Back Story: Rich Harris Won’t Stop Fishing
You’re 50 years old, settled into a pretty good groove with a wife and family and told by your doctor that you have from one to three years to live. What do you do now?
If you’re Rich Harris of Monroe Township, Pa., you go bass fishing and do everything else that makes you happy. In September 2009, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bone marrow. Harris began chemotherapy treatments that November and underwent a bone marrow transplant, but the doctor told him that he could only count on another three years at the most.
Harris’ reaction: “I told him I was going to be the next record-breaker.”
Two years later, Harris feels fine, except for the weariness that the monthly immunoglobulin treatments have caused and occasional complications from amyloidosis. To look at him, Harris seems hale and hearty. Susan, his wife of 32 years, and his two sons and daughter have helped keep his spirits and his willpower strong, and fishing the Walmart Bass Fishing League’s Northeast Division has been like a healing balm.
Harris has fished for bass for most of his life. There are a lot of lakes in northeastern Pennsylvania and western New York, as well as the Susquehanna River. Years ago Harris joined a local club, the Weekend Bassers, and then he and a friend fished a local circuit called the Renegades. After his diagnosis, Harris decided that, among other things, he was going to spend a lot of time with his family and do a lot more fishing. He left his job working for an area paperback book publisher, began treatments and started working on his Bucket List. Tournament fishing in the BFL was near the top.
Larry Nixon planted that seed in Harris’ psyche long ago – in 1979 to be exact.
“A new tackle store was opening in the area, and Larry was there for one of his sponsors,” recalls Harris. “I was just one in the crowd and he was a superstar, but he talked with me just like a couple of regular guys would talk. He autographed a fishing catalog for me; I still have it. Honest to gosh, I was really impressed with him [Nixon] and I followed his career from then on. I like to read about him in the magazine [FLW Outdoors] and when I got sick, I thought, by golly, I’ve been reading about Larry Nixon and tournament fishing all this time and now I’m going to try it.”
In his first tournament, on Lake Champlain in June, he placed fifth in the co-angler division and earned a check. He finished 40th (at Lake Cayuga), 64th at New York’s 1000 Islands in July and 10th at the Oneida Lake event held in late August. He’s got a head of steam built up for the circuit’s grand finale at 1000 Islands in September. Currently, Harris is 11th in the Northeast Division’s co-angler standings.
Like his fishing mentor, Nixon, Harris prefers to fish soft-plastics but, as any co-angler will tell you, often what you use depends on what the guy in the front of the boat is casting.
“If my partner is throwing a crankbait, I’m throwing a spinnerbait,” says Harris. “I was lucky in the first couple of tournaments in that the other guys were using soft-plastics so I was using tubes and a drop-shot rig, which is kind of a new style of fishing for me. But I got a check in the first go-around, so, hey, no complaints.”
Collecting a check was a bonus for Harris, but, as is true of many anglers, he’s not in it for the money. There’s something about participating in a tournament that tugs at a fisherman’s competitive nature. It’s his opportunity to show the world that even when everything else might be beyond his control, he has the fishing locked down. It’s his chance to be the best at something, though entering a tournament is like buying a lottery ticket; you’re probably not going to win, but there’s always that hope when you start checking the numbers.
And perhaps, to a man whose future is cloudy at best, tournament fishing represents the simple pleasure of tasting and savoring every drop of life while it’s there in front of you.
“When you’re out there first thing in the morning and the sun is coming up and all those boats are revving up – man, that’s great,” says Harris. “To be honest, I can’t sleep the night before a tournament; I’m like a kid on Christmas eve.”
As Hank Williams sang, nobody’s going to get out of this world alive. And whether he lives to be 100 or 55, Harris plans to keep enjoying his family’s company and the company of anglers who share his enthusiasm and affection for bass fishing, tournaments, and each other.
If heaven is the best place with the best people that we can imagine, it’s easy to imagine what at least a corner of Rich Harris’s heaven will be. There’s a lake, and a warm spring sun is beaming down. Birds are singing and a breeze is stirring from the west, from the Allegheny highlands. A bass boat is easing down the forested shoreline, as if it were floating on clouds. Rich Harris is standing in the back, throwing a plastic lizard, and Larry Nixon is in the bow, running the trolling motor as he lobs another cast toward the bank.
And they’re talking about fishing…