Beer and Bass Fishing

Beer and fishing go together like bass and topwater frogs. I’d wager that the majority of fishing trips taken by anglers all across the country have included at least a few beers. Beer companies know this and many breweries have focused a good deal of their marketing specifically toward anglers. Some beer companies, in fact, were at one time so closely associated with fishing and the outdoors sporting world that the two became almost inseparable. In Beer and Bass Fishing we’ll take a fun little romp through some of the vintage print beer advertisements that feature fishing.

It’s worth noting that while beer has long been associated with angling, in a general sense, the real heyday of fishing-centric beer advertising probably ran from the later 1940s through the 1980s. Following WWII a lot of GI’s coming home embraced both beer and the outdoor pursuits with, ahem, gusto (give yourself some points if you can remember what beer ads used that word). Moving from the post-war period into the 1950s the American economy was expanding at a record pace, offering former soldiers more expendable income and more leisure time with which to pursue activities like fishing, and to partake in that very American of consumables, beer. When I say that beer was a very American libation, of course I recognize its roots and history in Europe. What I mean to imply is that, in my opinion, beer became more prominent in American society, began to be produced by large corporate breweries, and was consumed by Americans in quantities heretofore unheard of.

Beer companies, en masse, created advertising campaigns that highlighted an idealized vision of American culture. They depicted neighborhood gatherings and a sense of community where friends enjoyed all kinds of activities together (including angling), in an idyllic vision of relaxation, nature and prosperity. It was, in a sense, a reaction to the feelings the recent war engendered in Americans. Men and women were bombarded with both television commercials and print ads that conjoined beer with leisure, albeit manly, activities such as fishing. But women were a definite part of the vision, often sharing the piscine pursuit with their men, although usually in supporting roles.

Without getting too deeply into cultural analysis, let’s just say that the kind of vision these ads created was exactly what so many Americans were longing for. After several years of hardship and sacrifice during WWII, every red-blooded American was probably aching to lazily cast for bass and enjoy a cold beer while doing it. And once the die was cast, beer companies stuck with it for a good long time, consistently marketing their brew to anglers and hunters over the next few decades.

But in this essay we’re focusing on the fishing imagery of beer advertisements. So let’s have some fun.

Here’s our first two ads, and they’re pretty straight forward. The one on the left is from 1941 and shows a monochrome bottle and glass of Miller High Life, with a baitcasting reel and rod combo behind the beer, and a couple of lures, including one Dardevle-like spoon, in the foreground. The text reads, “Enjoy Life with Miller High Life,” clearly implying that fishing is at least one way to accomplish this goal. We whole-heartedly agree! The message is simple, uncluttered and direct. Same thing for the ad on the right, which shows several rod and reel combos behind an image of Miller High Life. This one has text that, to paraphrase, says that just as every fisherman has a favorite rod and reel, so too does he have a favorite beer, and Miller High Life is it. We can date this ad to somewhere between 1949-1951, because of the little blurb at the bottom, which announces radio programming for the Lawrence Welk High Life Revue. Miller sponsored Welk’s show during those years.

Our next beer and fishing ad was released in 1948 by the United States Brewers Foundation (USBF), a trade organization formed in 1944 by the merger of the United States Brewers Association (USBA) and the United Brewers Industrial Foundation. This ad was #15 in a popular series titled “Home Life in America,” or the “Beer Belongs” series, which ran from 1945-1956, and were designed to promote beer drinking in everyday American life. There were 120 numbered print ads and a series of unnumbered ads that both preceded and ran after the numbered ad campaign. They were paintings created by prominent illustrators of the day, this one being crafted by Douglass Crockwell and titled “Prized Possessions.” The ad shows two friends admiring surf casting rods and reels, and a couple of baitcasters, owned by one of the men. There appears to even be a red and white bass lure in the open tackle box. Given that there’s a mounted striper on the wall behind the men, it’s not a stretch to think that these guys might also pursue largemouth or spotted bass. Their wives admire a piece of dishware in the background.

