Fisher King

It is in no way a shack, fishing or otherwise. The house is a very nice big house in a very nice development carved out of some very nice woodlands outside of Derry, New Hampshire. There's no dock, no backyard full of old rusting outboards. There is only a sloping, manicured back lawn. On the walls of the den inside, there are autographed hockey jerseys and autographed football jerseys and a concert poster autographed by the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. But there are no fish on the walls. Not a single gaping, dead-eyed, stiff-finned one of them. There is, however, a state-of-the-art big-screen television set.

"No doubt about it," says Charlie Moore, who catches fish on television for a living. "I always wanted to be in the limelight, for sure. [What I do], it's really not a fishing show. We're a TV show. I cringe when people say it's a fishing show. Fishing shows are weird. We do outdoor entertainment."

Moore, 34, has parlayed a part-time gig on the New England Sports Network into his own NESN show, another hugely popular show on ESPN2, and a small empire of fishing celebrity as the Mad Fisherman. Now, to be sure, when he talks about "outdoor entertainment," Moore sounds like pro-wrestling mogul Vince McMahon talking about "athletic entertainment." And there are those in the fishing community who believe that, as far as televised fishing goes, the entertainment end of things too often drives the boat.

Just this year, writing for the outdoor-sports bible Field & Stream, John Merwin summoned up the shade of the late Gadabout Gaddis, the genial old Maine fisherman who is to Charlie Moore what Sid Caesar is to Jerry Seinfeld: "It is worth noting that the difference between his and many of today's televised fishing shows is that Gadabout's were usually intelligent."

"I don't really care what people think about me being a traditionalist," says Moore. "I want the opportunity to make people laugh and take them away for an hour or a half-hour. Hey, even the fish doesn't die."

He is not entirely in his chair at this moment. He's popping up and down, punctuating every half-syllable with a whole guffaw. Of course, the first celebrity fisherman dates back to the New Testament. Some 1,600 years later came Izaak Walton, who wrote in The Compleat Angler that "if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." Walton got famous back before there was even network television, let alone the many niches of the cable spectrum within which grow such exotic programming fauna as Trading Spaces, Mother Angelica, Venom ER, and, to be sure, Charlie Moore's pursuit of both big fish and big laughs, not necessarily in that order.

"I was walking around the mall," Moore says, "and I heard this `Charlie?' This lady was about 60 years old. She says to me, `I love your show.' So I ask her, `Do you fish?' and she says, `No, but you make me laugh.' My show is all about entertainment. Jay Leno has his desk. I got my boat in the water, and I'm entertaining people. That's my stage."

In 1996, Moore badgered NESN executives until the network gave him a spot on Front Row, the network's old nightly magazine show. There, Moore met Bob Sylvester, who has been his producer ever since. At the beginning, Sylvester had to work at getting Moore to bring his off-camera persona onto the screen. "The first time," Sylvester says, "he was all serious and quiet while, off-camera, he was a riot."

(The very first segment had other problems - specifically, Moore had forgotten to put a plug back in the bottom of his boat and it began to sink beneath him.)

Since then, Moore has come to redefine the way people watch fishing on television. In 2000, when Front Row was canceled, his spots evolved into Charlie Moore Outdoors, which airs twice a week and has become something of a national phenomenon. On it, Moore mixes skits - including "The Codfather," in which people do not sleep with the fishes but fight with them - with actual fishing trips taken with celebrity guests. Names have run heavily toward Boston athletes such as Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri and Bruins captain Joe Thornton, but Moore's guest list has branched out to include TV's Batman actor, Adam West, rocker Ted Nugent, and the aforementioned Skynyrd folks.

In 2002, ESPN picked him up for a show that became Beat Charlie Moore, in which viewers challenge the host to a fishing contest on their own home grounds. If they win, Moore must pay them $5,000. They also can make Moore face a physical challenge. One winner, a fireman from Oklahoma, made Moore go through a three-minute segment of firefighter training. "I went to the station, and I put on that big suit," Moore recalls. "The next day, I couldn't lift my arms." It is now the ESPN network's highest-rated outdoor show.

This is a lot of water under the keel for a kid who used to haunt the piers that line Boston Harbor along the Winthrop waterfront. Moore's father, who now runs a store in Winthrop, bought him his first boat when he was 8. In addition, young Moore would badger the captains to take him out after cod and flounder. He also learned to show off.

"I was 8 or 9 years old," he recalls. "There was one guy named Norman, and he told my father, `One thing about Charlie, when the fishing is slow, the kid is keeping me alive. He never shuts up.' That's my show - when the fish isn't biting, you still get a show."

Charles P. Pierce is a member of the Globe Magazine staff. He can be reached at Cpierce@globe.com.