If you're involved in an office pool or a fantasy fishing game based on the BASS Angler of the Year race, chances are that Jim Bitter wasn't high on your list entering the Bassmaster Tour season.
After all, the Florida pro is now 60 years old and hasn't won a Bassmaster event since 1995. Given those facts, Bitter's most recent season performances have seemed headed in the direction of retirement.
So guess who is atop the Angler of the Year standings after two Tour events and heading into this week's tournament on Georgia's Lake Seminole? It's Jim Bitter, confounding the so-called experts with a fast start and a 16-point lead over fellow Floridian Terry Scroggins.
Bitter finished sixth in the season-opener held on his hometown Harris Chain of Lakes and followed up a week later with a 19th-place performance at Lake Okeechobee.
The five-time BASS winner has even surprised himself this season.
"I'm happy with the way I'm fishing," Bitter said. "I feel just like I always have, but this year things are turning out right. I just haven't run into a lot of bad luck, I guess.
"I really don't feel much different than when I started. I was 45 when I started, and I don't feel much different today. I can still fish a whole tournament or two in a row. It doesn't bother me that much."
Bitter entered the 2003 Tour facing the reality that it would likely be his last season. Age, his most recent track record and other factors have caused his stable of sponsors to dwindle over the past few years.
"It started out to be that way," he explained. "I was going to fish the first two tournaments simply because both of them were at home. And if I made enough money to continue, I would. If I didn't, that was it. I don't have the money to pay my own way, and I don't have enough sponsor support to do it.
"So as long as I win money, I'll keep doing it. If sponsors jump aboard, fine, but I'm not looking for them. I've won enough now to carry me through the rest of the year if I want to burn it back up. If I fish eight more tournaments and I don't win anymore, I'll burn that all up. And I don't want to do that. So it's still kind of a tournament-by-tournament thing for me."
Bitter has a history of brushes with greatness during his 16 years on the BASS circuit.
The five-time Bassmasters Classic qualifier has been in the lead in the Angler of the Year race during two other seasons. In 1996, Bitter was atop the standings during the first half of the season before engaging in a seesaw battle with Kevin VanDam down the stretch. Despite winning BASS events in New York and Minnesota that season, he lost out to VanDam based on points. (He actually caught about 40 pounds more than the young Michigan pro, which would have put him ahead under the previous season's rules.)
But it was in 1989 that Bitter made a name for himself in bass circles - for the wrong reason.
That season, he won the $108,000 first prize in the BASS MegaBucks Tournament on the Harris Chain and easily qualified for the Classic. In the world's most-watched fishing event, Bitter held a seemingly insurmountable lead entering the final round. And in a historic mini-drama that would be replayed on television screens for years to come, he literally let the most important tournament in the sport slip through his hands when a keeper-sized bass escaped his grasp and slid back into the water.
Bitter went on to lose the Classic by a mere 2 ounces. He is arguably the most famous runner-up in Classic history.
As a result, a sizable legion of fishing fans will be pulling for the old man to make a run at the 2003 Busch BASS Angler of the Year crown.
"It would be great if it happens," said Bitter, one of the sport's true gentlemen. "But Seminole will be a big test.
"I think it's going to be feast or famine like it was last year. It's still relatively cold and it's supposed to get colder as the week goes on. So you're going to have relatively few fish move up shallow because this is still early and the water temperature is, like, 52. So if you catch them out of one spot one day, you're not going to be able to repeat there. That's the same thing we had on the Harris Chain.
"But the fish are better average-wise here, so if you catch three or four here you're still in the hunt."
SEARCH HELPER
Among the east Texas residents reporting the sites of debris from the space shuttle Columbia was guide and Bassmaster Central Open angler Roger Bacon. He was squirrel hunting on the Angelina River about 12 miles west of Jasper when he heard an unusual noise from the sky followed by a large splash into the water about 50 feet away. Bacon then alerted local law enforcement officials.
DID YOU KNOW?
Tour pro and Bassmaster Southern Open winner Cody Carden is a volunteer paramedic and firefighter in Shelby, Ala.
PRO BIRTHDAYS
Veteran pros Denny Brauer and Chet Douthit both turned 54 Feb. 3. Oklahoma's Tommy Biffle will be 45 on Feb. 6, while transplanted Californian Mark Rizk of Alabama celebrates his 40th birthday the next day. Texan David Wharton will blow out 53 candles on Feb. 10.
IF I HADN'T BECOME A BASS PRO...
Illinois pro Chad Morgenthaler would still be a firefighter. He was a captain in the Carbondale Fire Department before resigning last summer to pursue a career as a full-time professional fisherman.
THEY SAID IT
"The most satisfying part of my job is the camaraderie of the fellow anglers, just the enjoyment that we get out of each other. We're intense competitors on the water, but yet there's a kinship you establish with certain anglers. When we're not in tournaments, we talk during the week about what's going on in the tournament trail and outside the tournament trail. We hunt together and things like that. So just the big camaraderie deal is pretty neat." Alabama's Tim Horton, the 2000 BASS Angler of the Year.