Hook, Line, & Sinker Local Fishing Guru Describes His Life and Passions April 2006

by Gene Buchholz
Photos by Russell Byrne

Perhaps there’s nothing more powerful for a young boy than making his dad proud. When I was 13 years old I did something that pleased my father so much that I think the experience altered the shape of my life in some way.

I was born and raised in WaKeeney, Kansas, which is exactly mid-way between Kansas City and Denver. My dad kept me active in the outdoors. Besides fishing we did a lot of hunting while I was growing up – things like upland game birds and deer. From the very beginning I pursued deer only with a bow and arrow. Even as a youth I couldn’t see hunting those beautiful animals with a high-powered rifle that could knock a deer down that was standing about as far away as you could see the thing. Plunking a deer 300 yards away with a large bore rifle wouldn’t be much more fun for me than for the deer. I wanted to give the animal a sporting chance.

Our area of Kansas opened its first deer season in 1965, when I was 13 years old. I paid ten bucks for a license and went hunting with a fiberglass target bow that I had bought for $6.95 in the sports section of a department store. I took off on my first hunt without even taking a practice shot. I guess I was giving those deer about as much a chance of staying alive as any hunter could.

Dad and I began to hunt along an old reservoir bottom in a little town named Quinter, Kansas. A game warden who had just shot a deer with his bow turned his spot over to me. I climbed 20 feet up into his stand and watched as my dad headed across the clearing. He intended to make a big circle and chase deer back to me. Before he even got out of sight, however, a big 8-point buck walked directly beneath my tree. I let an arrow go and watched the deer take off like a rocket crashing through trees and underbrush. Then he ran back into the clearing and fell dead.

When my dad came running to me, he was more excited than I was. I’ll never forget the look of pride and admiration in his eyes at that moment. The next year I bought a brand-new Ben Pearson recurve, but my dad still has that fiber-glass bow. And I’m sure he still tells that story to anyone who will listen.

A Passion for Fish
While I was growing up, fishing was as important as hunting in my family. Some of my earliest memories are of fishing with my dad and mom. My parents would be cat fishing some days until two o’clock in the morning. We never killed a fish simply for sport. We were catching fish for the dinner table, so we practiced a lot of catch-and-release because you can only eat so much fish and the big ones weren’t very sweet. North of town we fished along the banks of the Saline River that emptied into the Mississippi 325 miles away. Or we fished to the South of town in the Smokey Hill River, that eventually emptied into a reservoir.

Our fishing was a multi-generational thing when I was young, because my dad’s parents often went fishing with us. One day my sister, who was five at the time, wanted to rig her own hook. Mom gave her a nightcrawler. She didn’t thread it on the hook but just stuck it on like she was hanging a shower curtain, threw it into the river, and the biggest catfish of the day struck it right away. That happened more than four decades ago and we’re still laughing.

I attended college at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas and earned money for college by working in a filling station. I graduated with a Physical Education degree, but went right into selling office machinery. I was working all the time and really missed fishing. A big change came in 1990 when one of my employees and I entered a Hook Line & Sinker tournament and took home first prize. We fished the required six tournaments and won the annual championship the first time we fished it.

I subsequently began fishing Pro/Ams with a pro named Jerry Tilton. We fished together every year from 1990 through 1995. We were fishing all the way from Southern California to Shasta, with a lot of tournaments on the Delta, of course.

A Life Centered on Fishing
My first major tournament was at Clear Lake. There were 160 boats with 320 anglers and I took fourth place and caught a ten-and-a-half pound largemouth bass (also called a black bass), which remains until this day the largest bass I ever caught.

I once weighed in the largest largemouth bass ever caught by anyone in the Delta. The monster weighed in at 18.67 pounds. The person who caught him released him back into the water and I imagine he’s still there waiting to be caught again by some lucky angler. The fact is that there’s bigger bass than that one out there in those waters, and I’ve had some of them take my bait. The old line about “The One that Got Away” is the basis of a lot of jokes, but every real fisherman knows by experience that there are larger fish in the water than have ever been caught. I don’t even have a theory about why that is so. 

