Attention anglers who love Bass fishing! The secret is out: On most days last summer you were badly outsmarted by a creature with a brain the size of a chickpea.

But hey, don’t feel bad. You weren’t alone. According to a recent government report, there are over one million of us that chase that little green creature all over Canada’s lakes. That’s right—almost one-third of Canada’s angling population put Mr. Bass on their Most Wanted list. But that pales in comparison to our American cousins; of the 50+ million licensed anglers in the United States, over 20 million claim to be addicted to bass fishing.

We give it our all. Everything we have. Money, knowledge, time, money, pride, health, money, relationships, jobs, and oh, did I mention money? Last year, Canadians spent an estimated 1.1 billion dollars on our little bass fishing fetish.

But it wasn’t a total loss. In fact, there were 18,205,060 reported catches of this elusive slime-coated little dynamo (only 2.5 million were kept). That works out to about $60 per fish caught and $540 per fish kept. At an average weight of 1.5 pounds, that means that each fillet of bass that hit the barbecue cost about $360. The best part is that it took a mere 17,881,082 man-days to do it. That’s right—when all was said and done we each spent 16.9 days in the outdoors exclusively in pursuit of Bass.

To nobody’s surprise, we were predominantly made up of knuckle draggers (76% male), which doesn’t bode well for my kind. However, that does mean almost 200,000 female bass anglers out there can’t lay claim to being all that bright either. That’s the real surprise.

All in all, more money was spent per capita on Bass fishing than any other freshwater fish in the country. That’s why they call it the money fish.

Angelo Viola