I think it’s worth reprinting the text at the bottom of this ad:

“Beer belongs…enjoy it.
In this home-loving land of ours…in this America of kindliness, of friendship, of good-humored tolerance, perhaps no beverages are more ‘at home’ on more occasions than good American beer and ale.
For beer is the kind of beverage Americans like. It belongs—to pleasant living, to good fellowship, to sensible moderation. And our right to enjoy it, this too belongs-–to our own American heritage of personal freedom.”

If that doesn’t make you feel patriotic…

I’m guessing that for Crockwell at least, fishing was indeed a part of his American life, as he created several paintings in the series that prominently feature fishing, as the next two ads attest.

These ads too were painted by Douglass Crockwell, the first titled “Getting Ready for Summer” (#29 in the series), shows two couples doing what men and women apparently did to get ready for summer in 1949: the women are preparing garden plantings and the men are discussing fishing gear over a couple of cold beers.

The second ad is called “Casting Lessons in the Backyard” (#68 in the series) and was released in 1952. It shows a gathering of stylishly attired friends in a well-manicured backyard, with one man teaching one of the women how to properly cast a fly rod, while their friends look on from a patio table that holds a serving tray full of brown beer bottles. These two paintings show fly fishing gear, and at this time fly fishing was still a technique used by many anglers to pursue bass, although there is of course no way of knowing what these folks were fishing for. But this is my article and I’m declaring that they were definitely bass anglers! 

Our next beer ad is from Budweiser and is most definitely a bass fishing ad! The piece is from 1950 and the scene shows a couple who have been out bass fishing in a canoe. They’ve beached their canoe and are enjoying a shore lunch of sandwiches and cans of Bud from a very cool vintage red metal Budweiser cooler. Their rods and net are clearly visible in the canoe, as is the open tackle box (I think I see another red and white lure in the top). This one is from the company’s “There’s nothing like it” series, and the upper text reads, “There’s nothing like it…absolutely nothing. One treat right after another! The music of birds and wind in the treetops…the hefty plop of the scrappy bass you’ve hooked…and finally cold, golden Budwesier inviting you to delight in the world’s most famous beer.” They sure are painting a picture with words here.

It’s worth noting that from 1945 to 1955 the brewing industry lost around 175 individual breweries to consolidation (from 468 down to 292) yet average personal beer consumption (per capita) hovered between 16 and 19 gallons per year. As the years would move forward the number of breweries would continue to decrease until the late 1980s when the craft beer market began to boom. Per capita beer consumption was also just over 21 gallons in 1975, the highest it had been since 1910.

Next up, a couple of sweet ads from possibly my favorite old time brewery, Hamm’s. I remember, as a kid, watching those old commercials with the Hamm’s bear. I can still sing the tagline from their jingle: “From the land of sky blue waters!” The bear was created in 1952 and became the brewery’s mascot. The animated commercials were memorable, catchy and clever. In this first ad reproduction the “Hamm’s beer bear” is casually and carelessly walking to a boat, fishing rod over the shoulder, but he’s absentmindedly walking over another bear who’s trying his best to hold the boat to the dock. 

The flagship Hamm’s brewery, started in 1865, was located in St. Paul, Minnesota and at its peak it was the 5th largest brewer in the country. The Hamm’s bear was so popular that in 1999 Advertising Age Magazine called the campaign featuring the bear one of the best ad campaigns of the last 100 years.

In addition to ads and commercials featuring the cartoon bear, Hamm’s released campaigns that were more about creating a feeling, a feeling of nature in its most untouched form. I don’t think any other brewery in America so closely identified itself with the great outdoors as did Hamm’s. Icy mugs and glasses of beer were superimposed over scenes of blue northern lakes lined with pine trees or boulder strewn rivers in wilderness settings. People were optional in many Hamm’s ads. It was all about the scenery. But the second Hamm’s ad here does imply a human element. It shows the usual composition of beer and pristine northern lake but with a baitcasting rig and what looks like a Helin Flatfish in the foreground. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture yourself pulling giant smallmouth bass from this beautiful lake, and enjoying a cold Hamm’s between battles.