My hobby developed into love and then into a passion. It turned into a fulltime occupation in 1993 when my wife and I had the opportunity to buy Hook Line & Sinker located in the Big Break Marina. This was a lot more fun than selling office equipment.

Most of the tournaments were held out of Stockton in those days. I began to convince the owners of West Coast Bass, and the directors for WON (West Outdoors News) to begin moving tournaments toward Big Break. In 1995 I qualified at a local Pro/Am tournament, named the West Coast Bass Classic. The last day of the tournament I was paired with a good friend, Dee Thomas, a member of the Fishing Hall of Fame who is renowned for his flipping technique. Dee and I took home the trophy. We also won two fully rigged boats with a market value of 50 thousand dollars. He won the pro champion boat and I won the amateur. It is unusual for two fishermen fishing together in a boat to both win the top place in their perspective categories.

After that I turned pro and subsequently qualified for a lot of classics, and won enough of them to regularly qualify for the Tournament of Champions. I entered the Bass Master Tournament circuit for five years. In my second year I was rated 15th on the West Coast, out of about 600 fishermen. The sport is growing. With the help of family and friends who hang out at the bait shop, we developed the Hook Line & Sinker into an area center for teaching newcomers, conducting tournaments, and serving as an information center for national fishing news. We were given national recognition by Field and Stream magazine.

We’re involved with Bass Master and with FLW (Forest L. Wood) tournaments. We ship spinner baits, crank baits, jigs, and swim baits throughout the US and all the way to Japan. The West Coast is gaining international recognition as innovator of new lures.

In 2001 ESPN bought Bass Masters and are trying to take sport fishing to the same level as NASCAR. They are doing promotions and getting big bucks involved. Some of the entry fees are four times more than in the old days. Entry fees for tournaments used to be $300, but now a single tournament can cost a thousand dollars to enter.

My success in fishing has netted me a number of sponsors. For example, I get a new boat every year from Ranger and a new 250 HP Race Engine every year from Mercury. My Ranger bass boat has a draft of six inches, so that huge engine can push to speeds of more than 75 miles an hour. My youngest daughter began fishing with me in tournaments when she was eight years old and fished for three years. She still goes with me every year to pick up my new boat. The two of us would put it in the water to break it in. When it got warm I would crank up the throttle and she would always yell. “Daddy, go faster!” Two years ago I got my first 250 racing engine. When we headed back to the ramp I asked her, “Don’t you want to go faster?” “No, that’s fast enough, Daddy.”

That kind of speed actually plays an important role in a tournament. If safe light comes at 7 o’clock a.m., for example, you might have a 15 minute window to get to your spot and catch the fish you need to win a tournament. With a high-speed boat, that 15-minute window can permit you to get to a perfect hole almost 20 miles away from the headquarters.

History and the Delta Sports Fishing Business
A recent article in Bass West Magazine rated the top ten bass lakes in the world for size, quality, and quantity of fish. The article contained the note, “The California Delta is the best bass fishery in the world, so it gets an honorable mention.” The Delta couldn’t take the top prize, which went to Clear Lake, because it isn’t a lake.

My activities with local fishing is helping to preserve the heritage of this area. Our East County towns and cities ought to build towards the future on the basis of the heritage that has come to us from the past. The City of Oakley, for example, has a history of great vineyards and orchards that we’re in danger of losing.

Fishing, of course, is an important part of our area’s heritage. The tournaments have developed past the hobby stage into a full-blown industry. Some participants are making more than two million dollars a year. A company manufacturing tackle called Fire Line pays Roland Martin, TV’s “Professional Bass Angler,” a million dollars a year to promote their equipment.

When one of the big fishing tournaments comes to the area the increased foot-traffic alone injects hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue into the local economy. When a Bass Masters or FLW tournament is scheduled, for example, fishermen begin coming into the area three months ahead of time to pre-fish the local waters in order to learn where the best holes are and the most likely lurking spots for the “big ’uns.”

Major sports fishing exerts a strongly positive pressure for environmental development, as well. The entire industry, on the bait side, boat side, and fishermen side, are heavily into conservation. We pump tax dollars into preservation efforts. Our passion for Catch and Release sets a basis for creating a vibrant fishing industry that will one day provide our kids and grandkids with fun, adventure, and even income long after we are gone.

