school of fish fired up catching fish on every cast, when for some unforeseen reason, they quit biting. Momentum can even carry over from one tournament/game to the next.

No football game or bass tournament can be won without one important detail — a game plan. Your football game plan can change not just on every series but on the result of only one play. An angler’s game plan can change on the very next cast. You spend hours preparing for your next opponent or tournament and all of a sudden, you have to punt and regroup. Then there are days that everything you planned works like a charm and your game plan pays off with a championship win or collecting a check on tournament day.

There are times as athletes or anglers that are a grind, those days when nothing you planned goes right. Everything you thought would work, does not. Every play/cast is a struggle, and the game/tournament seems like it will never end. Just trying to get a first down or catch that fifth fish for a limit seems to take forever and some cases you can’t get it done. This is where heart, grit and determination come into play and the player/angler that has the most of those qualities will usually prevail.  

In football, they say defense wins championships. The same can also be said for tournament bass fishing. With football, you scout an opponent to gain an advantage. In bass fishing sometimes you catch fish in areas you know you’re not going to fish on tournament day because you don’t want to beat up your own fish. It’s not something you do to intentionally hurt a specific angler, but it’s a strategy anglers employ in order to play defense. Every once in a while, you’ll find an area by accident simply by fishing defensively in areas you otherwise might not have fished.

The final comparison between football and tournament bass fishing that just might be the biggest difference between winning or losing: decision making. At some point during a football game a coach has to make a decision to go for it on fourth-and-goal or kick a field goal. One is the safe play while the other is a huge gamble. Anglers must also make major decisions during a tournament day, like “do I make the long run for bigger fish and hope they’ll bite, or do I stay where I’m at and wait them out?” One has high risk while the other is a safer play. Anglers will most always take the risk because it has the highest reward.

There’s no better time of year as football season kicks off and it’s also when most tournament trail championships take place. Football and tournament bass fishing; two sports that have so much in common and appeal to so many fans. Now you have an angler’s perspective on how these two awesome sports parallel each other.

‘Til next time, good luck, good fishing, apply your sunscreen and drink plenty of water. 

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

Now that I’m in my early 60’s, I’ve often wondered what kind of person I would have become without the people who mentored me, the people who influenced my thoughts and the things I believe in. I am a believer that each of us has a destiny that only the Big Man above knows who we will become. Every day growing up we were exposed to people around us like teachers, coaches, preachers, aunts, uncles, family friends and more importantly, our parents. 

Each of the above had a big impact on me in so many ways, but my coaches probably had the biggest impact because I was around them more than anyone else. During my generation, coaches were tough and, in most cases, feared. You respected them because they demanded respect. They taught you what it meant to commit to a task and complete that task. They taught mental toughness and how to overcome what the mind was telling the body when the going got tough.

They taught the concept of being a team player and how to work together to conquer an opponent. Team building, as they called it, was a crucial ingredient in the recipe for team success. No one was bigger or better than the team itself. If you thought you were special, my coaches had a way of bringing you back down to earth. How did they do it, you ask? A few examples would be 100-yard bear crawls or barrel rolls, “up-downs” for what seemed like hours but really was only for a few minutes, or maybe they just ran you until you either threw up or just couldn’t go any further. They pushed you to limits you thought you could not achieve.

Today, the ways my coaches got your full attention would be called child abuse and would not be tolerated. More than likely, you’d end up in court dealing with a lawsuit.

Even though my days of competing on the football and baseball fields are long gone, fishing bass tournaments has replaced that competitive fire that I still have. Over the years and now into my early 60’s, my mindset has changed. No longer do I pre-fish from daylight ‘til dark five days straight before an event. I’m just not that mad at the fish anymore and my competitive fire is not as strong as it used to be.

Today, you have to fish smarter, not harder, and utilize your time on the water more effectively. With today’s high-tech electronics that bass boats possess, searching for bass is a lot easier. We used to spend all day casting to find fish, but now all we must do is idle around looking at a screen in order to mark and locate schools of bass.

There a few other things you can do to help prepare for an event — like having good line on each reel and making sure your hooks are sharp. Another thing that can help give you a slight advantage: adding your favorite scent to every bag of worms can sometimes make a difference in the number of bites you get in a day. Does it really work? As any professional angler would tell you, if YOU believe it works and gives you more confidence, use it!  

