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Tellez wound up going with an old crush of hers, and Monroe didn't like that at all. The prom incident became an issue – "the prom thing" – and remained one over the course of their on-and-off relationship, which had the misfortune of turning serious at the same time as Monroe's fishing career. "It was a big issue for me – all right, this guy is always going to pick fishing over me," says Tellez, who is now engaged to a cellarmaster at Rombauer Vineyards. "That's why we never worked out." Monroe eventually had to move to Phoenix "to get away from her, because it was affecting my fishing." (He moved to Patterson two years later.)
"If I had to do it over, I would've gone [to the prom]," he admits. "It's one of those things you regret." Of course, he also says: "Most girls take offense to it – they think they can change a man, and a man'll love them more than they love anything else. And that's just not the case [with me]." And: "It was the first tournament I ever won."
Adams Marine sits on a bank of the California Delta in Suisun City, just a block or two from where Main Street cul-de-sacs. The place is a Skeeter boat dealership, and every so often, customers are treated to what is known as a Demo Day, in which staff pros hold forth on bass technique and then take potential boat buyers for a spin on the water. One Saturday in October, maybe 20 people grab plastic chairs inside Adams Marine's large, hangarlike building. Discounted boats are fanned out in front of them, like a card trick. One guy has a T-shirt with a picture of a fishing hook and the large block words "BITE ME!"; another shirt, worn by an older man with a lot of tattoos, reads "Playaz Wear."
Monroe is here today, at the request of the owner, Bob. (Bob would like you to know that Adams Marine is the only Skeeter dealer in Northern California.) For about 15 minutes, Monroe takes questions from the audience, and everyone seems faintly impressed: Besides catching fish, how do you get a job like yours? ("Go to school for marketing," he says.) From a boy, about 6 years old: Have you ever caught a jellyfish? ("Oh, yeah, but I cut the line.") And finally: What happened at the Classic? ("Ummm ....")
Skeeter will pay Monroe's expenses for his work today; he wasn't obligated to attend, but he did because the dealer asked, and maybe when it comes time to renegotiate his sponsorship deal, Skeeter will show its appreciation. Monroe understands, and even seems to embrace, this side of the sport. "I'm an advertiser. That's what my job is," he says (though in this case, he is, more precisely, an advertisement). This year at the Classic, Monroe watched as a group of cheerleaders working for Yamaha handed out small sticker tattoos of the company logo. "I just said, 'You know, I'm going to be on camera – that would be a neat way to get some extra Yamaha [exposure],'" he says. He got a sticker for his left cheek, and as it happened the left cheek got the most airtime that day. (He also kissed one of the cheerleaders, but, he says with a sigh, "That's another story.")
"Yamaha loved it," he says. "It was one of those sponsorship things where I go above and beyond the call of duty. Nobody else did it. I got on the bus that morning with all the fishermen, and all the Yamaha guys saw [the tattoo], and they're going, 'Aww, that's a major kiss-ass right there.' I'm just like, 'What, are you mad you didn't think of it?'"
It's all very Ish, a part of the persona. Ish is a salesman, carrying all sorts of expectations. "Ish," says Monroe, laughing at himself for using the third person, "is always on his P's and Q's." Tellez, one of just a handful of people to call him Shama, is blunt about her distaste for Ish; it's what she calls him when she's trying to piss him off. "He's someone who has routine answers, someone who always wants to say the right thing," she says. "When he's Ish, he's trying to be what everybody wants him to be." But Shama? Shama's clothes don't always match. Shama will say "fuck" and not worry about losing a sponsor. Shama pulls up next to a truck in Reno, sees a few strands of blond hair, and winds up with a long-term girlfriend. (Her name is Rachel, and she calls him Ish.) "Not to say I have a split personality, but Shama's more free," Monroe says. "Shama doesn't care. He just wants to have fun, be with a whole bunch of girls, enjoy life."
For all the talk about its being the sport for the everyman, bass fishing certainly creates an odd kind of athlete, one whose athletic persona is yoked to his corporate persona; he's a salesman even on the weigh-in stage. That's out of necessity: This year, Monroe says, he has won about $60,000 at tournaments; he figures he has pulled in at least that much in endorsement deals. In return, he shows up at expos and Demo Days like this, and he makes sure to mention his sponsors whenever possible. (A rod is never just a rod – it's a Lamiglas rod.) "You don't get paid for catching fish on that product," he says. "You get paid for pitching that product."
Monroe realized early on that this was the nature of the sport – that this, in many ways, was the sport. After high school, he went to Contra Costa College and took marketing and public speaking courses, knowing that's what sponsors would want. And one of his last jobs before fishing served as additional preparation: He sold cars. "Like a fish in water," he says. "I was a natural car salesman." Now he sees himself as part of a new breed of bass fishermen, "people who are businessmen, more than just bass fishermen." He cites the old-guard anglers. "You hear some of them speak," he says, "you couldn't sell nothin' that way. 'Well, Ah cawt 'em on a lizzerd, yeah, on a Carolina rig.' Now you've got guys saying, 'I was out there with my 7-1/2-foot Lamiglas flipping stick and 25-pound Maxima line and 4-inch lizard on a tungsten weight made by a PRADCO.' They do a whole infomercial right there. And that's what's gonna sell." It's something the new breed appreciates: If pro fishing is mostly marketing, isn't marketing – with its own set of lures and lines – just another kind of fishing?
