Wrestling with a catch
A former wrestler jumps out of the ring and into the ocean.
UNLIKE in his previous job where he manhandled his opponents in the wrestling ring, TV host Eric Young says he handles the fish he catches carefully.
“Ninety percent of what I do is catch and release, it’s more sport fishing than commercial fishing. It’s very low impact, people sport fish all over the world. We’re very mindful to handle the fish right, make sure we put them back in the water still alive so someone else can catch it and have the same kind of experience that we did,” he says.
Young, a former Total Nonstop Action (TNA) professional wrestler, is the host of the Animal Planet show, Off The Hook: Extreme Catches, about unusual and often dangerous fishing methods.
The show features stunts such as Young trying to catch a sand shark with pantyhose – and succeeding.
Young, 34, hints that the second season of the show will be even more extreme than the first, with episodes set in the harsh cold waters near Alaska, an ice festival in Minnesota and even under ice dives.
It is not only fishing enthusiasts who enjoy the programme, he stresses, adding that he has met many unlikely fans.
“I get stopped in the airport, you know, by girls as young as the age of 12 saying they watch the show and they love it. They don’t like fishing because fish are ‘gross’ and they don’t like touching them, but it’s still a fun show to watch.”
Part of the fun, apparently, is due to Young’s colourful way with words – he cusses quite a bit on screen.
In his own defence, he says: “Sometimes the emotions just come out and I cannot help it. I know Animal Planet is not a great fan of it and I know kids watch my shows.
“But the person you see on the show is who I am in real life.”
In fact, it was his colourful personality in the ring that caught the attention of the show’s producers. It turns out, fortuitously, that he is also a fishing enthusiast.
Young, whose real name is Jeremy Fritz (Eric Young is his ring name), is mindful of environmental issues, with the current furore over depleting fish stocks.
He says: “A lot of the fishermen in the United States are worried about world regulations. We did an episode where we were catching bluefin tuna. In the US, they’re very protected and you can only catch a certain amount a day, but bluefin tuna are global fish so the same one you catch in Cape Cod in Massachusetts could have been in Portugal earlier that year. Fish that are global should have global regulations.”
Strong opinions about the current fishing environment and regulations aside, he urges amateur anglers to just have fun.
“Fishing is a game of patience and testing. There are so many styles of fishing; try spearfishing, try rod and reel, try net fishing, try until you find what you really like.”
Ironically, the one person that he cannot seem to convince of the fun of fishing is his wife of 11 months, also a professional wrestler known as ODB, who is in her 30s. He confesses that she is not the biggest fan of fishing and the cold.
This means she does not travel with him and they have been apart as much as they have been together since they got married last May because he has been filming the second season of the show.
He admits: “I’m not good at the married life.” – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network
Catch on Animal Planet (Astro Ch 556) every Monday at 9pm.