Giving up the perfect season: A code of honor in bass fishermen

 

“I really wanted the perfect season,” he said. “I really wanted it.”

Bassmaster Elite Series pro Mark Menendez wanted the perfect season for a lot of reasons: for his late wife Donna, who passed away last year after a fight with cancer; for his kids, so they could see their father win the Bassmaster Classic; for himself, to prove he could still be the best after taking a year off from the tour.

For the 51-year-old pro, the perfect season meant winning the 2016 GEICO Bassmaster Classic—the holy grail of bass tournaments, one that he was on the cusp of qualifying for last weekend. And last Sunday, on September 20, Mark Menendez had the perfect season in his hand. Then, it was flopping around in his livewell.

As the final day of competition came to a close at the 2015 Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship at Sturgeon Bay, Wis., Menendez was smiling. He had done it. His 11th place finish was good enough to make him the "bubble boy" — the first angler outside the Classic cut, but almost certain to get in before all the berths are gone.

The perfect season was alive. Like a small conference NCAA tournament team, he was ready for a Cinderella run.

“I had about 40 minutes left in the tournament, and I hooked a fish,” Menendez recounts. “I’m fighting this fish, and I can see it’s a good one. I know that I have to have this fish if I want a chance at the Bassmaster Classic. It was exciting. I know I’ve got a chance,” he stumbles, “A chance to have the dream season after all of the crap I’ve gone through—losing my wife, not going back on tour and finding the motivation and the will to return. The perfect season is coming to fruition.”

And then it was gone.

It was gone not because Menendez lost the fish. He caught it. He kept it. He weighed it in, and it vaulted him into a slot for the mother of all bass tournaments, for a chance to win $300,000 and some bass fishing immortality. No, the perfect season was gone because later that night, at about 2:30 a.m., Menendez snapped wide awake in his hotel room.

“That fish I caught was illegal,” he realized.

Due to a rule in the Wisconsin fishing regulations, fish taken by anglers must be hooked in the mouth to be considered a legal catch. The law, Menendez guesses, was created to protect salmon, muskie and sturgeon from being snagged while they are spawning. The fish he caught attacked his bait—a triple trebeled Strike King KVD 300-series jerkbait.

“He hit the bait about 30 yards out,” says the angler. “I can see that the front hook is clearly pinned in the corner of the fish’s mouth. I can see it at 30 yards, and I can see that the jerkbait is laying down the left side of the fish’s body.” But, quickly, things turned south. “The fish went on an extremely determined run, and I stopped the fish and he stayed down and stayed down.”

By the time Menendez hoisted the Classic-qualifying bass into his boat, the jerk bait’s front hook had dislodged. The bass was captured by the second and third hooks, along its gill plate and spine.

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“I got caught up in the moment, and I threw it in the live well,” Menendez says.

Moments later, he had all but qualified for his dream tournament. But, something wasn’t right.

Mark Menendez prides himself in knowing the law. In August, a little-known angler rights ordinance in New York put him on the winning end of a court case against a harasser. But this month, the law was keeping him up at night. “It was the same feeling you get when you see the blue lights behind you,” he remembers. “It just hits the pit of your stomach … that sick feeling when you know you’ve done something wrong.”

Mark Menendez laid awake in his Wisconsin hotel room until 5:30 a.m., then he set out to give his perfect season away.

That journey wasn’t easy. It required a phone call to B.A.S.S. Tournament Director Trip Weldon. And that phone call, because of a cell phone problem, required a drive of over an hour to Green Bay, where Menendez could remedy the issue. The drive was agonizing. Menendez became sick to his stomach. As the miles passed, the angler felt his dream slipping further away, but he knew that letting go was the only way to move forward. “If I won the Classic,” he thought, “it would be tainted forever. I would know. It would never go away.”

He replayed the catch in his mind: “The hook was in its mouth when I hooked it. I saw it. My Marshal could see it, but when it came to the boat, that hook was not in the fish's mouth.”

The hook was not in the fish's mouth. Weldon, for his part, quizzed Menendez methodically on the event. Weldon knew the stakes, he knew what the Bassmaster Classic meant, but the pair kept coming back to the law. By the thinnest of margins — centimeters — the perfect season had to go. Menendez asked to be disqualified. And that meant everything.

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It meant falling from 41st to 50th in the Angler of the Year Standings, it meant missing the Bassmaster Classic, and it meant risking the sponsorships that help feed his family along with it—sponsorships he had already risked by taking a year off from the Elite Series to become both father and mother to his two children during his wife’s battle.

But to a man, Menendez says his sponsors have once again stayed true. Strike King Marketing Relationship Manager Mark Copley says there was never a chance they wouldn’t. “That’s why Mark is one of our guys,” he calmly noted. “Wins come and go, but the one thing you have that sticks with you is your integrity. We’re so proud of Mark for sticking by his integrity and doing what’s right, and I know all of his sponsors—Lew’s, Skeeter and everyone else—we’re all looking for that type of guy.”

To Menendez, integrity means more than a shot at $300,000. Some things mean more than money; they last longer than figures in a bank account.

“I did it,” Menendez tells, “because I want to be able to show my children that if you do things the right way, you will be successful.”

Mark Menendez reckons there’s a code of honor among bass fishermen. He reckons things should be done the right way, and he just gave up the perfect season because life, after all, has more than one.