The Fish That Changed America ─ True Stories About the People Who Made Largemouth Bass Fishing an All-American Sport

From boats and baits to rods and reels to tips and tactics, bass fishing has been a magnet of innovation for almost a century.

Bass fishing changed from pastime to business in part because of competitive tournaments and the publicity they generated. That publicity, in turn, sparked a demand for more and more information from the tournament fishermen themselves—how they caught bass—so in essence, the sport fed upon itself. Author Steve Price has interviewed dozens of anglers over the past few years, and he fits each of their stories into a complicated puzzle that forms a comprehensive tale of competitive record holders and fishing industry insiders alike.

The Fish That Changed America is not simply about tournament bass fishing, although some of the stories included here do involve competitive anglers. Rather, Price has tried to embrace a wider view of the entire sport and to show how different facets of bass fishing meshed so perfectly at the same time, leading to the state of the industry today. The participants—those who laid the foundation for what all bass anglers today enjoy—tell their own stories of what happened during those not-so-long-ago years. Many of the stories, such as the standing room–only funeral for a famous largemouth bass, touch on far-ranging topics that all anglers will enjoy.

Steve Price has been covering the sport of bass fishing for more than four decades, during which time he has written six books and more than three thousand magazine articles and hundreds of newspaper and Internet stories about the sport. His fishing features and photographs for Yamaha Marine Group have reached millions of readers around the world each month. He is a contributing editor to Field & Stream magazine and has served as a senior writer for B.A.S.S. Publications for more than thirty-five years. He was inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame in 2010.