Nothing Goes As Planned

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The plan was to meet at a small privatelake near Stuttgart, Arkansas, to tape an edition of "(Mark) Zona's AwesomeFishing Show." But other than the early-morning gathering, nothing went asplanned.

At the end of the day, it made for an apt edition of atelevised outdoor show. You've got to be flexible in this business. No oneknows that better than Jerry McKinnis, who had his own show, "The Fishin'Hole," on ESPN for 30 years.

"I've never experienced anything quite like that,"said McKinnis of the adventure in central Arkansas that went completely off-script."We wanted something different. We'll remember that day."

Mark Zona's hero in the TV fishing world has long been JerryMcKinnis. Since 2004, McKinnis has been Zona's boss, for lack of a better word.As the head of JM Associates in Little Rock, McKinnis has employed Zona, mostoften as a co-host with Tommy Sanders on "The Bassmasters" show, andnow as host of his own show as well.

That's important background information, because a familialrelationship has developed between McKinnis, 75, and Zona, 39. It's somewherebetween father/son and older brother/younger brother. And it includes plenty ofbarbs.

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"Zona, I'm not doing any more TV shows," McKinnissaid at 7:30 a.m., just after their boat was launched on this mid-October day."And I'm not sure yet that I'm going to do this one. If I get close to thebank, I might just make a run for it."

McKinnis, however, would ride this rollercoaster to dusk.

For several years Zona has talked about taping a show withMcKinnis. But, for one reason or another, it just never worked out. They boththought the episode, whenever the day finally came, would be done on asmallmouth bass fishery somewhere in Zona's home state of Michigan.

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McKinnis had recently come up with a different plan. Arkansasannually produces almost half the rice grown in the U.S. In the rice-growingDelta and Grand Prairie regions of the state, every rice farm has a man-madereservoir that can be used for irrigation. An added benefit of these smalllakes is they collectively produce some of the best largemouth bass fishing inthe country – bass fishing that few people know about. McKinnis has fished acouple dozen of these reservoirs over the years, several more than once.

Zona knew about them, too, and jumped at the idea of tapinga show with McKinnis within an hour's drive of the JM Associates studio in LittleRock. A year ago, Zona had been to the lake designated for the show and caughta three-pounder at the base of almost every cypress tree in this 30-acrereservoir, which is a forest of cypress trees.

It is a beautiful lake, especially so on this particular autumnday. The cypress trees were beginning to show the rust-colored shades of fall,and the tupelos had dropped a layer of bright yellow leaves that covered oneend of the lake. But natural beauty gets you only so far in this business.

By 11 a.m., McKinnis and Zona had boated only twokeeper-size bass, and there was considerable chatter about whether to grind itout or make a move. That's one of the benefits of fishing this area: If you'vegot the right contacts, you can quickly be on another reservoir. All theselakes are private, so contacts are key.

Forty-five minutes later, Zona was antsy for a change ofscenery. He was ready for anything to salvage a day that had included somegreat story-telling, but not enough bass-catching to qualify as a fishing show,much less "Zona's Awesome Fishing Show."

"Jerry, you want to shoot a show together next May?"Zona asked.

"No," McKinnis quickly answered. "I don'tknow if I ever want to see you again."

That's pretty much the pattern with these guys: One mantosses out a thought, the other immediately engages, "with extremeprejudice," as they say in the military.

At noon, Zona made a decision: "This is the call of theday right here. I say we put it on the rack."

When you're taping a TV show, it's not just one bass boatthat has to go on the trailer, there are two, on two trailers. And it's notjust Zona and McKinnis making a move. In this case, there were four others:videographers Wes Miller and Brian Mason, photographer James Overstreet andthis writer, spread among three vehicles and the two boats and trailers.

So it made for a small caravan when we left the firstreservoir and headed for another lake that McKinnis had fished successfully severaltimes over the years. It hadn't rained recently, and there were dirt roads totravel. The dust cloud was so thick at times you couldn't see the vehicle infront of you.

Less than an hour later, we had arrived at reservoir No. 2.Zona and McKinnis walked up the levee to check out the lake, which wasotherwise shrouded in timber. And their jaws dropped, like the water levelapparently had at some point during a drought-stricken Arkansas summer.

"The lake is gone, Mark. The lake is gone,"McKinnis said.

"I don't ever remember a 'Fishin' Hole' episode whereyou pulled up to a lake and the lake was gone," Zona said.

"Now I know why I quit doing this," McKinnislaughed.

So Zona's sparkling new Nitro Z-9 bass boat with a250-horsepower Mercury Pro XS outboard got another Iraq-like dust coating asour caravan roared off to lake No. 3.

"This boat literally has 11 minutes on it," Zonasaid. "I picked it up at home, put it in the water to make sure all thegraphs worked and then came here."

It would need considerable washing, with extreme prejudicetoward dust, at the end of the day.

