Casting Isn’t Just a Day on the Couch

Are pro bass fishermen athletes?

They say it requires incredible strength and concentration to spend consecutive full days standing on a moving platform, making hundreds of precision casts, at times in searing heat or freezing rain.

Tour veteran Denny Brauer told the Inside BASS online newsletter that pro football players have fished as amateurs and that after a week they, “were more worn out than they ever had been at training camp for football.”

Tim Goad, a former NFL lineman who has participated in tournaments, agreed. “A lot of people don’t think fishing is strenuous,” he said, “but if you stand up in the front of the boat and fish hard for eight hours, you will learn the truth. There is nothing easy about it.”

Snake tale: Veteran angler Jack Wade recalled accidentally catching “a big, old, fat snake,” which he gingerly shook loose.

“Then, I cast across the next point and here comes another snake like a jet-ski after [the lure]. I cranked up the boat and left. I never went back in that area and I had caught a ton of fish there one time.”

Trivia time: North Carolina leads all colleges with 14 players currently in the NBA. Which two schools are tied for second and with how many players?

A drag for Daly: San Francisco’s Harding Park is the site this weekend of golf’s American Express Championship, and Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle wondered about the course.

“John Daly played a practice round Tuesday,” Ostler wrote, “and a couple of the par-threes are so short that Daly didn’t have time to smoke an entire cigarette.”

“It don’tcome easy”: Sports Illustrated recently described Alabama quarterback Brodie Croyle as a Ringo Starr look-alike.

Said a dumbfounded Croyle in the Birmingham News: “Ringo Starr? Who’s Ringo Starr? Seriously.”

Good hunch: When Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies was struggling at the plate in late June, batting just over .250, Denver Post baseball writer Troy E. Renck predicted on a radio show that the slugger would finish at .320 with 20 home runs and 80 RBIs. Helton finished .320-20-79, leading Renck to remark, “Maybe next year I’ll have a better hunch.”

A farewell wish: From the Denver Post’s Jim Armstrong: “The Vikings won’t lose this weekend. How can we be so sure? Because they have a bye week. Or, as Mike Tice may end up calling it, a bye-bye week.”

Enjoying the ride: Some people say skateboarding leads youths down the wrong path, but there are those who disagree. Asked what he’d be doing if he weren’t a pro rider, Kevin “Spanky” Long told Skateboard magazine, “I’d be somewhere else, maybe in school, like bored or something -- maybe I’d be a stoner.”

Trivia answer: Arizona and Duke, with 10 each.

And finally: From Greg Cote in the Miami Herald: “The Rams have signed offensive guard Richie Incognito, who said he was just happy to be recognized.”