THINK LIKE A FISH

Master bass fisherman, fishing-equipment entrepreneur, and regional TV personality Mann lets fly a homespun, anecdote-rich memoir.

Fishing for bass rates right up there with NASCAR as one of the miracle sports of the American South, tracing its lineage back to rural poverty as today's champions count their money all the way to the bank. Mann has been there to see it all, starting as a poor farm boy in Alabama fishing both for the love of it and to put food on the table. He brings a dose of humor to the recounting of those years (“I don't know whose idea it was to take a bicycle pump and inflate our dogs”), but he also gives a glimmering of what makes him such a fabulous fisherman—namely, thousands and thousands of hours spent fishing. Simple exposure would have taught him a trick or two, if nothing else, but Mann was both curious and observant; he used that knowledge to design fishing lures. They were so successful by word of mouth that Kmart picked them up, then Wal-Mart and Sears; pretty soon Mann was making a good deal of money doing what he liked to do most. Here, he relates how both the lures and the business worked, how he became part of the growing competitive fishing circuit, and how he left at the top of his game after 17 years, sick of the pressure and already rich (though this was before the $250,000 first-place purses of today). Occasional overwriting (“So join me now on a fishing trip whose lake is the pages of my life”) and strange notions (“Dr. Samuel Johnson, an American clergyman, educator, and philosopher”) give a Yogi Berra flourish to the proceedings.

A story of dedication whose author merges with the object of his passion as much as any great violinist or cook.