Columnist Ron Kantowski: Quite a fish story

Thursday, April 22, 2004 | 10:48 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

The one and only time I went fishing as an adult was about 20 years ago on the San Juan River in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. I was invited by a friend who was on the city council of the town in which we lived, who said he had to get out of the office because the phone wouldn't stop ringing. This was before cell phones.

On the way to the quality waters of the San Juan -- which I guess is where the really big ones get away -- we stopped at a bait store, where my friend bought a 12-pack of beer and enough pork rinds to feed a small town in Arkansas.

"Don't we need some worms?" I asked, my knowledge of fishing pretty much limited to Andy and Opie and TV reruns from Mayberry.

"Not the way I fish," he said.

When we got there, he planted his pole on the bank, cast his line into the river -- without baiting his hook -- and put a Jimmy Buffett cassette into his boom box. Then he plopped down on a lawn chair and popped open a cold one.

"Ahhh," he said, taking what today you might call a Man Show-sized slug.

"Now this is what I call fishing."

Nothing against a relaxing day in the country, but Tim Klinger's idea of fishing is slightly different. To Klinger, a Boulder City native, it's a way to make a living, and I don't mean by trolling for swordfish off the coast of Newfoundland.

Earlier this month, Klinger spent four days trolling for bass on Beaver Lake near Rogers, Ark. On the last day, he hooked 10, whose combined weight was 24 pounds, 1 ounce, and traded in his fish for 200,000 clams.

You read that right. Ten fish, $200,000. Throw in a loaf of bread, and you'd swear on the New Testament that it was a modern-day miracle.

That's $20,000 per fish, or $3,278.69 per ounce.

A-Rod money (almost). Or as Laraine Newman said to Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live after sampling the contents of her "Bass-o-matic" blender: "My, that's good bass."

Klinger is in his rookie season on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour for bass fishermen. Unless you live on a houseboat in the Ozarks, professional fishing is probably little more than a minnow in your sports consciousness (although ESPN does sponsor a bass fishing fantasy league). But as long as they continue to hand out whale-sized checks like the one you see in the photo accompanying this story, guys like Klinger really don't mind.

"This has totally been like a dream," said Klinger, 30, whose victory seems even more remarkable in that it was just the fourth time he followed the allure of the lure on the FLW Tour.

Klinger, who recently moved to Henderson, used to be an electrician. But about the only wiring he's doing these days relates to deposits in his bank account.

Dealing with the instant fame his victory brought him within the industry is one thing. Adjusting to the fortune is quite another.

"I had planned to buy a Corvette," Klingler said, when asked how he would spend his earnings.

But he said while shopping for one, his responsible side emerged like ... well, a fish out of water.

" I don't know," he said. "Forty-thousand dollars for a car seems a little (frivolous)."

Besides, how would it look towing a bass boat?

As you might expect, Klinger's passion for bass fishing grew out of childhood outings to Lake Mead with his father, Mike, whose favorite pastime was fishing.

Tim Klinger went way beyond that. He qualified for the lucrative FLW Tour, which features seven events with diverse title sponsors such as Kellogg's, Snickers, Frito-Lay, Pedigree pet food, Castrol motor oil and Tyson (the chicken folks, not Mike), via the EverStart Series Western Division, the bass fishing equivalent of golf's Nationwide Tour.

Klinger said if you subtract the pastel-colored clothing, pro bass fishing and pro golf are similar in that each takes a lot of experience and a little luck to be successful.

But he admitted that in Arkansas, it was basically the other way around. The literal changing environs of pro bass fishing are such that Klinger was able to beat the world's best anglers on a lake he had never seen before the tournament.

Other than raising the $15,000 entry fee, Klinger said about the only preparation he put in for the Beaver Lake outing was topping off his boat with gas. And even that wasn't necessary.

"In four days, I probably didn't burn more than 6 gallons of gas," said Klinger, who caught most of his fish in a bay just beyond the marina.

But that's not to say that a city councilman and a city slicker could be successful on tour by merely dipping their poles in the water. There is a technical side to bass fishing, as evidenced by this report on Klinger's victory that was posted on the FLW Tour Web site:

So, feeling right at home, Klinger proceeded to key on the jig bite that put many of the top anglers in contention. He practiced using mainly top-waters and jerkbaits, but on the first day of competition, his co-angler partner, Katsutoshi Fursawa, showed him what would be his primary weapon in competition: a brown, 3/8-ounce Arkie flipping jig with a brown pork trailer.

Where's Bill Dance when you need him? I never saw anything about a flipping jig and a brown pork trailer in my Fishin' Magician manual.

If there's an irony to Klingler's big fish story, it's that the tour's catch-and-release policy prevented him from putting what he caught into a frying pan.

Not that he is complaining. The last time I checked, $200,000 will buy a lot of Mrs. Paul's fish sticks.