Kevin VanDam is a champion in fishing, advertising

Kevin VanDam is a champion in fishing, advertising

NEW ORLEANS -- America's most famous bass fisherman smiles inside when southerners talk about great fishing on their lakes. Kevin VanDam says all but a handful of those waters below Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon's line pale in comparison to Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie in Michigan.

The 43-year-old tournament fishing professional from Kalamazoo still loves to fish the Mississippi Delta, though, because the variety in the brackish waters is so surprising.

"You never know what you're going to catch next," said VanDam, one of the favorites in the Bassmasters Classic that sees 50 of the nation's best compete in a three-day event that ends this afternoon, with the winner getting $500,000 and probably an equal amount in endorsements over the next year or two.


"One cast you get a largemouth. The next you get a redfish. The next might be a flounder, then a sea trout. If you like variety, you'll love fishing here. I even caught a nutria (an exotic South American muskrat that has colonized this region) and a 4-foot alligator that scared the heck out of me."

The Mississippi Delta isn't just big -- it's shallow. The anglers in the Classic have spent a lot of time finding productive sites that are a trade-off because of the chance of running aground or hitting something that will damage the boat.

The problem here is that your spots are so far apart. If a place that you found was really good in practice doesn't produce, you might have to run an hour, hour-and-a-half to the next spot, and there's no guarantee that will be any better," VanDam said. "That's a huge chunk out of a day when you only get 8 hours to fish."

Ryan Said, a Classic rookie from Wixom, was making a 90-mile run from the launch site near New Orleans to a good spot near the river mouth Wednesday when his electronic GPS mapping system failed. He was forced to rely on charts that don't list the depth in the channels, because they change so often, and landed on a mud flat for an hour before an airboat towed him.

A couple of years ago, a lot of tournament anglers, including some top pros, complained that the economic decline had made it hard to get even modest sponsorship deals.

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