Post-Gazette Click photo for larger image. Big-time bass fishing in the 'Burgh Getting bass to bite may even challenge the pros Anglers enjoy fight with fish that has an attitude Bassmaster Q&A with 4-time champion Rick Clunn Outdoors Expo a must-see for Bassmaster crowds High-speed bass boats give anglers more time to fish Fantasy fishing is reeling in the fans Audio Book Review: 'Fishing on the Edge' Fishing by the numbers The non-fisherman's guide to the 2005 Citgo Bassmaster Classic (But anglers can read it, too) Schedule of events The 2005 Bassmaster Classic on TV Bassmaster photo gallery Map: Probable bass fishing hotspots on Pittsburgh's three rivers Graphic: The 47 competitors in the 2005 Citgo Bassmaster Classic Graphic: Classic competition Top Five

Denny Tubbs was competing in a bass tournament a dozen years ago on Lake Kerr, a many-fingered impoundment draped over the Virginia-North Carolina border, when the idea for staging the Bassmaster Classic in Pittsburgh hit him like a smallmouth smacking a buzz-bait.

"I stepped out on the dock one morning, looked around at all the boats and the people, and said to myself, 'Why can't we do this?'" remembers Tubbs, an aquatic resources program specialist for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

The answer -- on display this week up and down Pittsburgh's three big post-industrial rivers, and in Point State Park, Mellon Arena and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center -- is the 35th annual CITGO Bassmaster Classic.

The world championship of bass fishing will cast 47 of the world's best fishermen onto the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers and their tributaries to search for big bass and the $200,000 winner's share of the $700,000 prize purse.

Landing the Classic is a coup for the region, not unlike pulling a 5-pound lunker out from under the shade of a marina on the Monongahela. The whole thing, from Friday's 7 a.m. start in front of the Point to Sunday's final bass weigh-in at Mellon Arena, will get extensive national exposure on ESPN and ESPN2. More than 12 hours of taped highlights and live weigh-in coverage in is planned.

BASS, owned by ESPN, has distributed 250,000 "Bassport" promotional pamphlets at fishing tournaments in southern and eastern states this summer. The small blue booklets look like government issued passports and aim to guide Classic tourists to the week's Bassmaster events and local amenities.

Short term the tournament, which will cost the state and city $2 million to stage, will have a projected $34 million economic impact on the local economy during one of the slowest tourist times of the year. More than 20 businesses have signed on as tournament co-sponsors, and the Greater Pittsburgh Convention &Visitors Bureau is all over the BASS Web site touting Pittsburgh area hotels, restaurants and attractions.

More than 100,000 people are expected to find their way to bridges, river banks and pleasure boats to watch the pros fish, and each evening 17,000 will pack the Mellon Arena for the weigh-in and ooh and aah the day's catches.

Locally, folks who don't know bass from Benkovitz are abuzz about the "Super Bowl of Bass Fishing."

But the more important long-term impact is the opportunity for national exposure that could help change Pittsburgh's outdated and inaccurate image as a polluted backwater mill town. Think of the tournament as a 2005 television reality show version of the 1979 movie "The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh," -- but this time with real fish instead of a star-crossed, Age of Aquarius basketball team.

"People still think of Pittsburgh as steel mills, dirty and nasty," Tubbs said. "After this, after they see some nice fish come in, some healthy fish, I think they'll realize it's a nice place to come visit."

Confluence of factors

But netting the Classic, did not come easy for Pittsburgh.

Tubbs was the catalyst, but a confluence of factors -- cleaner rivers, better river access, a healthy bass population and a receptive political and business climate -- had to come together at just the right time for the city to win the bid.

Also aiding Pittsburgh's selection was the desire of ESPN, which bought the BASS organization in 2001, to expand the audience and marketing for its signature fishing tournament beyond the South, much like NASCAR has done.

So this year, instead of fishing around the cypress in the Louisiana delta or along the shorelines of man-made, bath-water warm lakes in North Carolina or Florida, Classic competitors will be casting their Hot N' Tot crank baits against a metropolitan cityscape of steel, concrete and glass, into historic rivers that have supported America's settlement and industry.

But, unfortunately, not always bass.

Just 35 years ago only carp and bullhead catfish, two pollution-tolerant species, could be found in local rivers that for more than a century had been on the receiving end of untreated sewage, industrial waste and acid mine drainage. The Monongahela registered summertime temperatures of 130 degrees downriver from industrial discharges, and downstream from mine discharges more acidity than a can of Coke.

Steel mills, foundries, chemical plants and railroad lines sprawled along the riverbanks for miles, blocking public access.

The rivers' revival unofficially began in 1959 when the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority opened its sewage treatment plant. The recovery continued with the help of state and federal regulations controlling mining and industrial discharges in the 1960s and 1970s. Sewer overflows caused by storms still periodically wash untreated sewage into the rivers, but the impact of those overflows, while a health concern, haven't kept the fish from returning.

Many fish species found their way back to the rivers in the 1990s after much of the local steel mills went belly up.

"When industry left, spots on the river opened up and suddenly we had views of the water that generations didn't have because they were hidden by the hulk and bulk of the mills," said Davitt Woodwell, regional director of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and secretary of the Local Organizing Committee that wooed the Classic.

"Now we've got trails along the rivers and riverfront park, boat access and access for people. The rivers aren't the back alleys of industry anymore. They're starting to matter again as the quality of life is starting to matter. The Classic is a chance to show the nation that this isn't your grandfather's Pittsburgh."