The third lake had plenty of water in it, but not much inthe way of a boat ramp. The "ramp" was simply a break in the cattailslining the levee and some gravel on the soft mud bottom. In order to getlaunched, it took four-wheel-drive vehicles and one man wading thigh-deep topush the boats off their trailers, aided by the outboards revved in reverse.

McKinnis has more experience than he'd prefer in rescuing a no-fish-catchingshow at the last minute. At the top of the list would be a brown trout fishingtrip several years ago to Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border.McKinnis and crew towed a bass boat through a blizzard to get there, thenfilmed two days in miserably cold weather without catching a fish.

The brutal weather provided part of a story, not a whole one.

"With no fish, I've got no way to tell the story,"McKinnis said.

So after two days of fruitless trolling with a local fishingguide, McKinnis pulled out his secret weapon used often over the years – amarabou "crappie jig" tied to four-pound test line on spinning gear.

"We should have already loaded up and gone in. It wasthat cold," McKinnis said. "I remember to this day what that tick (onthe line) felt like."

After first thinking he might have hooked a carp, McKinnisrealized he had a monster brown trout on the end of his light monofilament line.After a long fight and one failed attempt at netting it, McKinnis finallyboated the fish. It weighed 24 pounds and was a four-pound line-class recordfor a short while.

McKinnis refers to it as "the most important fish Iever caught."

There wouldn't be a single fish that rescued this day incentral Arkansas; there would be several. Once in the water at 2 p.m. on lakeNo. 3, it quickly became apparent this was a good choice.

Zona caught a three-pounder on a crankbait at 2:05 and addeda smaller bass soon after. Twenty minutes later, McKinnis landed two bass on onecast with a crankbait.

"That's the first double on the show," said anow-smiling Zona.

"If I'd known that, I would have done it sooner,"McKinnis said.

The next day, McKinnis admitted it was a "first"for him.

"Lots of times you'll catch a fish and see others withit as you reel it in," he said. "That's the first time I've ever seenone come up and smash the jaw of the one that's hooked, then suddenly you'vegot two. Usually, you're trying to get your buddy to throw in there withthem."

As the afternoon progressed, Zona and McKinnis got dialed-inon a pattern. The lake had two small islands and an abundance of wood cover. A softplastic Strike King Rodent pitched into the gnarly stuff produced bass afterbass, including, of course, a big one that got away. McKinnis had a five- orsix-pounder halfway to the boat when it came unhooked.

"Oh what a great sight to see, when your line moves,and it's not your rod tip doing it," McKinnis said. "I'm sure thatwas a five-pound fish or better."

Between bass landings, Zona quizzed McKinnis about variousaspects of "The Fishin' Hole," which remains the second-longestrunning show on ESPN, topped only by the network's signature creation, "SportsCenter." In his first year on ESPN, McKinnis produced 52 one-hourepisodes, a staggering number in this era when 13-week runs are the standardand 26-week runs are the exceptions.

"That really established me at ESPN," McKinnissaid. "But I wouldn't want to do anything like that again.

"The next year we realized we couldn't do this for 52 weeks,so we did 26. But those 26 were backed up to the 52, so it was ayear-and-a-half of hard work. I edited every minute of it."

One of McKinnis' favorite shows involved fishing from ahelicopter for steelhead in Oregon with his long-time friend Forrest Wood,founder of Ranger Boats. It happened in the late 1980s.

"We'd fly up the stream and look," McKinnis said."The pilot wouldn't land if we didn't see fish."

There were few role models for McKinnis when he began histelevision career. He was born in St. Louis in 1937. In 1954, only 55 percentof U.S. households had television. The 1960s was the decade when TV took hold,and McKinnis was there. His first TV appearance was as part of a Little Rockstation's nightly sportscast in 1963. Then he began producing a 30-minute showentitled "The Arkansas Sportsmen" that eventually was regionallysyndicated to 120 stations. "The Fishin' Hole" aired on ESPN from1981 to 2010.

"I was on TV about three-fourths of the time there wasTV," laughed McKinnis.

With no mentors to follow, McKinnis was guided by thecenturies-old craft of storytelling. Even in a show about fishing, catchingfish is secondary to telling a good story, according to McKinnis.

That was, finally, the result of this October day – a goodstory. The lake where the fish weren't biting, and the lake that was no longera lake became integral parts of this three-act play.

"It was an incredible adventure I was sent on,"said McKinnis of his TV career. "And (this day) was definitely anadventure."

In a way it marked the passing of the torch, from McKinnisto Zona. Earlier in the day, Zona hilariously told of his goofy, star-struckapproach in his first conversation with McKinnis 20 years ago, when they wereboth competing in a bass tournament. They've spent a lot of time together sincethen, despite the awkward start.

"You've got a good show, Mark. I'm proud of you,"said McKinnis.

But a somber mood doesn't last long around these two.

"Hey, when we're done, we're not going to shake handsare we?" McKinnis said at the end of the day. "I hate that when I seeit on another show."

There were no handshakes. But there had been a daily limit oflaughter.