By Pete Robbins
Special to BassFan
Kent Brown may only live 3 miles from his childhood home in Roseville, Calif., but his influence spans a much greater distance than that. Each Saturday morning over the course of the last 11 years, he’s been joined on his Ultimate Bass radio journey not only by many listeners at the breakfast table or in their recliners, but also by tens of thousands of anglers in their tow vehicles headed to the lake, taking his message with them up and down the highways and around the world.
Radio isn’t the only part of Brown’s multifaceted fishing business. In addition to his weekly show, which airs on 1140 KHTK-AM radio and is streamed and archived at UltimateBassRadio.com, he serves as the West’s Triton rep and has conducted seminars at International Sportsman's Exposition (ISE) shows for 27 years. He’s also an accomplished tournament angler, and he thinks that credential separates him from many of the other interviewers and journalists in the same space.
“I came through the ranks of the tournament circuits long before I had a radio show,” he said. “I think that gives me credibility with guys like Skeet and Byron and Gary Dobyns.”
While he has their ears, their respect and their attention – with many anglers calling Brown directly after big wins rather than waiting for him to call them – Brown makes it a point to “avoid the negative side of the sport. I think the forums have it covered. I avoid the conflicts and the anglers fighting. There’s a positive in every story if you dig far enough, although that’s not to say that I don’t get on a soapbox once in a while.”
Up Through the Ranks
As a teenager, fishing played second fiddle to hunting in Brown’s spare time, and while he still spends as much time as he can hunting waterfowl, the fishing industry beckoned him and drew him in. His first job as a high-schooler was pouring and painting Weapon Jigs for Gary Klein in his garage, to be sold out of the back of Klein’s van. That quickly grew tiresome – “I’ll throw a jig, but I sure as hell won’t pour one anymore,” he joked – but it marked a critical point in developing a sounding board in Klein, who remains a close friend to this day.
His entry into radio was equally happenstance. One day his friend Sep Hendrickson asked him to guest host the popular “California Sportsmen” radio show, which he still co-hosts today. They incorporated a bass segment and later came up with the idea for an all-bass show.
“Everybody said it would last about 3 weeks,” Brown said. “No one wants to hear about one species.”
Over a decade later, he still hasn’t run out of topics, and his listener base continues to grow.
Why does he think his approach resonates with fishing fans?
“I can get in the truck with them on Saturday morning when they’re going fishing,” he said. “I’m live at 5 a.m. I'm talking with the guys who are leading tournaments like an FLW or another big event as they go to the lake. I’ve done that with Jimmy Reese, Joe Uribe and Greg Gutierrez.”
While podcasts and internet broadcasts have democratized the message, he believes that there’s still no substitute for a “50,000-watt CBS station which reaches 75,000 to 80,000 listeners every day in two of the top 15 media markets in the country.”
It’s also about recognizing his place in the world and how he fits into the bigger picture.
“It’s just fishing,” he said. “We’re not rock stars. I’m giving the fishermen out there not only the opportunity to catch more fish, but also to get to know the guys they see on The Bassmasters or who they read about. I’m not afraid to go totally off course and ask them what they do between tournaments, or with their families. To hear that KVD has to hang his Christmas lights before next Thursday puts a different spin on it.”
Still an Advocate and a Fan
Over the course of his career Brown has worked hard to develop relationships with up and coming anglers, and makes himsel personally invested in their stories, their successes and their shortcomings.
“Skeet’s been a good friend of mine since he was 17,” he said. “So covering his AOY title and his Classic title were big for me.”
Nevertheless, he admits to minor cases of butterflies when interviewing certain industry figures. The first was when he hosted Jerry McKinnis live in the studio. The second was Larry Nixon, who he said was “always one of my heroes.” The third was the first time he interviewed VanDam. Now he considers all of them friends and confidantes.
From those media heavyweights, he’s learned the lessons that help him to instruct the new generation on how to avoid typical interview subject pitfalls.
“A good interviewee can throw in a sponsor plug and not have it seem blatant,” he said. “You need to know when to throw it in and when it’s going to sound insincere. The other thing guys have to remember is that not every listener knows what you’re talking about. You have to make it so all levels can follow along.”
He also remains an unapologetic advocate for bass fishing in the West, with a caveat.
“The West is always going to be a land unto itself,” he said, "because it’s an 18- to 23-hour drive to where most of the (national) tournaments are held.”
He believes that the new Wild West tournament circuit will succeed, and that FLW continues to do a good job for its Western contingent, but said that for any national trail to truly integrate that region’s anglers, it'll need to rotate the locations of their fish-offs.
“Guys out here are tired of qualifying for Tournament of Champions on Kentucky Lake or Wheeler against a bunch of locals, but they’d be willing to do it 2 out of 3 years if the third year the tournament was out west.”
No matter where that tournament takes place, Brown intends to be riding to the lake with the leaders, albeit from the comfort of the studio, and he’ll bring his listeners along with him.