In the Hamm’s ad below, a couple of successful bass anglers – one man hefts a full stringer of what could be either largemouth or smallmouth – are about to enter a cabin where bottles of Hamm’s beer await. These guys look pretty excited to either have a Hamm’s or show off their catch, or maybe both.

Next we come to one of the more unusual – I’d even say crazy – beer ads I’ve come across. I don’t have a date for this Falstaff beer ad but I’m guessing it’s from the 1940s. It shows three men in a flat-bottomed boat in a river that seems very rough on one side of the boat and relatively calm on the other. Two of the men are seated while the third stands awkwardly in the bow as he fights what looks like a monstrous, leaping largemouth bass. The bass looks to be around 7 pounds. The angler looks completely shocked at the size of the largemouth, as he holds what appears to be a fly rod in one hand while his other hand grasps the air. His body posture suggests he may have momentarily lost his balance in the rough water (why is he standing in the first place?). The fellow in the middle seat has a baitcaster on his lap, a bottle of beer in his right hand and a smoking pipe in his left. At his feet is what appears to be an open cooler filled with beer bottles on ice. The man in the back of the boat handles a single paddle, but if you follow the fishing line from the rod held by the standing angler in the bow, it enters the water on the far side of the boat, comes up on the near side and is wrapped around the rear man’s paddle, and then connects to the fish. Our oarsman or paddler has an open crate of camp dishes and a minnow bucket at his feet, there’s an open tackle box in the middle of the boat (with more red and white lures), the standing angler straddles another case of Falstaff and there’s what looks like a pump action .22 rifle lying in the bow. Oh, and the standing angler’s beer is falling off his seat and spilling all over. This scene is pure chaos!

I’m not sure what the advertising message is here. Maybe that you shouldn’t drink beer and fish? Who knows. The picture was painted by Joseph F. Kernan, an artist known as “The Poor Man’s Norman Rockwell.” He was well-known for painting pictures of fishermen and hunters, and for illustrating many covers of The Saturday Evening Post. I found a site where this particular painting was ostensibly being sold. It was priced at $89,000.

Speaking of J.F. Kernan, check out this ad for Grain Belt beer, probably from the same era. Two anglers have just ended their day on the water. Unfortunately, they got skunked, or neither one caught any bass worth keeping. You can tell by the empty stringer the fellow on the dock is carrying, as well as their shocked expressions at the scene in the water at boatside. The angler in the boat is emptying the minnow bucket into the lake and as he pours out the contents a sizable largemouth bass leaps from the water to engulf one of the baitfish! The angler with one foot on the dock has the same body expression as the standing angler in the previous ad. At least they had their Grain Belt beer to console them. I’m not sure how effective these ads were, but Kernan was one of the more interesting artists on the scene, with ads that were humorous, folky and just plain strange.

Next, it’s Budweiser again, though a bit later in time than the earlier ad. These two are from 1959 and 1962, respectively. The first uses the slogan “Where there’s life…there’s Bud,” and shows an angler holding a spinning combo in one hand and a can of Budweiser and a cigarette in the other. What’s interesting about this image is that I think we can identify his spinning reel. It looks like a Fin-Nor, an unusual spinning reel that was designed by Gar Wood Jr. and was released the same year as this ad, 1959. By all accounts, Fin-Nor marketed very high quality reels.

The second ad, released in 1962, shows an image similar to its predecessor. It’s a lone angler holding a can of Bud and a cigarette, but even though the text says that “the big ones are biting,” this guy is just chillin’. He’s sitting on a dock, maybe taking a break to enjoy a beer and a smoke. His tacklebox is open and his spinning rod leans against the bench he’s sitting on. And we can come close to identifying his spinning reel as well. It looks to be a Mitchell, possibly a 300 or a 306. The Mitchell 300 was an extremely popular reel in 1962. From its release in 1951 until it ceased production in 1986, Mitchell sold well over 13-million units. The 306 was no slouch either, selling over a million-and-a-quarter during its production lifetime.

