Gone fishin'
If I were to tell you that a U.S. state is about to become the first in the country to host a bass fishing tournament sponsored by the state high school athletic association, which one would you guess it is?
Probably not Illinois, right?
But indeed, it is the Prairie State that will crack the nation's seal on varsity high school fishing next spring, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. I'm no fishing enthusiast - my head nearly exploded once when I interviewed a professional fisherman and he told me his equipment of choice was a "green-pumpkin Zoom Super Chunk trailer" - but Illinois seems a curious place for this sport to make its national debut. This site lists 104 freshwater lakes in Illinois - isn't Minnesota supposed to have, say, 8,896 more than that?
And as our esteemed photo editor Rob Brown commented, "How did Illinois do this before North Carolina?"
But perhaps I shouldn't be wondering that too loudly. If we had to put together an All-Area Fishing Team, I'd be dead in the water.