Recently I watched Kevin VanDam walk through the halls of a sport show as an honest to goodness star.  Men of all ages, wives, daughters, and sons followed KVD throughout the hall hoping for an autograph or a tidbit of insight that might improve their fishing.  Contemplating what I had witnessed, as the sweet smell of smoked meat and fudge filled the air, I was proud that a Michigan boy had made good. Check that – made great.  KVD has made it as an angler. Not a football, baseball, or hockey player; a fisherman just like me, except for the good looks and skills in my case.

The good news is that if it can happen for KVD it can happen for you; the reality however is that it is not happening in our beloved corner of the angling world.  Why not? I’m sure we have all asked that question many times while busting hump trying to catch that limit fish in six footers with a minute left to make it back to weigh-in.  This is exciting stuff.  It’s extreme.  Why doesn’t anyone get it?  Fish On!

No one gets it because not enough people know about it.  People know we have world-class beaches but they don’t appreciate the scale and raw power that our Great Lakes possess, as Gordon Lightfoot echoes in the background.  People know that there are fish in Lake Michigan but they don’t appreciate that the Great Lakes has the world’s best offshore salmon and trout fishery.  Ask ten random people if they know we have salmon in the Great Lakes and I think you would identify the crux of the problem.

So how do we change this?  We can change it if we all work together.  Yeah I know, let’s all hold hands and sing “Give Peace a Chance”, but as cliché as it sounds it is the truth.  If we are going to change the nature of our sport we are going to have to do it together.  Many of us do a ton to promote our sport, to participate in the fishery, to promote sponsors, and to encourage participation.  We all need to do more.

The one thing you hear always is that what we do is not bass fishing.  Bass fishing is easy for people to identify with; a stick, some string, a night crawler, and a body of water bigger than a puddle and just about anyone can bass fish.  It still took pioneers like Ray Scott to organize it into the phenomenon that it is today, it took innovative anglers like Roland Martin and Bill Dance to become icons in the sport and help develop a fan base.

Can our sport really be popular?  The simple answer is – YES!  The fact that we are not like bass is not a weakness but our strength, our sport and tournaments have many of the most exciting aspects of popular outdoor sport shows.  We have hard charging sizeable fish with multiple hook ups; recall the chaos on the back of your own boat when you’ve had a few fish going in opposite directions.  We have extremes in weather from sunny and flat to eight footers, thirty knot winds, and horizontal rain.  We are fishing with lots of rods and using any technique we can to get fish in the boat.  Most importantly we are a team sport which wraps our own human nature and group dynamics into the entire package.

To get the exposure we deserve for our sport, our anglers, and our tournaments it takes much more than a “documentary” of the fishing experience and shooting some great looking video.  Success will ultimately be measured by our ability to build a fan base and to keep that fan base over a period of time.  We must be story tellers and develop an experience that allows our fans to identify with teams and anglers, when we are successful perhaps it will be you walking through that sport show being asked for autographs.