It's all about the fish

Connelly family photo Patrick Connelly and his daughter Caitlin, both of Wexford, display a bass the 13-year-old reeled in recently. Caitlin wrote in: "My family and I were fishing on the Allegheny River when a bass bit my line. It was about 17 inches and between 3.5 and 4 pounds." Patrick, a veteran angler, says there are plenty of big bass in Pittsburgh's three rivers, if you know where to find them. Click photo for larger image.

But what really matters to the fishing pros is the fish. For all the vision and hard work, the Bassmaster Classic wouldn't be coming to Pittsburgh is the water wasn't right and the fish weren't here.

But it is and the fish are, according to Rick Lorson, the state Fish and Boat Commission's area fisheries manager, who said recent fish sampling has found more than 40 different species of fish in the city's rivers, including healthy numbers of walleye, sauger and bass -- the big three in the local sport fishing scene.

"The rivers have come way back since the bleak years of the 1950s and 1960s," Lorson said. "The Mon isn't dead or recovering. We're into a managed fishery mode.

"And the fish stock on all the rivers looks good as far as the number of fish and the number of big fish. There's enough bass here to be very good fishing, and the largest number and the biggest fish are found within one mile of the dams on all the rivers."

His observation is confirmed by a Fish and Boat Commission survey released last year of the smallmouth population below the Highland Park Dam on the Allegheny that shows about half of the 40 fish sampled measured 15 inches or more, with three stretching the tape to more than 20 inches.

The dams, installed to facilitate industrial and commercial river traffic on area rivers, also provide navigable pools for recreational boaters and stable, protected habitats for bass and other fish species.

"The locks and dams are the reason we're able to fish as well as we are in the rivers," said Dave Kreutzer, who's retired from a lifetime of work on the rivers as owner of the Twin Rivers Towing Co. and is secretary of the Western Pennsylvania Bass Association.

He said each river dam serves as a fish nursery system that not only aerates the water but also provides space for the fish to spawn and live in the downriver areas adjacent to the outflow where fishing is restricted for safety reasons. The stable navigation pools also aid spawning and water quality and quantity.

"Without the dams today the Bassmaster pros might be using 'quads' instead of bassboats to fish the Mon because the river wouldn't have hardly any water in it," said Kreutzer, who also is a member of Pennsylvania's BASS Federation, District 5. "The water levels would be too unpredictable to promote good fishing."

Proof that the bass are in the rivers can be seen in the proliferation of fishermen and tournaments, said Frank Jernejcic, a fisheries biologist with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources.

Jernejcic, who collects data on the local fishing tournaments, said there were 41 tournaments at eight sites on area rivers in 1975, a number that jumped to 519 tournaments at 36 sites in 2003.

"The fishing tournament numbers really jumped up in the early 1990s," he said, "The bottom line is they wouldn't be fishing in the river if they weren't catching fish."

Enhancing the region

Tubbs knew there were fish in the river and he knew the Classic would be a good fit for the city. What he didn't know is how to pique the interest of the folks at BASS and ESPN.

Tubbs continued to talk about getting the big tournament for Pittsburgh at local tournaments and fishing clubs, but the Classic dream languished until four years ago when he ran into Woodwell, who at the time was executive director of the Riverlife Taskforce.

Woodwell liked the idea and mentioned it to Ken Komoroski, an attorney and committee member of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

"He asked me to help and I said of course, but not for the reason you think. Not because I love bass fishing," said Komoroski, who has a trophy bass from the French River in Canada mounted in his law office. "I volunteer for groups that want to enhance the region and I felt this could be positive publicity for the community."

Woodwell and Tubbs contacted Dewey Kendrick, the Bass tournament director and site selection committee chairman for the Classic, and in 2001, Komoroski and Woodwell accepted an invitation from Kendrick to view the Classic firsthand in New Orleans.

"You can't believe it until you see it," Komoroski said. "I was prepared for a great spectacle but it was far more than I expected. But I came away feeling Pittsburgh had everything New Orleans had except for the tourist reputation."

Kendrick's visit to Pittsburgh in 2002 made him a believer.

"We took him to Mount Washington to get an overview of the city and the rivers and he said 'You've got everything we need,' " Komoroski said. "The weigh-in site at the Mellon Arena, the trade exposition at the convention center and the launch at the Point could all be within walking distance of one another. That's unprecedented as far as I know."

Several months later, Kendrick came to Pittsburgh again to meet with Mayor Tom Murphy.

"We had 20 minutes with the mayor. Dewey did a power point presentation about the Classic and the mayor's attention grew," Komoroski said. "We ended up in there an hour and the mayor showed genuine enthusiasm, especially for the family orientation and focus of the Classic."

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Woodwell and Komoroski put together the less-than-creatively named Local Organizing Committee and stocked it with local and state leaders including Murphy; Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato; Craig Davis, director of convention sales for the Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau; and state Rep. Harry Reedshaw, D-Carrick; and William Dietrich, founder of Dietrich Metal Framing and former chairman of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

"Dietrich had no interest in fishing," said Komoroski, who was appointed the organizing committee's president. "But he said early and often and emphatically, 'We have to have this.' He sees it as an opportunity for the region."

Pittsburgh was a Classic finalist in 2004 with St. Louis and Charlotte, the eventual winner. To win hosting rights to this year's classic, Pittsburgh beat out Hartford, Conn., Nashville and Dallas.

"Everyone working on this was interested in the vitality of southwestern Pennsylvania and sees the Classic is part of the efforts to enhance the region and make it better known," Komoroski said. "This is a large opportunity. If we're lucky the Classic's bass will be as big."

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette A largemouth bass swims in the safety of a tank at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. Click photo for larger image.