Shocking and True: This Post is About Bass Fishing

OK, listen, I know there are a lot of people out there that don’t think fishing is a sport. I’m one of them.

Then again, we can’t get past the truth that fishing stories end up in the sports section and the Bassmaster Classic is televised on ESPN with guys holding up fish and flashbulbs going off everywhere. Maybe it’s not a sport, like poker, but it’s competitive and sport-like.

And kind of like NASCAR, there are people paying attention even if the rest of us don’t get it.

That brings us to a man named Jonathan VanHook. This Rockville, Ind., police officer drew the attention of the Associated Press by catching an Indiana state record 39-pound striped bass on May 25 in some lake in some county of which I’ve never heard. That’s VanHook with his catch pictured.

The previous record, set in 1993, was just over 35 pounds. That fish came out of the Ohio River.

After an in-depth Internet search it seems Mr. VanHook caught himself a pretty big striped bass but nothing close the the world record.

The largest documented catch of a striped bass happened in 1982 off the coast of Atlantic City, N.J. when a man named Albert McReynolds tussled with a 78.5 pounder for over an hour before reeling it in.

Yeah, that’s DOUBLE the size of VanHook’s state record catch.

So anyway, maybe you don’t care about fishing. Maybe we don’t either. But congratulations to Jonathan VanHook on an Indiana state record. Quite an accomplishment, even if it won’t be on ESPN.

Photo credit: The Indiana Department of Natural Resources via the Indianapolis Star.