So far, the 1996 presidential campaign has raised traditional issues--the economy, balanced budget, education, and foreign affairs.
Not one candidate has declared himself on fishing. It's a booby trap issue, just waiting for a candidate to foul his instep on it. It has happened before.
One who stumbled was Calvin Coolidge. Mr. Coolidge ticked off the nation's anglers when he was quoted as saying that fishing was for old men and boys. This went over like a can of worms at a Trout Unlimited convention. Advisors tried to mend the damage and made it worse. They told Mr. Coolidge he'd better take up fishing and quick. So he did...with worms. Fly anglers were enraged.
The taciturn man known as Silent Cal must have wondered how someone who never said anything could get in trouble so much for shooting off his mouth. Mr. Coolidge finally recognized which way the political wind was blowing and got himself a fly rod.
Herbert Hoover was unimpressed. He ribbed his fellow Republican: "President Coolidge apparently had not fished before election," Mr. Hoover wrote. "Being a fundamentalist in religion, economics, and fishing, he began his fish career for common trout with worms. Ten million fly fishermen at once evidenced disturbed minds. Then Mr. Coolidge took to a fly. He gave the Secret Service guards great excitement in dodging his backcast and rescuing flies from trees."
Mr. Hoover recognized that often the piscatorial president is merely looking for news coverage, not fish. He scoffed at politicians who cast for the cameras rather than for trout. He was an ardent fly fisherman, probably the most skilled angler ever to hold Rod One.
"Fishing is a chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of the sun on the blue water," said Mr. Hoover in a sweet little 1963 book titled Fishing For Fun.
Quite a few presidents have fished and several have written about fishing, but none as simply as Hoover. He said, "And it is discipline in the quality of man--for all men are equal before fish."
Fish-14, Bush-0
Nothing humanizes a president more than when he is doing something that we do and fishing is a prime example. But there is a difference between a fishing president and a president who fishes (the difference usually is a public relations man). Few presidents have been more interested in how many inches the fish measured rather than how many inches of publicity it generated. One was George Bush and he was never more human than during his 1989 autumn vacation when he found that though all men are created equal, in fishing some men are more equal than others.
"KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) -- The vacation was 14 days old and the standings were: Fish-14, President Bush-0. The presidential patience appeared to be wearing thin."
That was the story in a nutshell. Fish are no respecters of title or power. Neither was the media. The Portland (ME) newspaper ran cartoons and a box score on how long it had been since Mr. Bush caught a fish. The President couldn't buy a fish while all about him were landing wall hangers. Mr. Bush seems a man not easily riled except by Dan Rather (who, fortunately for Rather, was not part of the fishing party). But the Bushian neck was getting a bit crimson as one aide after another dragged fish aboard while he struck out. He finally broke the drought and the media pressure eased.
Outdoor writer Norm Strung once guided then Vice President Bush on a Montana fishing trip. They were trolling for lake trout, four rods out, when a fish hit.
"Fish on!" someone shouted.
"Is it my rod?" asked the president-to-be. An aide, mindful that the only person who outranked Mr. Bush wasn't aboard, said with weary tact, "Mr. President, they're 'all' your rod!"
Above the Limit...And the Law?
The presidents themselves disagree on who can be considered a fishing president. Mr. Hoover, a fly fishing purist, said there were only three fly fishing presidents: himself, the fiercely grinning Teddy Roosevelt, and Grover Cleveland. He ignored Dwight Eisenhower who was a good fly fisherman. And Mr. Hoover had died before Jimmy Carter not only flung a presidential fly, but wrote about it, and before George Bush didn't and then did catch fish (Mr. Bush is more a lure lofter than a fly flinger and so was Mr. Cleveland).
Mr. Coolidge spent some time at the Cedar Island Lodge on Wisconsin's Bois Brule River, one of five presidents to visit the river and fish in it (though some fished it either before or after their presidency). It now is a Wisconsin state park and a famed blue-ribbon trout stream. He had become, by then, so accomplished an angler that he bragged to game wardens at Cedar Island Lodge on the Brule that he had caught 26 trout. Small problem: the limit was 25.
"Not a single word was spoken for several minutes by newspapermen or conservation officers assigned to the president's security," says Virgil Peters in The Badger Sportsman. "They stood with bowed heads and all, including the president, appeared to be staring at their shoelaces."
Mr. Coolidge settled the problem in typical presidential fashion. "You boys decide," he said, striding away. Not surprisingly, the president wasn't ticketed for over-the-limit.
The first presidential visitor to the Brule was Ulysses Grant in the 1870s. Grover Cleveland made the pilgrimage in the 1880s, then came Coolidge in 1928, Herbert Hoover (as a senator), and Dwight Eisenhower (as a general).
