ESPN Classic

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Everyone who had Alton Jones, Charlie Hartley and Cliff Pace on your fantasy fishing team, raise your hand.

And while you're at it, cross your fingers and hope that lightning doesn't strike your lying, lying heart.

Those three gentlemen — respectively in first, second and third place after Day Two of the Bassmaster Classic — were all among the least popular selections. Not even 1.4 percent of fantasy teams have a Jones for Alton. Almost 3 percent have a Hartley. Slightly more than 2 percent picked up the Pace.

Meanwhile, a guy like Jeff Coble — a supposed sexy, sleeper pick among those in the bass fishing know — wound up on about a ninth of all teams. Then he fizzled down to 41st.

"If Jerry (McKinnis) or anyone else picked me for their fantasy team," he told the weigh-in crowd at the Bi-Lo Center on Saturday, "that's exactly what it was — a fantasy."

Coble made the same misstep that several anglers did: sticking with a shallow dock pattern.

"I just put all my eggs into one basket and it was the wrong basket," he explained. "In retrospect, I probably should have spent more time out looking deep — in that 20- to 30-foot zone — but I can't get too much going on in my head or I get confused."

But that's the way it goes. For every fantasy underdog clawing to the top, there's a darling who makes fantasy owners want to kick a stack of rods. Nearly half of owners bet on South Carolina's own Casey Ashley to justify their love.

After Day One, he was in fifth. On Day Two — not so much. He caught only two keepers worth 5 pounds, 12 ounces, and looked more than a little sheepish weighing his fish.

When Aaron Martens noticed him walking to the press room, he asked Ashley what happened. "Man, I just bombed out," he said. He found big fish but couldn't catch them. He even spotted a lunker in hip-high water and told his attendant cameraman, "Get ready. This fish is 7 pounds."

Didn't happen. Ashley had enough weight after Day One to float him to 20th place and a final day fishing his first Classic. Not a bad showing, considering that the returning Classic champion, Boyd Duckett, finished in 33rd place. (That low rumble you hear is a chorus of 46 percent of fantasy owners groaning.)

Duckett only boated two fish among the six bites he got on Day One before bouncing back to catch a 15-2 limit Saturday. His deficit was too great to make up.

"I really needed sunshine," he said. "I thought had a good back-up for the rain: deep fish."

Duckett caught his two fish in about 30 feet of water, but, finding mostly suspended fish, tried to go shallow. There he found quality bites — "I had a 4, a 5" — but failed to boat them.

"I just couldn't catch anything," he said. "I lost one on a Rat-L-Trap, one on a jig and one on a spinnerbait. So I managed to lose them on the entire plethora of baits."

Versatility, it seems, can also lose Classics.

Duckett just about tied with Steve Kennedy for the dubious title of Fantasy Value Misspent. The fifth-most common pick — one slot above reigning Angler of the Year Skeet Reese — Kennedy limped in on Day One with two fish weighing 5-3. Despite a 12-13 recovery on Day Two, he finished in 39th place.

He went down by throwing a football jig to fish who didn't want one. On Day One, he said, he got just 10 bites and landed just two of those. Here was his account of the typical nonsense he encountered on one hole:

"First cast, got a bite, missed him," he said. "Two or three casts later, got a bite, missed him. Got a bite, missed him. Got a bite, hung a tree. Popped it off, let it go back by him, missed him. And he wouldn't bite the jig again. So I dropped the jigging spoon down there, and he annihilated it. Pulled it off, and then — nothing. After they were done, they were done."

After he set the record for BASS tournament weight in northern California last year, Kennedy always looks like a potentially awesome fantasy pick. But maybe he needs to get more inventive. Saturday, he said, he didn't so much as consider making a run to Clear Lake.

Bassmaster.com will provide unprecedented live video coverage of the Classic this week, Feb. 22-24. We'll have live "Hooked Up," daily launches at 7:15 a.m. ET and live weigh-ins and real-time leaderboards starting at 4:30 p.m. ET broadcast live from the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, S.C.

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