New Year's Day wouldn't be a holiday without football, black-eyed peas and the annual Polar Bear bass tournament at Beaver Lake.
The contest is open to everyone, and it's a fine way to start a brand new year. The 2023 tournament starts at 7 a.m. Sunday at Prairie Creek park. Weigh-in starts at 3 p.m.
Entry fee is $75 per boat and payment must be in cash. All fees are paid back to the top finishers after fish are weighed. The tournament limit is five black bass. The three species of black bass -- largemouth, smallmouth and spotted -- are eligible for weighing.
The Polar Bear has been held on New Year's Day for as long as most fishermen can remember. No telling when the first one was held, but it goes back at least to the 1970s. Beaver Lake filled in 1965.
I've covered nearly every Polar Bear bass tournament since the early 1980s and can remember it being canceled only once. The expected high that New Year's Day was zero degrees. That's way to cold for even a polar bear to be fishing.
There are cash prizes for the heaviest catches of five bass (all fish are released after being weighed) and there's also a prize for big bass. I'm here to testify that it only takes one cast to stash that big bass money in your pocket.
In 2011, a fishing buddy got the notion that we should team up and fish the Polar Bear, just for grins. I figured we might as well take that $75 entry fee, put a match to it, light a campfire and roast some weenies. But enter we did.
I catch fewer fish per man hours of fishing than anyone on the planet. It'd be a cold day in the Congo before we'd win any money, I told my pal.
That year the Polar Bear tournament lived up to its cold-weather name. We fished bundled up from hair to toe nails on this raw, cloudy New Year's Day.
About noon, we hadn't put one fish in the boat. There we were, fishing a rocky bank within sight of Prairie Creek park. I cast a crawdad-colored crank bait close to shore. It about scared me to death when a big bass nailed it.
The fish was in about two feet of water, which just shows to go you that not all bass are deep in the winter. I was on Cloud 10 when my partner slipped a net under that bass and hoisted it aboard.
There in the net that largemouth bass looked to be 5 pounds easy. We had a chance of winning the big bass money.
The rest of the tournament was spent making sure that big boy stayed alive and healthy for the weigh-in and trying to catch another one. That three hours between catching it and 3 p.m. seemed like eternity.
Back then, my neighbor, the late Jackie Rogers, was weigh master at most every bass tournament on Beaver Lake, including the Polar Bear.
My pal stood in line near the scales with our prize bass in the weigh-in bag. When it was time to weigh, I stepped aside and said to Jackie, "We've got a big 'un."
Jackie said "Flip you wouldn't know a big bass if it hit you in the head."
Turned out our fish weighed 5 pounds even. Big bass money was ours until the bass catching duo of Keith Brashers and Nicky Parson presented a largemouth that weighed 5.2 pounds. Dang! If our fish had a few more scales we would have won a couple hundred bucks.
Finishing second fiddle behind Keith and Nicky isn't a bad showing. The pair are household names among Beaver Lake bass chasers. They're near the top of the leader board at nearly every tournament they enter.
If fishing is your thing, forget football and fish the Polar Bear tournament on Sunday. One lucky cast and you could bring home some dough.