Mark Davis: Big Waters, Big Fish, Big Personality

If you’ve ever seen Mark Davis on the Outdoor Channel’s BigWater Adventures and thought there’s no way he could always be “on” the way he seems on the tube, let me clear things up for you – whether he’s eating chicken wings, dragging a tube for smallmouths or pulling on thousand-pound marlin, the dude is revved up. He carpe diems the hell out of every day he’s alive.

Even though he’s best known for his saltwater exploits, I first met him almost a decade ago at a media event on Lake Erie. We stayed in touch, and as I burrowed further into the bass industrial complex he’d tease me about staying away from the salt. “Don’t try any offshore fishing,” he’d warn. “It’ll ruin you.” I laughed at him. I was all-in on my limited corner of the world

So of course I had to call him recently to admit that he’d been right. After two sailfishing trips to Guatemala, and particularly after our recent tuna popping trip to Panama, I’ve become obsessed with the salt. I want to experience more of it and Mark is a guy who gets paid to chase as much of it as the human body can handle (although I’m pretty sure he’d do it for free). 

Here’s his story, as only he can tell it: 

HPFC: How does a guy originally from Indiana end up get the bug to travel the world chasing saltwater fish?

DAVIS: I thought I was going to be a tournament bass fisherman. This is something that’ll blow your mind. Two weeks ago I went back to the lake that I grew up on, where my grandfather had a trailer. A buddy of mine bought this 50-acre lake and we decided we were going to stock it with some bigger fish. I went up there and spent a week on Raccoon Lake in northern Indiana. I hadn’t been on that lake in 20 years. I went up the river and found some pre-spawn fish and left that spot with 22 pounds on a lake where any day of the year 12 pounds will win it. It’s because I remembered the things that I had learned growing up on that lake but I didn’t have the skill set I had now. On Monday I said to my wife I had an idea. By Tuesday I told her I was putting things together. On Friday, we had five fish over 5 pounds on a lake in Indiana. So to answer your question, I never really traveled much except in the state of Indiana and I learned every single lake intricately. I had seen the ocean on some field trips with the church and with school and a couple other vacations. I had waded around in the ocean a few times and been on the beach and done the tourist thing. I had never actively fished in an ocean until I was 21 years old. That was on my honeymoon. I went to Charleston and it got in my blood and two years later I moved down here and went out on a headboat.

HPFC: Was travel something you had thought about, or did that just naturally evolve?
DAVIS: I had always had the wanderlust, for lack of a better way of putting it. I was just never able to actualize it and go do it. I went out offshore on a headboat and it became the pivotal moment of my life and my career – two things happened almost back to back. You had a guy who was 22 years old who’d fished everywhere he possibly could in freshwater. Musky, pike, walleye, catfish, bass. If it was in freshwater I had a pretty good handle on it. I went down to South Carolina and went out on that headboat and I was just awestruck. It was like I stepped into Mars. I had no idea what I was looking at. I didn’t know anything about it. Everything that came over the rail, I was like, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” And then I went to Haddrell’s Point tackle in Mt. Pleasant and the reason that is pivotal is because I walked in a tackle shop as a 22 year old avid fisherman, and I could not tell you what 75% of what was in there could possibly be for. Maybe I’d seen pictures of some of it in Outdoor Life, but it struck me that I had absolutely no idea what’s going on outside my little droplet of water that I’d been fishing in. Then it just became almost humbling and lit a fire in me like you cannot imagine. I thought I was relatively good at fishing, and in my little bubble I was ok, but when I hit saltwater and saw some of the stuff, I had no idea.

My next pivotal moment in South Carolina was when a friend and I went out redfishing. That was when I realized that redfish are very similar to saltwater largemouth. You can damn near catch them on exactly the same tackle as long as you don’t lock your reels up. Back then they weren’t nearly as saltwater-friendly as they are now. But you can catch redfish pitching a jig up into the canes when they’re tailing. You can catch redfish on a spinnerbait when they were coming out. You can catch a redfish on a Rat-L-Trap on a flat at low tide. That was when I started thinking that all fish want is three things: They want to eat, not get eaten and make babies. It’s just where and how they do it that’s the difference. That has held true from that point forward. There’s guy who’ve known more about billfishing in the past 25 years than I’ll know in my life, yet I’m proficient enough to go and catch a billfish. There’s so many similarities of where fish are, what they do or where they swim. Back to the wanderlust thing. That’s when I started saying, “I want to go do this. I want to do this. I want to check this off. I see a similarity between this and this.” That led to a springboard that made me realize how little I knew and how quickly I needed to get after the rest of it.