Beer companies have played an important role in professional bass fishing as well. Early in the history of the BASS Masters Classic, Miller Brewing was a sponsor of the tournament, and Busch beer sponsored the Elite series when it kicked off in 2006. Other breweries and beer companies have sponsored pro bass tournaments ever since professional bass fishing became a thing. Below are three images courtesy of Terry Battisti, the first shows Roger Moore after day 2 of the ‘74 Classic when he was leading; the second is a two-page spread for the 2006 Elite Series with Busch Beer proudly announcing their sponsorship of the tournament, and the third is of Terry’s logo’d stein and two Bassmaster Classic patches from ‘73 and ‘74. Click on each image to enlarge it.

And here’s an interesting piggyback on bass fishing tournaments sponsored by beer companies – beer companies running their own fishing contests. I’m doing some research for The Big Bass Podcast on Wisconsin state bass records, and I’ve learned that the smallmouth record was caught by a fellow who entered the fish in a contest run by Fitgers Brewing out of Duluth, MN. Below is a countertop ad for a fishing contest run by Genesee Brewing and its founder Louis A. Wehle. It shows a leaping largemouth bass, fighting to throw a Bass-Oreno, prominently at the top of the placard. Wehle must have been a bass angler, because I’ve found at least three other old Genesee beer ads, and another company-run contest, with prominently featured largemouth bass. Wehle also published a series of New York State Fishing Guide books in the 1950s and 1960s.

Miller Brewing’s commitment to the sport is evidenced by their willingness to sponsor bass tournaments over the years, as well as their many print ads featuring bass and bass anglers. Here’s a humorous ad showing a smiling angler with a fishing rod in one hand and a bottle of High Life in the other. The text reads, in part, that after experiencing “the explosive blast of a savage muskie…or the sudden sock of a fighting bass,” taking a break to enjoy a Miller beer is called for. The fisherman looks like he may have taken a few too many beer breaks, as does the goofy-smiling bass under his boat.

Our last beer ad in this article comes from Rheingold Brewery, a New York brewer that originally operated from 1883-1976, although there have been various permutations of the beer since then. Rheingold was well-known for their Miss Rheingold Pageant and for using celebrities in their ad campaigns. This particular two-panel ad is from 1956 and shows movie actor Van Heflin attired in fishing regalia, including hip waders, and holding an undetermined spinning rod. Heflin talks about “the one that got away,” but promises a shore lunch of fish and iced, “extra dry” Rheingold as he prepares to open a can with a group of friends at the water’s edge. I’m not sure how appealing “dry beer” or stories about the fish you’ve lost sound to our ears today, but hey, if a Hollywood actor in hip waders says it’s good beer it must be true! 

Of course no piece on beer and bass fishing would be complete without mentioning the Heddon Big Bud lure. Designed by Jack Davis and first showcased in the 1975 Heddon catalog, the Big Bud was initially thought to be a weird gimmick lure. That may have been the first impression of many anglers, but since then a heckuva lot of Big Bud lures have been sold and it’s become a highly collectible item with a strong cult-like following. The ad shown here is, in a way, a reverse of the theme of this article – it’s a bass fishing lure ad featuring beer. Huh? Heddon does a little word play on the Budweiser slogan “King of Beers” by describing the Big Bud as the “King of Lures.” They also emphasize that the Big Bud is a serious bass lure with text that indicates they performed a number of field tests and that big bass repeatedly hit the lure “again and again and again.” Neither is this a cheaply manufactured bait. The text reveals that like any of Heddon’s “million-selling lures,” the Big Bud is handcrafted using the same high quality material and hardware as any of their best baits. This is a serious big bass catching lure, that reminds you to enjoy a cold Budweiser when you’re done casting.

I’ve gathered a lot of great beer ads that feature fishing, but had to be selective and weed out most of them for this article. If this essay gets enough attention to merit it, I’ll do a part 2. So, if you enjoyed this piece feel free to share it with anyone else you think might get a kick out of it. And let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.