The Fishing Hall of Shame - Softcover

President George Bush— America’s most famous fisherman—suffered the worst case of bluefish blues the world had ever seen.
 
With an armada of camera boats tailing him on his daily outings off the coast of Maine, the vacationing First Angler went an incredible seventeen straight agonizing, mortifying days without hooking so much as a minnow. And every day that the President returned fishless, the whole world knew.
 
Finally, with only one full day left to his vacation, a desperate Bush turned to prayer. And it worked. Within an hour after leaving church the President caught a hefty bluefish to put an end to his embarrassing jinx.
 
In August 1989 Bush had taken his family to their summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, for a nineteen-day summer vacation. No sooner had he arrived than he hopped into his twenty-eight-foot cigarette fishing boat, Fidelity, confident he’d catch some bluefish as he had so many other times before. He didn’t mind that a flotilla of press boats was following him to record every moment of his expected angling successes.
 
Unfortunately, Bush didn’t catch a fish that day ... or the next day ... or the next ... or the next. While those around him were getting strikes, the President was striking out—a fact reported daily by the media.
 
By the tenth day without even a nibble, the Portland, Maine, Press Herald began publishing a “fish watch.” Every day the paper ran a drawing of a bluefish inside the international symbol for no and gave the number of outings the President had gone without catching a fish.
 
This spurred his staffers into damage control. A White House press official claimed that although Bush hadn’t snared any blues yet, several members of the presidential fishing party had caught fish “under the President’s very careful tutelage.” But the press continued to report his catch of the day: zero.
 
With only six days left on his vacation, Bush’s fishing failures were starting to bug him—especially when he saw White House reporters wearing the Press Herald’s “no fish” logo on their press credentials.
 
With tongue in cheek the President called the logo “a vicious assault on my ability” and threatened to call up the newspaper editors and complain. Then he predicted the slump would end that day because he planned to go out and “murder” some fish. He was even bringing First Lady Barbara Bush with him for good luck.
 
Barbara’s presence did indeed bring good luck—for everyone in the presidential fishing party but her husband. Meanwhile, back on land, some entrepreneurial reporters began selling “no fish” T-shirts to their colleagues.
 
By now the chagrined President was desperate enough to seek advice from local anglers. Among their recommended strategies were spitting on the bait before casting and using depth charges from one of the Coast Guard vessels that always accompanied him.
 
As Bush readied his boat for his fifteenth outing, family members tried to buoy his spirits. They chanted, “We want fish!” and “Go for the blues!” Several of his grandchildren held up placards that read, A FISH A DAY KEEPS THE PRESS AWAY, FISH TILL YOU DIE, and GRAMPY, YOU CAN DO IT! Finally, the family serenaded him with an improvised song: “When the Fish Go Marching In.”
 
Despite all their support Bush went fishless again. “It’s gotten out of hand,” he told the press. “When I see it [his fishing failures] on national television, I know we’ve got to put an end to this monkey business. So we will prevail. I guarantee you—I positively guarantee you—that this jinx will end.”
 
Reporters nodded and wondered if he would catch a blue in their lifetime. To the President’s credit he continued to grin and bear it. However, he did shake his head when White House photographer Dave Valdes simultaneously hooked two bluefish on a line with two sets of triple hooks. And Bush did grit his teeth whenever photographers, in chase boats waiting for him to catch a fish, reeled in bluefish themselves and then held them up for him to see.
 
On the eighteenth day—the last full day of his summer vacation—Bush sought divine help. He went to St. Ann’s Episcopal Church and prayed. “This is it!” Bush told the press as he headed for his final outing. “I can feel it!”
 
Wearing camouflage pants, an olive drab sweater, a blue work shirt, and a cap that read USS BLUEFISH, the President roared out into the ocean again with the First Lady and shouted, “We’ll stay out for as long as it takes!”
 
The praying paid off. Using a jawbuster lure Bush landed a two-foot, ten-pound bluefish. Reporters and Secret Service agents in boats about 150 yards away began honking their horns and cheering. It was victory at sea. Paul Bedard, a Washington Times reporter, said the news was “like the end of a war.”
 
When the Fidelity returned, the mood at the dock was as wild as Election Night. Barbara Bush thrust her fist high in the air in celebration. Relatives shouted for joy. Grandchildren kissed him.
 
When a reporter asked the President if he was going to have the fish stuffed and mounted, Bush replied, “Stuff it? I’m lucky to have caught it.”
 
 
Long before Watergate the White House was involved in a shocking cover-up—a fishy scandal perpetrated by none other than President Herbert Hoover himself.
 
The victims of this ignoble intrigue were the directors of a prestigious fishing club who for years had personally brought their first salmon of the season to the White House and presented it to the President. The Chief Executive would dutifully pose with the directors and their fish for photos that were later framed and hung on the walls of the club.
 
In 1929 the directors arrived at the White House for the annual ritual. Before the formal presentation they gave the prize salmon to President Hoover’s new secretary. Unfortunately, he was uninformed and didn’t follow the usual procedure of simply keeping the fish on ice until the photo session began. Instead, the secretary gave the fish to the White House chef.
 
At the start of the photo session Hoover turned to his secretary and asked, “Where’s the salmon?” The secretary, with a stricken look on his face, stammered, “I ... uh ... sent it to the ... um ... kitchen. I thought you ... uh ... were going to eat it.”
 
Hoover rolled his eyes and immediately dispatched the flustered secretary to the kitchen. There, to his horror, he found that the salmon’s head and tail had been cut off, and its entrails had been cleaned out.
 
But one of the cooks took immediate action. She rapidly sewed the head and tail back onto the fish and neatly stuffed its insides with cotton. The secretary then rushed the fish out to the White House lawn, where Hoover, the club directors, and the photographers were waiting.
 
The presidential coverup was now under way. As he handed the stuffed salmon to the President, the secretary whispered a warning to him: “Hold the fish carefully and horizontally.”
 
Hoover triumphantly held the fish up and smiled for the cameras. It looked as if no one would be the wiser. But then one of the photographers stepped up to Hoover and whispered, “Mr. President, something’s wrong with the fish.” Hoover looked down and was aghast to see cotton sticking out of the salmon. He then hid the offending evidence.
 
Confessing to the cover-up years later, Hoover said in his memoirs, “A President must be equal to such emergencies, so I carefully held up the fish with my hand over the spot of cotton. The directors of the fishing club, the fish, and I posed before twenty photographers—and each asked for ‘just one more’ six times. But the cotton kept oozing out of the fish as was proved by later photographs.”
 
Those last photos never made it onto the walls of the fishing club.