The Woeful Tale (and Long Tail) of Big Mouth Billy Bass

It may have been funny the first time, but by round 5,572 it ceased to have any entertainment value. In fact, it might’ve been better used as a torture device than as a gift, but if you were known among friends and family as an angler in the very late 90s or early 2000s, some well meaning individual was going to give you a Big Mouth Billy Bass.

It didn’t matter if you were the second coming of KVD, or if you preferred trout or marlin – you somehow ended up with one. The givers didn’t care about pescatorial purity or accuracy. They just wanted to see you laugh, although by the time you got it, it was hardly new, so the laughs were forced at best.

If you were not alive then, or you were in a POW camp (where BMBB was not used as a torture device, as described above), let me tell you about this little gem. It was a latex rubber “mounted” bass, but when activated by nearby motion or (later) pushing a button, it would spring into action and songs such as “Take Me to the River” or “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Later they came out with other versions, including trout, catfish, lobsters, and deer, and about the time that it officially jumped the shark, they slyly added a great white shark.

It became a cultural phenomenon outside of the fishing world, showing up in numerous non-angling episodes of popular culture:

On The Sopranos, Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti bonded over one that played YMCA:

Later that same fish triggered substantial rage in Tony Soprano:

The New York Times even reported in 2000 that “Queen Elizabeth keeps hers on the grand piano at Balmoral Castle.” New York Magazine recently took a deep dive into how she got it, as reflected on the television program The Crown. 

Navy Federal Credit Union made reference to it in a commercial for secure mobile banking:

Laugh – or cry – all you want but it made the inventors and distributors millions upon millions of dollars. They reintroduced it in 2021 to sweep up a new generation of gift-givers. Even if they hadn’t, though, this is a story with a long tail. Even if you don’t want to buy, sell or process a BMBB of your own, it’s the gift that keeps on giving in the form of other uses.

For example, the Flying Fish bar and grill in Dallas created a “Big Mouth Billy Bass Adoption Center” for people who risked going Tony Soprano if they heard the songs just one more time. With a donation/adoption/relegation, you receive a “FREE BASKET OF CATFISH,” along with your name on the wall, which might result in the people at certain tables later hunting you down and killing you for ruining an otherwise peaceful meal.

The Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club in Chicago recently bought 70 of them, mounted them in a single stairwell, and choreographed them to sing in harmony:

Hackier types find ways to repurpose them as well, linking them to ChatGPT or Alexa for added content.

You can of course still buy the various iterations of the animatronic fish if – unlike the Flying Fish in Dallas – you’re not smart enough to get one or more for free. If that might push you over the edge, you can celebrate this cultural phenomenon through other gear like the following shirt:

Wavey Goods Co.

And this might be the oddest, most inexplicable and yet oddly the most riveting of the bunch:

Hype Clothing

[Editor’s Note #1: I apologize if you can’t get “Take Me to the River” or “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” out of your head now.]

[Editor’s Note #2: This is listed under the “Stuff We Like” tab of our website simply because there’s no “Stuff We Dislike” or “Stuff That Makes Us Uncomfortable” section.]