Don’t mistake my lower level of commitment being a form of weakness. My desire to win still burns and it hurts just as bad today to lose as it did 20 years ago. All anglers play armchair quarterback on the drive home and question what they could have done differently that might have resulted in a higher place or better finish. No one plays devil’s advocate more than bass fishermen!

Tournament bass fishing is not so much about what bait or color you’re throwing, it’s about the decisions you make on tournament day. Making the right move to a different location at the right time is the difference in catching fish or not. TIMING IN BASS FISHING IS EVERYTHING! The anglers that make the right moves at the right time are usually cashing a check.

‘Til next time, good luck, good fishing and make sure you wear sun protective clothing and sunscreen. Melanoma is the number one killer of all the cancers and it’s one that can be prevented.

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

Tonight at 7 on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (KLTS-TV Channel 24 in Shreveport), viewers statewide can enjoy a two-hour special, “Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame: 2023 Celebration,” recapping the July 27-29 induction festivities for the LSHOF’s Class of 2023.

LPB programming is also available live at www.lpb.org and also with the LPB App.

Two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, four-time WNBA All-Star Alana Beard, LSU football record-shattering receiver Wendell Davis and College World Series champion baseball coach Paul Mainieri are part of a star-studded 12-member group of honorees recently inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.  Beard and Davis are Shreveport natives.

This LPB sports special, produced in partnership with the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, features highlights from the July 29 induction ceremony and many of the festivities surrounding it. Also included are the induction interviews and profile stories on each of the honorees, plus a look at  the newly-added memorabilia to the Hall of Fame Museum in Natchitoches.

“As LPB serves as Louisiana’s storytellers, audiences are used to seeing LPB programs featuring our state’s people, history, and culture,” says Clarence “C.C” Copeland, LPB President and CEO.

“A walk through the Sports Hall of Fame Museum will show you that our state’s contributions to the world of sports is another story worth telling! We are excited to expand our sports programming efforts and what better opportunity than this.”

Along with tonight’s premiere, LPB will encore the show on Thursday, August 17 at 9:30 p.m. and Sunday, August 20 at 5 p.m. After the night of the broadcast premiere, the program will be available for on demand streaming for members with LPB PASSPORT – an extended membership benefit.

Along with Manning, Mainieri, Davis and Beard, the LSHOF Class of 2023 also includes New Orleans native Ron Washington, who managed the Texas Rangers to a pair of World Series appearances and helped the Atlanta Braves win the world’s championship; two-time LSU track and field USA Olympian and world champion Walter Davis; and Slidell native, Tulane great and Chicago Bears two-time Pro Bowl running back Matt Forte.

Also inducted were All-American LSU pitcher Paul Byrd, a 14-year Major League Baseball veteran who made the 1999 All-Star Game; multiple national champion and world class weightlifter Walter Imahara, a UL-Lafayette legend whose story began in a Japanese American internment camp in California during World War II; and retired Baton Rouge-Parkview Baptist baseball coach M.L. Woodruff, whose teams claimed 11 state championships.

Rounding out the Class of 2023: two transformational and highly decorated figures in Louisiana’s sports journalism field, Lafayette writer and editor Bruce Brown and longtime New Orleans Times-Picayune prep writer Lori Lyons.

Visit LaSportsHall.com for more information on the Class of 2023 and all 479 people enshrined in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame since 1958, along with information on past and upcoming LSHOF activities.

As an angler, there’s one question that I’ve always wondered about when it comes to catching bass: “Is it the bait, or the angler” to understand why people catch bass.

Ever since I started bass fishing back in the late 1960s on our farm ponds in east Texas, having the right bait has been important — or so I thought. Just like other sports, some people are just more gifted than others. They have natural ability that only the good Lord above can give. They might be faster, stronger, or just mentally tougher than their competition. Some people just have a higher level of determination and refuse to lose. So, “Is it the bait or the angler” is similar to the age-old question — which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

The man who is considered the greatest bass angler of all time is Kevin Van Dam, a man who has amassed over $7 million in winnings since arriving on the professional bass fishing circuit in the mid-1990s. I had the chance to talk with Kevin’s brother, Randy, and we discussed what makes him so great. Randy stated that ever since Kevin could pick up a rod, he possessed skills and instincts other anglers don’t seem to have. He said it was commonplace for them to be on the lake fishing when Kevin — for no apparent reason — would switch to a different bait and start catching fish immediately while everyone else in the boat could not even get a bite. That’s called instinct and it’s something you can’t teach; that’s God-given.

