Angler Monroe a reel trail-blazer

ZAPATA, Texas - When Ish Monroe of Clear Lake, Calif., became the first African-American professional angler to win a $100,000 Elite Bassmasters Tournament in March 2006, he shook the foundation of what is still perceived as a Southern, country-music-loving, good-ol'-boy network.

There was a new face on the podium in Texas, and it wasn't white.

But Monroe doesn't want to be known as the only African-American on the tour of 109 professional anglers.

"To me, there's only one color and that's the green," says Monroe. "The green money and the green bass. That's all that matters."

The Bassmasters Tour is a social phenomenon. It features the best anglers in the world and attracts thousands of fans to remote locations. When the Lone Star Shootout came to Zapata, located on the banks of Falcon Lake (a reservoir that's part of the Rio Grande), it was the biggest thing in this border town 60 miles from Laredo since US Customs agents found 4,989 pounds of marijuana hidden in the Falcon Lake brush in 2001.

A circus atmosphere precedes the tournament, which is here for the first time.

Anglers give out movie star-like pictures, their uniforms crammed with sponsor names. Smokeless tobacco companies pass out free samples, middle-aged men get their caps autographed, and one red-headed woman asked anglers to sign her Levis. When the anglers finally start their engines for their favorite spots at dawn, the scene looks like an aquatic Daytona.

Monroe, 33, fits in here. In his nine-year career, he has won more than $650,000 and qualified for the Bassmaster Classic (the Super Bowl of bass fishing) five times. With his trademark smile and his love of hip-hop, he's as marketable as a fresh bluefin tuna at a Japanese seafood convention.

Monroe more than doubles his salary with his 14 sponsors and personal appearances. He has his own ESPN fishing show, "Yo, Ish." The show, which runs 2 1/2 smiling minutes per episode, features Ish fishing for answers to viewer questions.

As for discussing the social implications of being African-American in this sport, Ish definitely would rather be fishing.

"I just don't care about that other stuff," he says.

Starting young

So who is this guy?

For starters, his real name is Ishama Monroe.

"My parents smoked too much pot in the '70s," he says, laughing. "They never got married."

He also says his hard-working parents had trouble making ends meet.

"We were really poor; there was government cheese at times," he says, not laughing.

Ish started to fish at age 2 in the lakes of Ann Arbor, Mich., with his grandfather. When his parents moved to San Francisco the following year, he'd fish San Francisco Bay after school with his father.

He started competing in tournaments at 16, and later went to junior college, studying marketing and business while working as a car salesman. One day he had a conflict. The date of a big tournament fell on a workday. His boss gave him an ultimatum: show up at work or else. Ish went fishing, and won the tournament. From then on, he was hooked.

Monroe has no idea why he is the only African-American on the tour.

"It's just one of those things," he says. "I guess everybody else was just told they could never do that for a living, because I was told the same thing. Because I am black.

"My mom used to hate fishing. She'd say, 'You can't fish your life away.' Now she watches Bassmasters."

Don't call him the Tiger Woods of fishing either.

"Tiger wins every time out," he says. "I'm a long way from that."

Besides winning the season-opening event on Texas's Lake Amistad, he also won the Busch Shootout on Texas's Grapevine Lake.

He's currently ranked 27th on the tour and is part of an up-and-coming group of West Coast anglers. More than half of the anglers on tour are from Texas, Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Carolina.

Monroe says he has never encountered any racism from his fellow anglers.

"The guys are all professionals, they don't get into that," he says.

But he also says that everybody faces racism eventually.

"Who hasn't?" he says. "Whether it's black against white or white against black or Asian or Latino or anybody else, everybody faces racism at some point."

While on tour, Monroe was driving a brand new Suburban, towing a boat through Georgia, when he got pulled over by police. This has happened several times, he says.

"It's what I call a 'DWB, Driving While Black,' " he says. "I had the window down, the hip-hop going. The only reason the cop justifies pulling me over was a routine stop."

Kevin VanDam, a three-time BASS Angler of the Year, treats the race question with the look of a man who hooked his line into an underwater tire.

"I hate how in the media and in politics people try to bring race into it when it's not an issue," says VanDam. "We treat him like everyone else. We spend so much time with these guys, they're like second family."

A boatload of topics

On this day, it's 97 degrees and the breeze from Mexico feels like a blast furnace. For Bassmasters, this is a brand new location. It's the last practice day and people already are predicting that records will fall.

Monroe drives his Z21 Ranger Bass boat at 68 miles per hour across the border. On the Mexico shoreline, he sees a clump of branches sticking out of the shallow water.

He has five rods and reels and lures ready to go. He shuts off the engine and tosses sidearm, as if he's imitating Red Sox pitcher Javier Lopez. It takes him 30 seconds to get a bite on the line. But the fish shakes off the hook.

"Bass have the brains the size of a pea, but sometimes I think they're the smartest thing in the whole wide world," he says.

He has a Lorrance computer on the bow and another in the cockpit.

"Sometimes this is like a video game," he says, laughing.

He casts again and hits his target.

"My flippin' and pitchin' is money," he says. "I used to sit in my house and flip and pitch into a cup all day. My mom used to hate it. There were marks in the walls, hooks into the carpet."

The fish are biting, and Monroe is very happy. He works a foot pedal attached to a small trolling motor in the bow. He never stops. Lunch is a South Beach Diet bar.

Monroe never brags about catching fish.

"I show the fish respect," he says. "I never go around popping off about how I've got 'em figured out, because they will humble you in a heartbeat."

While a lot of the anglers stay at the local Holiday Inn Express, Monroe prefers to rent a lakeside house. His friends stay with him and prepare his meals. Sometimes he flies in his favorite meal, sushi-grade tuna, from the coast. The extravagant meals make up for the monotony of the road.

"It's like a gypsy, a glorified truck driver," he says. "I'm gone 260 days a year."

A fishing boat from Mexico comes by. Nobody waves. Monroe watches the boat like a hawk. He keeps a pistol in his boat, just in case.

Freshwater fishing is underwhelming to many saltwater fishermen used to far bigger catches and fish with more fight.

Asked why largemouth bass make for better fishing than battling a nasty North Atlantic bluefish, Monroe says, "They're harder to catch than blues. They're smarter. When blues are schooling, and they do that all the time, you can catch 'em on anything."

Live bait is banned in the tournament. No chumming, either.

"Anybody can catch fish that way," says Monroe.

Hundreds of casts a day can mean a sore arm, but, says Monroe, "When you think about the $100,000 top prize, it kinda goes away."

He lands an 8-pounder and tells the fish, "I understand that you're a little bit upset, I understand that," before gently releasing it.

During the actual tournament, Monroe isn't so chatty.

"If you got 30 words out of me, that would be a lot," he says.

The hot spot

The four-day tournament goes from a field of 109 to 50 after the second day. Those that make the cut are guaranteed $10,000. Monroe made the cut 12 out of 15 times last year.

He's third after Day One. But on Day Two, one of the other anglers, Paul Elias, has an earlier starting time and grabs his spot. Elias claims it was a spot he scouted in practice, too.

Monroe is upset. At first he shares the spot, but eventually he leaves the area.

"I try to be non-confrontational," he had said, prophetically, before the competition. "I believe in good karma. There's an unwritten etiquette to the tournament. If a guy is a leader, you don't fish near him. We are professionals."

A new record total of 132 pounds, 8 ounces is set by Elias.

Monroe slips to 28th place but still wins $10,000.

He is looking forward to a halibut fishing vacation in Alaska.

"Fresh water's where I make my living," he says. "Salt water's where I have fun."