The Distant Future of Bass Fishing

[HarveysMinnow]

“In the year 2525,
If Bass are still alive,
If fishermen can survive,
They may find…”

(Apologies to Zager & Evans… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiD2CGkoNts )

If humanity doesn’t blow itself away, and the lakes and rivers haven’t dried up, here’s my imagining of what Bass fishing could be like in the distant future:

Suppose we have slept for about 500 years, and we wake up in our floating ATV / Boat which allows us to travel rapidly over land or water, by skimming along atop an anti-gravity force field. Technology has continue to progress, making many ‘new toys’ available to sportsmen of all types. Fishermen don’t need rods, reels, or lines anymore. Aside from a few ‘old diehard purists’ who insist on taking their ancient relics of rod/reel combos to the water’s edge, everyone else uses some brand variation of the ‘great attractor’ and its control unit. This control unit looks a little like a smart phone, with a sturdy handle and a joystick or similar interface. With this hand-held device the fisherman controls the movement of his ‘attractor’, which is the size and shape of a minnow or other popular crank bait. Inside this attractor is an array of electronics more powerful than any computer now available. It gathers and sends to the control unit all the information that one could formerly get from the most sophisticated fish finder radar units of centuries past.

But finding the Bass and viewing his habitat in three dimensions is only the beginning. After you pick out the Bass you want to ‘catch’, you navigate your attractor to within about six feet of him, and then you turn on your ‘focused tractor beam’. (I know…I’ve seen too many Star Trek reruns.) The tractor beam has several settings, ranging from “novice” to “expert”. So you can decide beforehand how much power output to give your attractor, i.e. how much of a sporting chance you want the fish to have. Then the real fun begins, as you envelope him in your force field, and you watch your control screen as you pull him in the general direction of your location. He fights heroically and you can feel his pull in your handheld controller, so get a good grip! Does this Bass have enough energy to break your force field? Oops, he just headed deep…can you turn him before he gets behind that huge rock outcrop? Oh lovely…now he’s mad and has turned on your attractor… if he catches and swallows it, all bets are off. You gotta try to keep some distance between the Bass and your attractor! This see-saw battle continues until the fish tires and you bring him within netting distance. As soon as he is robotically deposited on the floor of your float, a microchip imbedded in the Bass transmits his weight, age, how many times he’s been caught, what his last meal was, and other pertinent data used by “Bassing Forever”, the governing body of world fisheries, whose purpose is to keep lakes and streams optimized for growing huge Bass and other gamefish.

Of course, most fishermen still carry a ‘tackle box’ with a variety of ‘attractors’. After all, fishermen the world over understand that a part of the enjoyment of fishing is shopping for new and improved ‘enticements’ and ‘tools of the trade’. In other words, the Bait Monkey lives on.

If you’re wondering why I waste my time dreaming up such as this, knowing full well that I won’t be there to see if these predictions even come close, I’ll can only say, ‘Hey, I gotta do something to help me endure the Winter’. If any of you guys are having similar spells of cabin fever, I encourage you to write your own versions of the future of Bass fishing.

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