HPFC: So with that as a background, what was the first exotic or semi-exotic trip you took from your South Carolina home base?
DAVIS: Probably Mexico as a springboard off a bass trip. We went to Aguamilpa  when they opened the lake and just as it happened a guy by the name of Jerry Meyer had a place in Manzanillo. This was about 1995 or 1996 and the owner of the lodge at Aguamilpa asked me if I wanted to go over there to go offshore. Besides the headboats, that was the first time for me. One of the writers for Cabela’s Outfitter Journal had just mentioned to me how he wanted to catch billfish a couple of weeks before so we put everything together to meet in Manzanillo. We went out and within 45 minutes we had a 400 pound blue on. They wanted to stick a flying gaff in it and I wouldn’t let them do it. I didn’t want to kill the fish. They were going to kill it, bring it in and sell it commercially. I didn’t want to do that. First blue marlin I’d ever seen up close. They told me that if I wasn’t going to let them kill it they were going to cut it loose. I wanted to get it up and touch the bill. They didn’t want to touch the bill. They didn’t even want to touch the leader. I probably very terribly – well, I didn’t kill myself so it wasn’t too terrible – I managed to get that blue. I leadered it, got it up to the boat, grabbed the bill, we took the pictures, got the article, turned the fish loose and it was all good. I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. I probably did everything wrong, took four wraps on the leader, did all the things that I should’ve probably died for, and from that point on I knew that I needed to learn more about all that stuff. I had just gotten a position at Shakespeare. They were trying to springboard into saltwater more. They didn’t have much of anything for saltwater, other than Ugly Stiks. I pretty much just told them that as I was growing and getting my captain’s license and doing all of the things that I was doing, let’s just expand out into saltwater stuff. That’s really how the whole things happened. I became buddies with Rip Cunningham and Barry Gibson and John Brownlee and Blair Wickstrom. They just took me under their wings and taught me.

HPFC: There are so many guys I meet in the bass world who are singularly focused. They have blinders on and don’t want to try anything else. Are redfish the gateway drug for those anglers to branch out? And where does someone need to go to experience it at its best?
DAVIS: Any tournament bass guy or avid bass fisherman – please don’t put your bass boat in saltwater, bad things happen, as you probably know. But that being said I will legit tell you that any solid bass fisherman can go to any one of the main estuaries from Port Mansfield all the way around into Florida and all the way back up to North Carolina and the Neuse River, and fish the back areas essentially just like they would fish any tidal river, just like they would fish for bass. They’ll start catching redfish.

HPFC: So that’s the gateway to other experiences?
DAVIS: I would tell you yes. If you remember all of the tournaments they’ve had in brackish water, you’ve heard the stories about guys with no experience with redfish whatsoever, they immediately knew when they pulled the trigger on one it was not a largemouth. It really is a lot of fun. You can use any bass category of baits that you want. I’ve caught redfish on Zoom Brush Hogs. When they’re up in the grass and see them, you take a Texas Rig and fish that thing in front of them, and they’re just like a bass – except you pull the trigger and a jet ski goes shooting out of the cane. That would be your gateway drug, but once you do that, do something visual – go tarpon fishing, sight cast cobias. Up your tackle into the next realm, get your 50 lb. braid that you’re actually going to need on a 6500 or 7500 reel. Get something that is going to be six- or seven-feet long and going to rip a hundred yards of line out and make you wonder what in the hell you hooked – when you physically touch the spool of the reel and it’s hot.
HPFC: For people who want to stay within the U.S., where should they go to do that?
DAVIS: You go down either side of the Mississippi River and you can get on the redfish until you get to the mouth and catch the rest of it. It’s tough to beat Venice, Louisiana. You can catch all the redfish you want, the eaters inshore and the bulls out. Then you can also go to the short rigs that are five or 10 miles max out of the mouth of the jetties and no matter which direction the wind is blowing you can go west, east or south and get away from it. You’re catching all kinds of stuff off those rigs. The cobias are there certain times of year. You’ve got mangrove snapper, American red snapper, tripletail, just about everything you’d want to catch. They’ve got that tarpon rodeo out of Empire every year and it usually takes pushing a 200-pound fish to win that every year.

