A little known fact: “Bass love squirrel!”

As spring has finally chased off winter, the lake water is finally heating up in the fishing world and the publishing world as well.  After a winter of great publicity through ESPN (twice–see Glen’s Bassography and Jerry McKinnis’s article), Tulsa World, BassFan.com, NPR, and the Shiloh Museum we’re looking to make the rounds in the Ozarks for book signings.  Shane and Glen love entertaining, so it sure to be an enjoyable time for young and old.  We’ve also uploaded some new videos featuring Glen’s storytelling to our Facebook page that were previously only available on YouTube, so check them out too.  In order to bring in the new season, we’ve pulled a new story and a few pictures out of the archives that should put you all right in the boat with Glen to experience the World Champion for yourselves.  Of course you can find many more stories in the book– An Impossible Cast–which you can buy at the Whitefish Press.  We hope you all enjoy!

Some time ago, Glen, Shane, and I put the boat in down at Tucker Hollow on Bull Shoals.  Around 7:30 that morning, Glen came knocking with coffee, chattering excitedly about the day.  Rain had bloated the lake and muddied the water—good conditions for catching bass he said.  Our destination was Bear Creek near Glen’s parents’ old farm.  He’d fished it constantly growing up before it was inundated, but he hadn’t returned in years.  His only concern was the forecasted 5 to 17 mile-per-hour north wind, which he was certain would kill our chances because he’d rarely caught bass with a north wind.

That morning’s trip was sparked by one week earlier when Wayne, an old friend from Rogers, Arkansas, drove across the state with a nice boat and bassin’ fever.  The day he arrived Glen and Shane took him out on the lake.  Shane caught his largest bass ever, a 5.5 pound Largemouth, and Glen wasn’t too embarrassed with a 4 pounder.  They were both embarrassed though that Wayne got skunked.  The next day, Wayne joined the fun as they found a hungry school of Kentuckies near the West Sugarloaf Creek Bridge.  When they called me to come down, Glen had promised that the Kentuckies would still be schoolin’.  His mission was to put me into a mess of them and watch them tear my snuff-box reel to shreds.

Once on the lake, Glen thought we could find lunkers bunched up around the old, submerged Lowry Bridge.  He was confident he could locate the bridge despite our lack of electronics because as a child he’d spent summer Sundays just up the creek near the Lowry grist mill and mill pond.  After church, families would walk down the hill and picnic at the pond.  Children pruned their skin soaking in the water and diving from boulders.  Glen’s memory was accurate.  We found the bridge and Shane caught a 3 pound Largemouth on a crank bait.  Apparently, though, that fish was a loner because we spent most of our time clearing lake trash from the bottom with our spoons.

We weren’t in a hurry though, so the boat drifted with the north wind along a wooded bluff that extended 50 feet into the water from the shore.  Glen decided that he would try for some white bass using one of his homemade spinner baits, which he put on his spinning reel with 6 pound test line.  After fumbling with them for five minutes, he threw them to the bottom of the boat in disgust.  The wind was making his eyes water so that he couldn’t see the line.  Shane put on his glasses and eventually tied the lure on.

“Alright, Jeremy.  You ready to see a big bass.  My squirrel-hair spinner’s gonna tear ‘em up!  Bass love squirrel!”  Glen started to cast and retrieve the homemade lure modeled after Dave Hawk’s Gold Bug.  “Hey Jeremy, did I ever tell you about that time Glen Cossey and I were fishin’ on Greers Ferry Lake back when it was almost new?  Well, we were fishin’ near the bank when we saw a squirrel goin’ after a walnut in a crook on a low hanging branch.  Just as the squirrel reached the walnut, a giant black bass shot out of the water and swallowed that squirrel.  While we were still settin’ there with our jaws between our legs lookin’ at each other, we turned back to the branch, and you know what we saw?  We saw that black bass put the walnut back up in the crook of that branch!”

