Bass videographer Glen Lau returns to his favorite fishing hole, Lake Erie – Cleveland.com

D’Arcy Egan

Plain Dealer Columnist

Celebrated videographer Glen Lau has been hooked on bass for more than a half- century.

Lau’s most famous videos, “Bigmouth” (1973) and “Bigmouth Forever” (1996), featured Florida’s largemouth bass. He also helped with “Hooked on Bass,” which can be seen on the National Geographic Channel at 10 p.m. next Saturday.

Lau’s favorite bass fishing hole, though, is still Lake Erie. He grew up as a barefoot boy on the muddy banks of the Maumee River, casting with a hand line wrapped around a beer bottle, eager to catch anything that would bite. Lau became a fishing guide in 1958, a rare occupation back when few owned boats, taking out a couple of anglers or waterfowl hunters each day in a little 16-foot fiberglass boat he docked at Channel Grove Marina on Marblehead.

Lau guaranteed his customers they would catch fish or didn’t have to pay his $25 guide fee. It was a bet he never lost in a decade of guiding.

And Lau, 73, never lost his passion for bass fishing.

“First and foremost, I guided for bass,” said Lau, “I’d take people after walleye and yellow perch, but bass were No. 1.”

Bass were on Lau’s mind this week as he introduced his Ocala, Fla., neighbor, Hoyt Gibson, and Gibson’s bass-loving sons, Greg and Jeff, to Lake Erie’s premier smallmouth bass fishing. I joined them on the final day of the week-long catch-and-release adventure, and we talked about his activist days.

Lau was among the first to demand that Ohio officials protect Lake Erie.

“To promote my guide service, I wanted to win the King of Ohio Fishing contest held by the Columbus Citizen [-Journal] newspaper,” said Lau. “I fished every day, catching 2,900 pounds of Lake Erie fish over six weeks to win it.”

The newspaper title gave the 25-year-old guide the platform to speak for his favorite fishing hole, as well as challenge Ohio’s lake managers, commercial fishermen and even the forces building the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant on the western Lake Erie shoreline.

He wrote articles in local newspapers, attended Columbus meetings and hearings, carried a video show he filmed to area sportsmen’s groups and weathered threats and criticism from the commercial fishing industry.  Click Link Below for full story!

via Bass videographer Glen Lau returns to his favorite fishing hole, Lake Erie – Cleveland.com.