HPFC: Is there either a species or a place that’s still on your bucket list?
DAVIS: There’s a lot of singles. There’s not a whole lot of countries. Australia was a big one, and I want to get back there. In two trips I think I had 38 species. It was sick. Some of the ones I got I wanted, like GT and queenfish and coral trout, the premier bucket list fish down there. Those are like the cubera and roosterfish of Panama and Costa Rica. But there were just piles of fish that I didn’t know what they were. If you watch the shows, you can tell I’m like someone hit me with a 20-pound salami in the side of the head. I’m just dumbstruck by what we’re doing. It’s just utterly stunning to me to drop down and I only knew what one out of five fish were.

HPFC: Fishermen constantly debate this, but what’s the hardest fighting fish pound-for-pound?
DAVIS: Does time matter. In other words, keep in mind: what pulls harder, a dragster or a tractor?

HPFC: You tell me. Which one pulls harder in a short burst and which one will kick your ass for the longest time?
DAVIS: A big gag grouper with a plan. The thing about a big gag is that he’s going to fight when he wants to and he’s got a plan when he does. I’ve seen more experienced anglers get wrecked by big gag groupers quickly than probably any other species. It’s about 50/50 for me, and I’m on my game. The grouper family in general, they live in stuff that they seem to know what they can do to you and how quickly they can do it. I’m a big dude and I pull really hard and I hit the gym and I lift weights and I’m ready to roll – and I’ve had fish pull me down so hard that I’ve pulled muscles I didn’t even know I had. So if you’re talking from a dead stop, punch you in the face and wreck you, pound for pound the groupers are pretty amazing. Now, if you want to talk about fish that’ll just double over most dudes it’s a yellowfin. Most fish, all things being equal, similar pound class, tail-to-tail, a yellowfin will drag them backwards and drown them.

HPFC: Is there a species that’s overrated?
DAVIS: Tons of them, but I’d rather not answer that because I’m going to piss a bunch of people off.

HPFC: If someone wants the ultimate angling experience and money is no object, where should they go?
DAVIS: Go to Australia, throw topwaters at GT until you get your [stuff] hurt.

HPFC: What’s your favorite fish to eat?
DAVIS: Am I grilling? Am I frying?

HPFC: You tell me. What’s your death row meal?
DAVIS: It’s tough to beat a pumpkin swordfish. If you could take the perfect fish fillet and make it better, that’d be a pumpkin sword, and I can’t really explain to you why. It’s more tender and it’s milder. Man, saltwater is so tough. I used to tell guys who fished in freshwater all the time that a walleye is the closest you can get to a decent saltwater fish to eat. That’s it. The groupers are amazing. Then you have a scamp grouper which is like it’s been soaked in butter for two weeks. You get the yellowfin tuna, get them bled out right, you don’t want to put anything on it, even heat. You just want to take a fork and eat it. There are so many saltwater fish that are amazing. The swordfish are phenomenal. Halibut are amazing. You start getting into frying fish – you get a cobia and get all the red meat out of it and when you fry it, it’s like a pork chop. It’s so tough to rate, but if I had to have a piece of fish just by itself, it’d probably be a yellowfin or a pumpkin sword. If I was going to put very little on it, maybe a little salt, pepper, butter and lemon, that’s what you’re going to go for. When you start using them in stuff, there’s different textures. In freshwater, you get a perch, a walleye, even a bass, you’re getting that white flakey meat. In saltwater you get so many different textures. It goes from a pork chop to chicken to beef, to something that’s like lobster. If it’s death row and I’m probably not going to see God but I’m hoping that I am, I’m going to want to have a nice clean palette, so it’s probably going to be yellowfin. I’ll sear it on high heat for about 30 seconds, just to put some bars on it. A little salt, pepper, garlic butter, maybe some lemon, and I’m good.