During a recent interview I had with KVD, I asked him what was the No. 1 bait in his tackle box. I’m anticipating something earth-shattering, but without hesitation he responded with an answer I was not expecting. His number one bait in his tackle box is — confidence! I was looking to hear something like a homemade spinnerbait, a secret crankbait or maybe a special-colored jig. But to my surprise, it was not a specific bait or color at all.

After this interview I began to wonder once again: when catching bass, “Is it the bait or is it the angler?” If confidence is the most important tool in an angler’s tackle box, then the bait nor color must be as important.

Over my years of fishing the BFL’s, Toyota Series and ABA events, I’ve heard that the many different colors that bait companies offer are designed to catch anglers instead of bass. It’s amazing how there are hundreds of different colors, especially when it comes to the soft plastics side of fishing. I’ve seen colors like bubblegum (pink) that catches fish and I’ve always questioned, “What does a bass think that is?” It looks nothing like anything natural in the bait fish world. But I have caught a lot of fish with that particular color. So it’s not the color, but how you fish it!

Many pros that I’ve interviewed over the years have all said that color doesn’t matter as much as the ability to fish the bait properly. This is where KVD says the confidence part comes into play. If you believe and have confidence in a bait and the color you’re using, you’ll fish it differently than you would a bait and color you don’t believe in. From this angler’s perspective, I do have one color trickworm that I have a ton of confidence in. If I’m struggling in an event and having trouble putting fish in the livewell, I will and have always turned to my confidence bait. It is a black emerald trickworm with a 3/16^th-ounce tungsten weight with a Gamakatsu 2/0 Skip Gap hook. This combination has saved the day for me several times and helped me earn a check in many events when I was struggling. 

When I get the opportunity to speak to a group of young up-and-coming anglers today, the one thing I tell them is how they need to figure out early in their career what their “confidence” bait is when the fishing is tough. What can you tie on that gives you the most confidence to catch fish?  For some it might be a certain colored jig or spinnerbait or maybe it’s a specific crankbait. But whatever it is, make sure you believe in it!

‘Til next time, good luck, good fishing and don’t forget to set the hook. Also make sure to wear your sunscreen and good UV protective clothing. 

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

JOURNAL STAFF 

In the latest round of strife about the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s select/non-select playoff system launched last summer, nine north and central Louisiana high schools have filed suit against the governing body of Louisiana high school athletics. 

But no local schools took action. Notably uninvolved in the suit is Northwood, whose principal, Shannon Wall, has been a prominent critic of the current setup.  

The group is seeking to overturn the select/non-select playoff system for all sports and all schools, citing what they perceive as an abuse of power by LHSAA executive director Eddie Bonine. The group claims Bonine did not have the authority to revise a glossary definition in the organization’s handbook — which enabled the change of the playoff system, expanding it to all sports and encompassing all schools. 

The group claims the term “select” is defined in the glossary and was changed unilaterally by Bonine based on issues impacting a majority of LHSAA schools. 

The LHSAA disagrees, saying the change last summer was made by the organization’s Executive Committee for the good of the organization. The new definition stated that any school with magnet components, all charter schools, and schools located in open enrollment parishes would be considered select schools.  

Filing suit were three Monroe schools and six in Rapides Parish. Rapides, Glenmora, Northwood-Lena, Plainview, Tioga, and Buckeye are the Rapides Parish schools involved in the suit. Neville, Carroll, and Wossman are the Monroe schools participating in the 11-page complaint.  

Northwood was making plans to join the suit before a Caddo principals meeting this summer produced the directive that no parish school would be involved in litigation against the LHSAA.  

 Wall began making preparations to join the suit  — going so far as to solicit community support on social media for potential litigation — before his initiative halted. 

“Like every school in the parish, we are part of the Caddo Parish School Board,” Wall told the Shreveport-Bossier Journal. “So as an individual school, we cannot be a part of a lawsuit.”  

Baton Rouge attorney Brian Blackwell, who filed the suit, told Baton Rouge Advocate prep editor Robin Fambrough the group is seeking a court date before August 31 — when the LHSAA regular season begins for football.  

“I have a letter that states that Mr. Bonine made the change and that’s the problem,” Blackwell told Fambrough. 