Throughout Glen’s story, his lure was proving him a liar until the north wind pushed us to the mouth of a creek clogged with washed out branches and trees.  “Uh, oh!” Glen warned.  “I got one.  Aww, but he’s just small one.  Ohhh . . . wait a minute!  Wait a minute, he’s growing!  He’s grown up!  Oh my gosh, it’s big ‘un!  Boy he’s really fightin’ now.  How am I gonna get him in the boat with this little 6 pound line?”  Glen guided the Largemouth to the front of the boat.  He reached down trying to manage both the rod and the bass, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got him!  He’s nearly 5 pounds!”  He threw the monster in bottom of the boat.  “Ha!  My squirrel-hair worked!”  He looked at his contraption proudly.  But that would be the last of the squirrel hair.  As we headed back down the creek, he’d caught some trash on his spinner bait, jerked the rod to remove the trash, and watched as the squirrel-hair arm of the lure broke off and disappeared into the murky water!  Glen blamed the north wind.

Glen's Goldbug sans squirrel hair

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Bill Dance and Dad

January 24, 2010

Now that we are past the holidays, a sell-out book signing in Lead Hill, AR, and a pretty dog-gone good write-up about An Impossible Cast in bassfan.com, I need to fulfill a promise I made to you regular readers of the blog about the relationship between Bill Dance and Dad.

When I began this book project around 2003, I knew I had something special on my hands, but I didn’t really know how special. I cherished and recorded the stories that Dad had been telling me all the years, many times while sitting with him over the campfire we often burned in our yard set in a halved, rusted oil drum. But then the work began.

Stories and people were missing from the account of the World Series of Sport Fishing. After years of researching the “Series” in libraries all over the Midwest I discovered that Dad had not just been a spoke in the giant wheel of modern fishing tournaments, but he actually was the hub itself. Some of the most influential people in the industry today were influenced by the name Glen Andrews. Bobby and Billy Murray, Jerry McKinnis, even Ray Scott all built their empires from the cornerstone known as Glen Andrews. Dad even showed the ropes to the guy with the most recognizable name in the industry today.

Bill Dance’s name is so well known to the general public that people who’ve never dipped a hook in their lives have heard of him. With over 20 national titles, well-known tackle lines, and a TV show, it’s very difficult to not stumble across his renown at least every now and then. Bill was a young hardware and furniture salesman when he met Dad at a sports show in Memphis. Bill constantly picked Glen’s brain on how to catch bass. He and his cronies would follow Dad back to his motel room and keep him up always later than he cared for with their never-ending inquiries about angling. Dad grew to love Bill like a brother and taught him everything he knew to teach. Bill once told me in a recent phone conversation that “Seventy percent of everything I know about tournament fishing, I learned from your dad.”

After talking to Bill about my dream of a book on freshwater sport fishing history and the biography of Glen Andrews, Bill Dance sat down and, with reverence, respect and a deep brotherly love penned this letter and sent it to me signed:

It’s amazing to me how you can meet someone or simply hear something the person says and it can change your whole direction in life. The one person that changed mine back in the early days, particularly in 1966, and was highly influential in kick-starting my fishing career was a big ole tall, lanky, fishing guide by the name of Glen Andrews.

There can be absolutely no doubt that I wouldn’t be doing what I am today had or lines not crossed back then. This soft spoken, country gentleman impressed me so much by his uncanny fishing abilities and I can tell you for sure that my early tournament successes were greatly influenced by it.

Glen used to always tell me “strategy wins tournaments.”And he took the time to teach me how to read both shallow and deep water, the importance of using my electronics, how to read maps, how to locate key structural features and how to catch bass on them. He knew bass habits and habitat better than anyone I had ever met.

Glen Andrews was, and still is, my mentor, my friend, my advisor and absolutely has always been, among the top contributors to the success of the name Bill Dance!

Next time, I’ll tell you all about Dad’s relationship with world-famous anglers Bobby and Billy Murray.

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