After life of grab-bag jobs, N.Va. resident settles on fishing guru
“Captain” Steve Chaconas has done it all.
He has hosted a financial reporting radio show, but retired from that in 2000.
“I found my bosses kept getting younger and dumber,” he said.
He was a writer for “The Howard Stern Show” in the early 1980s. He “sold computers before everyone had computers.” He has taught high school algebra. He sold Volvos and bartended in different decades, though on the same road — King Street in Alexandria.
But now, Chaconas, 53, has found his way onto the Potomac River as a fishing guide. The Mount Vernon-area resident travels around the country with top fishing professionals and gleans tips, both to take back home to his clients and to pen articles for top fishing magazines.
“Tournament-style fishing is kind of like weekend softball leagues,” he said — it allows guys to get hold of their competitive streak and unleash it.
“Guiding, on the other hand — I look at what I do as a form of recreational entertainment,” he said. “The Potomac River is one of the best bass fisheries in the country.”
Chaconas compared the Potomac to a golf course that can accommodate any skill level, pointing out that it’s home to a large concentration of largemouth bass, and that about half of Americans who fish or have fished have caught largemouth bass.
And, though he concedes that many a business meeting takes place during fishing trips (“It’s becoming the new golf,” Chaconas says), the sport is remarkably democratic.
“In my case, you really don’t have to be smart,” he said. “Two men become guys, [and] two ladies become girls when they come out.”
Fishing, as well as golf, bowling, croquet, pingpong and tiddlywinks, hovers between the vague definition of sport vs. game vs. activity. But don’t dare try telling that to Captain Steve.
“I consider myself to be an athlete,” he said. “I find it intriguing that people don’t envision fishing as a sport.”
Bass fishing is a physical activity, he said, and threading a lure through a target as small as a thimble — while making it presentable to the fish — pushes it past the label of “activity.”
“You put all these things together, and it really becomes a sport,” he said.
He also cited a cryptic axiom to bolster his case that only a true angler may understand: “Fishing lures don’t catch fish, fishermen catch fish. Fishing lures catch fishermen.”
Chaconas also relishes taking trips with professional fishermen to pick up tips.
“I try to unravel, I try to pick their brains,” he said. “It’s the same with anything else in the world — ‘why is this guy making money fishing whereas this other guy’ ” is just doing it for fun?
“My passion is being able to [share] what I can do well with someone else,” he said, whether it is providing financial market analysis or identifying the proper lure to attract a big catch.