Gen. Eisenhower visited the lodge just after World War Two. How things have changed. Ike's guide, Steve Weyandt, wrote that there were no guards when he drove to the lodge to meet the general. "The only sign of life I encountered was an old male raccoon waddling down the road with his mate," Weyandt said. Ike's fishing was featured in a 1955 outdoor magazine and there was a recipe for "Trout Eisenhower," which brings on arteriosclerosis just by reading it: chunk a pound of bacon and fry it over a hot bed of coals, remove bacon and drain, mix bacon drippings with a half-pound of butter melted in a second frying pan, pouring from skillet to skillet. Shake cleaned trout in a paper bag containing cornmeal, salt, and pepper and lay fish in the butter/bacon fat to cook.
Smile for the Camera
Nearly a million Missourians fish and no doubt will be pained to know that Harry Truman was most interested in fishing when there was a camera around. Missouri has a large reservoir and dam named after Mr. Truman, but he was apathetic toward angling.
Ken White, a Missouri outdoor writer/photographer, was a longtime friend of the Trumans and a frequent photographic recorder of their activities. "Harry used to tell that while he and Bess were courting, he'd sit under a tree and read a book and she'd splash around in a stream catching crawdads or something," White says. "She was the fisherman of the family.
"But Truman knew how to grease the skillet without wetting a line. Once, I remember, Bess caught a limit of trout and tried to get him to fish, too. He held the rod for a moment, but mostly he held up the fish while she admired the stringer and I took pictures. Looked just like he'd caught them."
As usual, Mr. Hoover had the last word: "President Truman, prior to his 1948 election, appeared once in a photograph somewhere in a boat gingerly holding a common fish in his arms. An unkind reporter wrote that someone else had caught it. I can find no trace of the letter that the reporter must have received. It is also reported that Mr. Truman was fishing somewhere north of Key West when his boat was surrounded by sharks. But sharks are always a bad augury. Mr. Truman did not run for a third term."
The Killer Rabbit
Sharks are nothing compared to the rabbit that threatened Jimmy Carter. For those of you who have forgotten that dramatic low light of Mr. Carter's presidency, he was fishing out of a canoe on a pond April 20, 1979, when a swimming rabbit charged Canoe One. The President belabored the aggressive bunny with a canoe paddle and the press had a wonderful time with the Attack of the Killer Rabbit.
"Carter was not injured," said one tongue-in-cheek report. Reports of what happened to the rabbit are not clear. The President, in his fine 1988 book An Outdoor Journal (Bantam Books) makes no mention of the incident (his only reference to rabbits is that he used to shoot them as a kid).
Jimmy Carter shouldn't be remembered for his rabbit encounter when speaking of fishing. He is the only president in history to gig suckers. Suckers are large minnowlike fish which feed off the bottom and aren't commonly caught on bait. In the Ozarks, they're gigged (stabbed with a three-pronged spear) or snagged by sweeping a large treble hook across shallow spawning areas. It is an honorable and timeworn tradition in the hills of Missouri and Arkansas, as well as elsewhere through the South--and there is no fish sweeter nor more delectable than fresh- gigged suckers deep-fried on the banks of their home river.
Mr. Carter listed his fishing presidents, but unaccountably left out Teddy Roosevelt. He did include Chester Arthur, who was minor league, and George Washington who fished but mostly fox hunted with hounds. If the presidents themselves don't agree who was the best among them with rod and reel, who can rate them. Evidence indicates Hoover was the most skillful, Cleveland and Hoover the most dedicated (with the edge going to Cleveland), Eisenhower, Bush, Teddy Roosevelt, and Carter occupying the next rank. After that, presidents really didn't fish. They may occasionally have wetted a line or they may have fished when they were younger. But they weren't obsessive about it.
Cleveland Set the Standard
All fishing presidents must be judged against Grover Cleveland. He set the standard. Mr. Cleveland was the first president to count fishing among the important things he did and was a fierce devotee of the smallmouth bass. When it came to writing about fishing, he tended toward the unwieldy: "It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the fishing habit, by promoting close association with nature, by teaching patience and by generating or stimulating useful contemplation, tends directly to the increase of the intellectual power of its votaries and through them to the improvement of our national character."
Mr. Cleveland was so dedicated that he wore out those who fished with him. A friend, Richard Gilder, editor of Century magazine, commented, "he will fish through hunger and heat, lightning and tempest." Another friend, actor Joe Jefferson made the ultimate comment on presidents who fish. He and Gilder burned out on fishing one hot mid-day on Cape Cod and headed for shore and shade. They lolled on the bank, watching Mr. Cleveland flail the water, undeterred by heat or slack fishing. Jefferson turned to Gilder and said, "Well, it is lucky for us that you and I can do something besides fish!"
Copyright (c) 1996 Joel Vance. All rights reserved.
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