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Bassin’ Blogosphere: Beard Magic

Category: article

 Oct 16th, 2008 by OutdoorsFIRST 

Modified Oct 16th, 2008 at 12:00 AM

	Gotta Love the Grizzly Adams Look

There are more important topics in the world of fishing than facial hair, but I feel I need to speak out on this vastly underrated subject. Facial hair, in particular the Van Dyke beard that many also call the Gotee, seems to be a uniform that many anglers will wear from time to time. In fact, many never go fishing without it.

Now, I have to admit, I have some cheesy facial hair working. No not a terrific Gotee or full Grizzly Adams beard, God has blessed me with a follicley challenged face. My beard action is there to simply act as a natural sunscreen, but also because I dig the scruff. Mine has nothing to do with fishing.

In fact, I suggest that if you’d like to become a top-notch bass pro, you need to shave. Look at VanDam, Skeet Reese, Jay Yelas and many more are all clean shaven. Sure, Rick Clunn has a beard and Iaconelli has a little tuft on his chin, but frankly Clunn kicked more butt back in his clean shaven days.

Anyway, what is it in our collective bassin’ psyche that makes us be such followers? Ya got me. The facial hair phenomenon has been around for over a decade now in tournament fishing. I say we all shave our mugs for the next 6 months to see if it changes our collective outlook on tournament fishing and fishing in general. I guess then we’d all be following that suggestion and still act like lemmings like many of us do with our fishing mask, aka facial hair.

For me, I’ll continue to keep my scruff. Sure, chicks don’t dig it, my wife never notices whether I shave it or not, my daughters kiss my cheek and complain that its prickly, but its mine darn it, mine all mine!