The complaints from the group mirror those that Wall expressed to Aaron Dietrich on the Monroe TV and radio personality’s Morning Drive radio show way back on January 24.  

“I asked Mr. Bonine in our last meeting, if this is a principals’ organization, we want to know the group of principals who went to them and asked them to do this for us,” Wall said in that interview. “His answer was that no principal went to him to implement this action. They (the LHSAA Executive Committee) thought it was best.”  

The executive committee includes principals representing all regions of the state. 

The plan issued last summer was to be reconsidered in last January’s LHSAA business meeting, but was deferred for discussion after the school year so as not to disrupt ongoing seasons. Principals and athletic directors opposed to maintaining the new plan could not marshal a substantial number of administrators to take part in an in-person meeting or even a Zoom session in the last two months, with only about 30 attending a summit at Tioga. 

Unless the lawsuit is upheld, next January’s LHSAA meeting seems to be the upcoming opportunity for opponents to successfully instigate some changes.

With zero fishing going on due to the hot weather we have been experiencing, today we’ll look at my working career.

After walking away from my athletic career in the late 1980s, it was time to get a real job. It was time to put my college degree (industrial engineering technology) to good use. One reason I chose this as my major was due to the number of IET graduates the oil and gas companies were hiring out of Northwestern State in the mid ‘80s. This was my original plan, but the oil and gas industry tanked, and they no longer were seeking graduates with this degree. 

One thing I’ve learned over the years from the many different jobs I’ve held was that each job helped prepare me in some way for other positions I’ve held. These included car salesman, supervisory role at CONAGRA Poultry, and high school and college coaching.

Nothing gave me more satisfaction than coaching did. Working with kids at the high school and collegiate level was truly rewarding and enjoyable. But the hours you put in on the college level are insane and was not a good fit for me personally or my family. I was not willing to make those family sacrifices that college coaches make. 

In 1990, I decided to apply for an engineering job at a textile company, Holloway Sportswear, based out of Ohio but with factories in Louisiana. Best job I ever had! It was a company that made athletic outerwear and high school letterjackets. Holloway was the Mercedes of the athletic apparel world; they made the best. If you ever earned a letterjacket in high school, there’s a good chance it was made by Holloway, who was the original letterjacket company. 

After two years with the company, I was promoted to Louisiana Director of Manufacturing, overseeing six factories across the state. The job was demanding, but the people were incredible.  

Around 1998, President Bill Clinton signed what was called the NAFTA agreement with Mexico. This was the beginning of the end for Holloway and all textile companies in Louisiana and across the country.

It was at this point that my boss and I made several trips to Mexico to set up sewing factories. Then one by one we slowly pulled styles out of Louisiana and sent them to Mexico for production. This was the hardest thing I ever went though as an employee. It was my job at this point to tell all Louisiana employees they no longer had a job. 

Many a day after making these announcements, I shed a few tears on the drive home knowing that I had just made life a lot tougher for so many women, many of whom were single moms. Many had no other skills than sewing. Some women were making as much as $14 an hour due to their ability to sew. This was good money back in the ‘90s and there were no other jobs offered in these small communities that paid those kinds of wages. 

All the employees were offered the opportunity to go back to school and learn a new trade. But many were in the age bracket of 40 and above and had no desire to go back to school. Many of these ladies had never done anything else their entire life but work in textiles. 

It was sad to see the impact this had on the people I cared so much about — people with a strong work ethic and dedication to go to work every day. People who took great pride in making Holloway Sportswear the best company it could be were now being sent home, for good. Some locations that had been in operation since the mid-1970s were being shut down. 

The old saying “nothing lasts forever” comes to mind when I think about my Holloway days. Again, this was the best job I ever had, but it came to an end in 2004. Even during those stressful days when I questioned of it was worth it, the people were the reason I stayed. One thing about Louisiana people, they take great pride in doing a good job and are very loyal and dedicated to whatever job they’re doing. 

After walking away in 2004, Holloway was sold and is now under the umbrella of Augusta Sportswear in Georgia. The Holloway standard is still alive and well today as they have retained their name and reputation as the best.  

Next week we’ll get back to more fishing topics as we are now in the hottest month of the year — August.

Until next time, good luck, good fishing and don’t forget to wear your sunscreen and protective clothing. 

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com