Fishing: Behind the Scenes of Got Bait?
It’s bait vs. lures—and kids vs. adults—in this epic fishing showdown. Now, here’s what you didn’t see.
August 16, 2014
Let’s face it folks – most fishing shows stink. All too often they’re poorly filmed, the audio is out of kilter, or they’re just plain boring. So when the opportunity arose to develop a fishing show unlike all others, with the high quality filming and editing of a boats.com production, I jumped at the chance. Added bonus: my kids would play starring roles in the show, as we put kids up against adults and bait up against lures in a fishing show-down. Check out the pilot episode, Got Bait? The Hunt for Flounder, and then I’ll tell you the rest of the story.
The Got Bait? teams and film crew prepare for a day of fishing and filming.
Trying to film a fishing show is sort of like herding cats. Except the cats are bigger than you are, and they really couldn’t care less about what you want or think. And since two of them are your own kids they might care a little bit, but only so they can do the exact opposite.
Our filming session began with a team huddle at the West Ocean City boat ramp, where David, Max, and I linked up with videographer Paul Cronin, producer Carol Cronin, assistant producer Gary Reich, guest fisherman John Unkart, and photo-boat captain Cousin Fred. (That’s his actual name: Cousin. Fred.) The boys and I had left home at 3:30 AM to get there by 6:00. Stars glittered overhead for the entire ride, but a mere mile from the boat ramp, we met a wall of ocean fog. We spilled out of the truck bleary-eyed and half awake, into a pea-soup gray with about 100 yards of visibility.
Got Weather?
In case you haven’t guessed it, fog is less than ideal for a video shoot. Not only do you have to deal with all the usual hazards of boating in reduced visibility, it also means your cameras are constantly subjected to a fine mist. It gathers on and distorts the lenses, it can short out the microphones, and if it saturates the camera body and gets inside, your videographer becomes upset. Very upset.
Fog. Lots of fog. Wet, cold fog.
Fog also cools things off quite a bit. As Paul put microphones on the kids, I started shivering. It had been 86-degrees when we left Annapolis, but here on the coast, it was just below 60. And damp. We donned foul-weather gear from head to toe before pushing off the dock; again that’s less than ideal for filming, since the jackets tend to squelch the microphones and the hoods shade everyone’s faces. But, as you saw on the show, we made do. And eventually, the sun did come out to bathe us in glorious, warm, welcome dry light.
And then my feet got all wet.
The boat we were fishing from, an Everglades 243, has a fishbox with a drain plug deep in its belly. And I forgot to put it in. Yes, yours truly, a boater with decades of experience under his belt, forgot to put in a drain plug. Luckily not “the” drain plug, but a drain plug nonetheless. The box filled with water, which sloshed out and began running across the deck. The Everglades is an unsinkable boat and there was never any danger, but it took a while for me to put two and two together, open the box, and insert the plug.
Fortunately, the night before I had been adamant about setting the boy’s fishing boots by the door, so they’d be properly dressed for a day on the water. But I’d been so obsessed with making sure they were well-equipped, I'd forgotten my own boots. As a result, I was in Topsiders—which soon turned into soggy leather mush. And I was shivering again.
Got Fish?
As we fished, it became apparent that the flounder had not read our script. While it called for multiple hook-ups and fish over 20 inches, we eked out a mere one-bite-per-hour average. And the majority of the fish were either throw-backs or barely-legals. Luckily we did catch enough to get by, and besides, on Got Bait? fishing is only one aspect of the show. Equally important is entertaining the viewer, and to that end, I gave David and Max explicit permission to try a prank or two.
Big mistake.
Barely five minutes went by without one twin or the other—yes, I know they don’t look it but those boys were born a mere nine minutes apart—yanking on my line, cutting my lures in half, or, as you may recall from the show, planting live minnow into my bottle of water. (No, that was not a set-up. I was thoroughly shocked when I realized what Max had done.) I had uncaged the beasts. And in my lust for good content, I'd failed to ask them to limit their antics to when the cameras were rolling. You didn't see it, but during our lunch break, Max dropped a live minnow down my back. When Paul was changing camera batteries, David placed a squid strip in my jacket hood. And during a pause in the action while Carol and Gary compared notes, one of the boys cut my jig off the end of my line. I’m still not sure which one did that dirty deed.
Got Food?
Here’s another thing you can’t control on a video shoot: hunger. Between the slow fishing, rotten weather, and long shotlist, we ended up on the water for a grand total of over 14 hours. Though we’d left the dock provisioned with sandwiches for everyone (chips and oatmeal pies for David, since there isn’t a sandwich on the face of the planet that he’ll eat), the cooler was bare long before the end of the shoot. When you see John and I cheering near the end of the show, it wasn’t so much because we’d won the lures-versus-bait contest as it was our joy at the prospect of closing down the shoot and getting some dinner.
Videographer Paul Cronin captures the final moments of the Got Bait? fishing show contest.
When all was said and done, despite all the trials and tribulations, we ended up with a pretty dang good show. Paul worked his magic, Carol and Gary kept us all in line and on-task, and the boys, John, and I all had a blast. I even saw Cousin Fred crack a smile or two fromt the photo boat.
Little did we know, our filming session for Got Bait #2 would turn out to be even less predictable. What happened? Tune in next month for Got Bait? The Search For Stripers to find out.
