This is How You Break World Records, I Guess

I set the DVR to record Tred Barta’s Versus Network show, almost out of morbid curiosity. If you don’t know who Barta is, I’ll fill you in. He’s a blustery charter boat captain who rose to quasi-fame as a columnist for Sport Fishing Magazine. His column was always fun to read, although the basic and shameless message was “Tred Barta is quite wonderful and everyone else is a moron.” He also hunts, and Versus airs his hunting and fishing adventures.

I wanted to see what this guy was like, because the things he says are so obnoxious and macho, and because he toots his own horn like he’s being paid by the decibel. And he’s a bona fide nut. He does things like shooting grizzly bears at 40 yards with a bow, which is about as smart as being a White House staffer and looking Hillary Clinton directly in the eye when she passes you in a hallway. Whatever is hardest and least likely to work, that’s what Barta does.

I was prepared to hate him, but watching the show, you can’t help liking the guy. He writes like a two-fisted he-man, but on video, he turns out to be an aging dad with a big belly and an insatiable thirst for chocolate milk. How can you hate a guy like that?

Last night I watched a show in which he took two fathers and their young sons fishing for marlin, off the South Carolina coast. It was hilarious. He made one of the kids sit in the cockpit with him while they spent ten minutes practicing the following drill. Tred yells “right long,” referring to the outrigger line on the port side of the boat. Then Tred points his hand at the rod and says “rod.” He did this over and over, based on the theory that it would help the kid get to the rod faster when the marlin showed up. And of course, the kid thought he was a mental case. And when the fish showed up, Tred grabbed the rods before anyone else could get near them and set the hooks.

They didn’t get any marlin. For some reason they were dragging rigged ballyhoo; maybe that’s a great marlin bait off South Carolina, but my guess is that he would have done better with fast-trolled plastic lures or maybe live bonito. It seemed weird to me. The ballyhoo did exactly what they do here in Miami, which is, attract dolphin. They HAMMERED the dolphin, and nearly all of the fish were big. At least one looked like it was in the twenty-five pound range. Tred was upset because they couldn’t get away from the dolphin and find marlin, but like all kids, the boys were happier catching nice fish often than great fish very rarely.

I didn’t see any evidence that the “right long, rod” drill helped.

Barta wore a ridiculous captain’s uniform while he fished. Khakis with a matching shirt, and the shirt had silly bars on the shoulders. I would feel like a complete idiot in a getup like that, but for a guy who practices saying “rod” over and over, it seemed like the perfect costume. When I fish, I get so hot I can barely stand to wear shoes. If I had to dress up like Ensign Pulver every time I went out, I’d have a stroke. And how do you get blood out of expensive khakis?

The appealing thing about Barta is that he seems to be exactly what he pretends to be. A well-meaning kook. He drinks his chocolate milk and does his rod drills and wears his captain suit with complete honesty. This is what he is. A bizarre and oxymoronic phenomenon: a sincere poser. He has decided not to fight it.

He hates the liberal media and says a blessing before each meal, so score two more points in his favor.

His show is a lot more fun than other things you may see on outdoor shows, like stuffy gun writers shooting hand-fed exotic animals on ranches ordinary people can’t afford to visit.

I wonder if we could get him to put on camo, stand in a hallway, and look the Hildebeest in the eye.