Entry 81-3

Why Shaw Grigsby Likes Bleeding Baits

Tons Of Big Fish In 21 Minutes

Editor's Note: Shaw Grigsby, a 47-year-old angler from Gainesville, Florida, has earned $1,194,655 on the BASS circuit, has had 43 top-10 finishes, has made 10 Bassmaster Classic appearances and has won eight Bassmaster tournaments. Grigsby also has a TV show titled "One More Cast" on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) that airs from January through December on Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. and appears again two more times during the week.

Grigsby: When you take out the commercials and the credits before and after my TV show, we only actually have 21 minutes of airtime for my fishing show. At many of the seminars I do across the nation, fishermen will ask me, "How in the world do you catch so many fish in 21 minutes?" One day I fished with Strike King Pro Staffer Mark Davis. We filmed for two days. We had seven bites, caught six bass and made one good 21-minute TV show, even though we spent two days trying to get the show. I've fished with Kevin VanDam, another Strike King Pro Staffer before, and spent as little as 7 or 8 hours and produced a 21-minute TV show.

This comparison doesn't mean that Kevin is better than Mark, but we were fishing in different places on different days under various weather conditions. I went to Mexico one time and was able to film two shows in two days, but those were magnificent days of fishing. Everything went right, and we were extremely fortunate to be able to get shows in that short time. But generally, I try to spend two days of filming for each show. About half of that time will be spent underwater doing underwater photography, which I believe is important so that the TV viewers can see what type cover we're fishing, how the lures move through the water, and what the bass are doing. However, because bass and the weather are unpredictable, you never know how much time you'll need to film a TV show.

I filmed a show with Tim Horton, from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, on Pickwick and Wilson lakes on the Tennessee River in north Alabama. We'd planned to do a smallmouth show, and Tim is as good a smallmouth fisherman as you'll find. On the first day of filming, the first fish we caught was a 4-pound smallmouth, and I thought that more than likely we'd get this show done in one day or less. But we fished all day long that day and never caught another good smallmouth. So, we stayed the second day and didn't catch anything but little smallmouth. We decided to keep on fishing a third day and again, didn't catch anything but little smallmouth. So we decided to stay a fourth day and still didn't catch anything but little smallmouth. That show really ate up a lot of time.

Another time I was planning to do a salt-water fishing show, and the guide had told me that unless the fishing was really terrible we should be able to get a show in one or two days. I thought maybe we could get two shows out of this trip, so I was really excited. However, on the first day, the wind was blowing 40 to 45 miles an hour, and none of the boats left the dock. The second day, we had 35-mile-an-hour winds. On the third day, we went out, but we still had rough seas. Both boats we planned to film and fish from broke down. We got the boats repaired on the fourth day and went back out on the fifth day. We caught two sailfish and filmed the show. That's the longest I've ever spent trying to film one show.

Although we may not have to film but one or two days, sometimes we'll have to spend four or five days to get that one day of footage that's only going to run 21 minutes. Some shows take years to film. For instance, we tried to film a fly-fishing for tarpon show. We fished two days and didn't catch a tarpon. We went back the next year and filmed two days and didn't take a tarpon. We returned for the third year and finally got a couple of tarpon. Most of the footage that you see on one show comes from two full days of fishing and filming, and we show the best of what we've caught during those two days. This way is how nmost TV shows are filmed.




 

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