Hanging at The Fish Wrap gets no better than during March Madness. Get paid to hang out and bet on sports. Awesome. Pete Rose really did have something there.

But The Fish Hack is backing away from the big screen just long enough to do a Final Four of fish in the Big Fish Madness tournament featured today in The Fish Wrap.

That’s the Versus.com promo that uses an NCAA-like bracket to set up hypothetical battles between different fish species to determine which fish is, pound for pound, the toughest around. To check it out, click here.

Versus started with 32 species. We’ll cut to the chase and do just the Final Four. But first, a disclaimer.

Fish Wraps are notoriously loaded with Homers, and when it comes to sport fish, this hack’s no different. For blogging’s sake, we’re only grading species The Fish Hack has caught. So there’s no tarpon, grouper, bluefish, bonefish, etc. Those are all the NIT — Not In Tournament.
That said, here’s my Top Four Prime Time Pisces:

STEELHEAD — Definitely a No. 1 seed on my bracket and easily in the Final Four. Nothing stronger and more admirable than a Rogue summer steelhead. The reason The Fish Hack underachieves at The Fish Wrap. Well, that and the fact that no one who knows me would hire me.

FALL CHINOOK SALMON — Elk River fall chinook pull like a draft horse on crack. But still a No. 2 seed that needed a little help to get this far.

SHAD — I once got spooled by a shad on the lower Umpqua. Burned into my backing and stole my fly line. So it gets the nod. That way, there’s no admission that perhaps it was a badly tied nail knot that was the culprit there.

BLUEGILL — Give Dickie-V his props. They’re like ants…small, but can carry, like, 65 times their own body weight. Still, a darkhorse.

Tomorrow, it’s Steelhead versus Bluegill and Fall Chinook verus Shad.

Go ahead and tell me you’re winners and any agruments for or against any of these fish. Or just wait for The Fish Hack to settle the score.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Outdoor Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.