Family Affair
The sports fishing industry has developed a subculture of people who are committed to one another as much as to the sport. A superb fisherman named Greg Bryant was killed in a motorcycle accident. In response, the industry set up the Bryant/Crenshaw Memorial Scholarship Tournament to keep his memory alive and to set up a scholarship fund for his daughter’s education. The Crenshaw part of the name is in honor of Derrick Crenshaw, the former 49er, who drowned in Big Break saving his son. They were close friends of mine.

A great spirit permeates the fishing industry! It is often a family affair. We hold Casting Kids Contests to give the kids some fun while their dads and older brothers are fishing.

We were running short of volunteers at our first Bass Masters at Big Break in 2001. I put out the word that we were going to need help, and little kids showed up. ESPN was filming as these little four foot high kids were carrying the fish from the scales to the boats.

Now we have a second shop at Russo’s Marina on Bethel Island. Russo’s has great facilities and has become the new tournament headquarters on the Delta. Two years ago at Russo’s some of the Lions Club members, including elderly ladies, were doing the same thing as the kids had done – and having just as much fun! The Oakley Delta Lions Club sponsored the tri-tip BBQ that year. So one way or another, these tournaments end up with a sizable community involvement.

I’ve played the role of tournament booster, and do a lot of things including using my personal network contacts, making commitments, and pledging resources in order to keep tournament organizations coming to the West Delta. My efforts have recently become increasingly more effective because of the commitment that Chuck Russo has also been putting into the tournaments.

Tournament fishermen are looking for convenience. I know from my own personal experience in fishing tournaments in other places that If there’s any hassle or lack of coordination my attitude is, “I’m never coming back to this place.”

Sometimes the little touches in a tournament make a big difference so we really roll out the red carpet when tournaments come to town. After eight hours on the water fishermen typically want something to eat, so for local tournaments we might deep fry 36 turkeys, plus tri-tips, and ribs. Great food has become one of our trademarks.

We’re hosting the FLW Tournament Trail and have hosted the Bass Masters Tournament for the past two years. The Delta is getting such a name that people are flocking from all over to fish it. People come from Florida, the Deep South, and from as far away as Japan and Australia.

You meet some of the nicest guys in the world in fishing tournaments. The most honest people I ever met were holding a fishing rod most of the time I knew them. Some of the guys treat strangers as family. In one tournament a fisherman’s trolling motor broke down. My buddy went home and got his extra motor and let the guy use it – and he didn’t even know him. Even when I was fishing in Mexico I never met anybody who wouldn’t try to help me if I got stuck.

Even though there is a lot of camaraderie among aficionados of the sport, fishing is an individual competition, like golf. You can’t blame anyone but yourself for your failures and you don’t have to share success with anyone else. People wonder how I can get out of bed at three o’clock in the morning and still think I’m having fun.

A big part of the fun is the challenge. One week a hole beneath the bend of a levee might be full of fish. The next week there aren’t even minnows. You have to figure out what changed. Is it the tide? The color of the water? The phase of the moon? You make an educated guess about where the fish are, flip your lure into a hole, start bringing it in. Suddenly the reel stops dead. There’s a hard tug on the line. The tip is bending double and I don’t know what might be on the end of the line. I love it!

I can’t even remember when I was first lured by the thrill of fishing. Whenever that happened I guess I took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I’m still captured by the sport. If I die with a fishing pole in my hand, you can put on my marking stone “He died doing what he loved.”

Fishing remains a multi-generational thing in our family. My daughter caught her first fish when she was eight. And she landed a whopper – a nine pound bass. For that little girl landing that monster was like reeling in a freight train. Nobody took my picture, but I’m sure I had the same gleam in my eye when I saw that fish as my dad had in his all those years ago when he saw that buck. It’s great to be part of something that’s been so good for so long!

Gene’s sponsors include Ranger Boats, Mercury Marine, Lamiglas Fishing Rods, Celco Film Recorders, C & C Marine, Motorguide, and Sawyer & Cook Insurance. He also says that he’s sponsored by his wife, Michelle, and daughters Kimberly and Tara.