HPFC: What is the one non-tackle item that goes with you everywhere you go?
DAVIS: Sunblock, of course. Around my third year of BigWater Adventures, which would have been 2008 or 2009, I had never seen a dermatologist. I had what looked like a cigarette burn on my cheek that would not go away. My wife is a nurse and she told me to go to the doctor but I put it off for probably a year. I told her it was getting better, but it wasn’t getting better. Finally she made an appointment at the dermatologist for me. I went in there four days before a shoot in Boca Grande for Goliath Grouper and the doctor was going to do a biopsy, but he said, “I can tell you right now we need to schedule you for a mohs surgery. We’ll biopsy it, but I’m sure of what it is.” I didn’t even know what the mohs surgery was, so I said, “Listen, I’ve got to go to Boca Grande on Monday. Why don’t we do this on Friday?” I went in there and in my experience in all of my surgeries it’s been about 10 to 20 stitches. I had five cuts on me on this one and he asked me if I wanted to see it. I could smell my skin burning. He put the mirror up and the right side of my face looked like someone took a melon ball scooper from the base of my eyelid down to my jawline and took it all the way out to the bone. They had taken a five inch by one inch by three-quarter inch, “hot dog” out of my face and taken it off. I went into shock. He saw the look on my face, and said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to pull it over, like a face tuck. We’re going to bring it over and you won’t be able to tell.” I was just stunned. He told me that what you could see was just the tip of the iceberg and we had to get it all out of there. I said I had to go on a shoot on Monday and he said, “You’re not going anywhere on Monday.” I told him I was going – this was back when I was afraid I’d lose my job if I didn’t go. He said he’d stitch the hell out of it, but he told me I wouldn’t be in any position to want to do this. I was going to be in pain. My wife looked at the stitch chart – she turned it upside down, she turned it sideways, she turned it back upside down again, she couldn’t figure out which way was up. She had to call the doctor for him to explain to her. I had about 48 stitches on the inside and about 80 on the outside. It was sewed up pretty tight. I went to the shoot. I was on Percocet and I was talking to seagulls. I caught a 500 lb. Goliath on standup and I had no recollection. I watched myself on the show for the first time when it aired. I was totally out of it, but I didn’t know I was out of it.

When that was over with, it shocked the hell out of me, and I called the doctor. I told him that I was in a unique position for a lot of reasons. I’m a guy that thought you guy were pixies with fairy dust, and now I realize this stuff’s real, and I need to help you guys spread the word to idiots like me that won’t listen to anyone other than idiots like me. I asked him what I could do to help. He told me, “I need you to say this: Apply your sunblock liberally and often; see your dermatologist at least once a year; and go to SkinCancer.org. Can you do that?” I told him I’d do it at the end of every show. I think we’re at a hundred and seventeen shows and counting. I did the math, and if you add it up about forty million people have seen that PSA. SkinCancer.org gets bajillions of hits off of it. I have people constantly contacting me, sending me pictures, asking for a dermatologist to recommend. I follow up with every one of them. I’d say that 25 percent of the inquiries that I get through the show are about skin cancer and skin cancer situations.  

HPFC: If you had one day left to fish in your life, where are you going, what are you fishing for, and who are you fishing with?
DAVIS: I’d be with my family. I wouldn’t be fishing – you know me well enough to know that I consider this a job and that’s like asking the postman to go for a walk. I still enjoy it, but it wouldn’t be my last day. But if you tell me that I could only fish one more day for the rest of my life. I’m going to be throwing sub-sandwich-sized chuggers at GTs in Australia all day long. That is one of the most violent fish on the planet. I’d probably be with Tim Carter from Halco and Ben Knight from Ningaloo Sportfishing. It would be in Exmouth with them throwing Halco Haymakers at GTs.

If you were to take a yellowfin and get it addicted to crack, and also put it on steroids, give it a GPS guidance system for the nearest structure, and give it a mouth that is about seven times the size times the size of a tuna’s, and give it the ability to physically crush most baits like chewing gum, turning 5/0 4X Gamakatsus and turn them inward, that would be a GT.