WILD BLOG: Bass legend hooks up with Fraser sturgeon
POSTED Sept. 9, 2009 / 4:40 p.m.

I pose the same question to bass icon Jimmy Houston, and 20 minutes later, to Fraser River guide Dean Werk: “So, Jimmy/Dean, what was your first impression of Dean/Jimmy?”

Their reactions are immediate, and exactly the same: laughter. Sincere, from-the-gut, “oh, do I have a story to tell you” laughter.

“Oh, man, he’s a character,” Houston tells me about Mean Dean the Fishing Machine, owner of Great River Fishing in Chilliwack.

“That guy,” Werk says about the iconic Houston, “is just a card, man.”

Houston is back home on his Oklahoma ranch after three days of fishing aboard Werk’s 22-foot Custom Weld fat boy, which served as the main platform for a three-day shoot of Houston’s television juggernaut on B.C.’s Fraser River system. This afternoon, he’s fresh in from a survey of the pecan trees on the ranch in Cherokee County – “Yeah, I’m a little bit of a nut farmer … I guess that’s appropriate,” he jokes – and as anyone who’s ever met him in person can attest, the 60-year-old namesake of “Jimmy Houston Outdoors” and “Jimmy Houston Adventures” is brimming with energy and enthusiasm.

But as he begins to describe his experience in the Fraser Canyon, and his days on the water with Werk, his energy level goes from 9.5 to 11.

Jimmy Houston, it appears, is taken with the Fraser.

“To tell you the truth, I knew very little about that fishery, other than what I’d seen on TV,” he says. “I had seen a few shows here and there and heard some good reports, but that place is really something. I was blown away by the scenery. Every direction you turn, it’s like you’re looking at a picture postcard. It was as neat a place as I’ve ever seen.”

Houston has been around the block a few times the past three decades, too. In 33 years of filming his monstrously successful TV shows for Versus, ESPN, Faith TV, America One, Lone Star Cable, American Media Group and a slew of others, he’s laid the lumber to everything from peacock bass to marlin to tarpon. He’s won well over a million dollars on the national bass circuits, been named Jim Thorpe Man of the Year, been inducted to the IGFA Hall of Fame, and given the title “King of Sports”

He’s SEEN SOME THINGS.

The Fraser’s oversize white sturgeon, though, have left a mark.

Pageboy meets rockstar: Houston, his daughter Sherri and a Versus film crew hopped aboard with Werk in late August, as the second leg of a weeklong roundabout through two of B.C.’s signature fisheries, Nootka Sound and the Fraser. Houston’s Nootka trip was, in his words “great”, but the Versus cameras (unbeknownst to them) were about to get some of the best comedic chemistry this side of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis when the garrulous Houston - he of the pageboy haircut - met the equally garrulous Werk - he of the rockstar haircut - and the squadron of Great River boats barreled upriver to their first Fraser Canyon fishing spot.

I had chatted with both Houston and Werk earlier this summer about their August arrangement, and, knowing how well their personalities mirrored one another, was anxious to hear how the filming had gone.

About how I expected. The two were the Frick & Frack of the Fraser:

Houston: “When I leave to fish in the morning, I’m really believing that I’m going to have a great day.”

Werk: “I can’t wait to get out there in the morning, ever morning. I believe every day is going to be a great day.”

Houston: “Man, that guy (Werk) will fish until it’s too dark to fish. He goes hard all day. We fished one night until 10 o’clock. Most guides who fish day after day after day, they’re ready to quit after they’ve caught their clients’ their limits, but that guy never wants to stop.”

Werk: “Once Jimmy gets a rod in his hand, it’s almost impossible to get him to put it down. That guy, man, he never wants to stop.”

Houston: “(Werk) is a great guy to fish with. A lot of fun. He wakes up having fun and goes hard all day. He’s kinda like me: he just keeps on keepin’ on.”

Werk: “It’s Jimmy Houston. He’s excellent to be around. Really a fun-loving, energetic guy: he’s ‘go go go go go!’ all day long.”

And then there’s the fish-kissing thing.

Go run a Dogpile search for “Jimmy Houston” images and you’ll come up with several photos of JH laying a smooch on a various varieties of bass. Turns out that Werk is similarly pre-disposed to the piscatorial pucker-up.

“I don’t pay an awful lot of attention to the bass world, but before he got out here I found out he’s a guy who actually kisses all the fish,” Werk says. “I didn’t know that. Well, I’ve always been the guy who kissed the fish as well. Jimmy doesn’t really kiss ‘em like I do, though. He gets his lips close, but I actually kiss them.”

“It smoked out another 200 yards and jumped again …”: Day 1 of the shoot saw Werk’s boat, a film boat and a ground-based camera crew anchoring up in the Canyon near Yale, bouncing salmon flesh and roe at Big Eddy, Little Eddy and Emery Creek. Werk estimates that he, Houston and Sherri handled upwards of 20 fish that day, but the first significant fish of the shoot, a 7-footer that Sherri fought first thing in the morning, immediately had Houston in full-on “JH cackle” mode (if you’ve seen his show, you know what I’m talking about), and gave the Oklahoman a little taste of the power of the Fraser’s white sturgeon as his film crew rolled on 31 minutes of uninterrupted footage.

“I’ve heard that those fish were dynamite, but, man, it was amazing,” Houston says.

It got better.

Day 2 en route to another Fraser tributary – where Houston would spend the day catching sockeye on a flyrod – Werk throttled down near and whipped the Custom Weld around to survey a piece of sturgeon water that looked too good to pass up.

“I saw a nice piece of water while we were coming up the Fraser and told him ‘You know we really need to stop here toss out bait for sturgeon’,” Werk says. “He says ‘Let’s go for it, man!’, so we stopped, tossed out a bait, and BOOM, 7 ½-foot fish.”

Sherri again had the rod in hand, this time for 33 minutes, but Houston’s view of the fish was – in his words – the highlight of the trip.

“The fish we’d caught beforehand jumped some, but that last one Sherri caught, it smoked out about 100 yards of line, jumped, went down and smoked out another 200 yards just like that, and then jumped again,” he says. “I mean, that thing got all the way out of the water. It was amazing. I mean, it was really something to see that fish smoke off 300 yards of line and come out of the water like it did.”

Part II: Houston, we have a flyrod: Check back later for Part II as the Fraser system turns an avowed basser into a borderline flyrodder.

-JS