Right about now you may be wondering, “Who is Uncle Buck?” Around here everyone is “Uncle” so it can be hard to keep track, that’s for sure.
“Hey Aunty. We get one Uncle Buck?”
“Ah dunno. Ask yo’ faddah!”
In this case, Uncle Buck is one of three characters to co-habit the mind of just one man, William “Bill” Crawford, also known as “B.C.” and on increasingly rare occasions, “Uncle Buck.”
To understand B.C. take the gleeful approach to life of Hunter Thompson’s character Raul Duke; “When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.” Then, add in the verbal delivery style of Foster Brooks’ Emmy nominated character who stops in Dean Martin’s piano bar everyday to get a little drink to settle his nerves before going to work; “What kind of work do you do?” asks Dean. Fosters obviously tipsy character replies, “I’m a brain surgeon.” Or a dentist, or an airline pilot. You get the joke.
Finally, stir in the joyaux de vivre of Rodney Dangerfield’s character in the movie “Caddy Shack” — Al Czervik. Al nearly swamps and rams his friends sailboat while crazily driving a giant sport fishing boat, but does neither. Once danger appears gone, he sinks the sailboat by dropping his anchor on and through it. In classic Dangerfield style, Al then waves his arms, bugs out his eyes and yells down from the bridge, “Hey, you scratched my anchor!”
If you combine those three characters and those scenes, you will have a pretty good idea of what it is like to spend a few days at sea with Kona’s own fishing comedian, Captain Uncle Buck.
Since September 2019, however, B.C. has spent much of his time puttering around the house making custom gaffs or crafting Koa fish hook pendants, interspaced by hanging with his ever growing tribe of grandkids. He sold his charter boat “Chiripa” back in 2013, choosing to make cameo appearances at tournaments and on other fishing boats rather than fish for hire full time. By and large though, he puttered. One would think that getting back on the water after that long on land might generate some feelings of self doubt, but that would be out of character for an old salt like B.C.
We would need every bit of the space in the sports section, the society pages and the police blotter to relate all of the globe trotting adventures of Bill Crawford and his alternate personalities B.C. and Uncle Buck. However, the most recent headlines are that They came off of a three year hiatus from living salt free, jumped on a boat (figuratively, not literally) They had never before stepped foot on, then promptly went out and won an elite marlin tournament.
September 2019 was the last time that TV producer Ken Corday came to town to host his 5 day private fishing tournament, until just a week ago. Corday named his event TART, or Tag and Release Tournament, even though anglers can weigh a marlin if it meets a minimum weight. Corday comes over to team up with some of Kona’s finest charter skippers and crews, but mostly to mix HIS crazy mainland characters with a handful of our crazy island characters because of one canonical truth — fishing is supposed to be fun.
One thing about crazy characters though, if they are encouraged to dig deep and bring up their innermost lunacy, well then, all bets are off — especially with a guy like Uncle Buck. According to those on hand Capt. Crawford et al put on a quite a show.
Sure, he and his crew of ringers Capt. K.J. Robinson and Capt. Teddy Hoogs led angler Rick Fitts to a runaway tournament victory by catching 6 marlin, but according to B.C. “I put on a performance. I take ‘em on an adventure.”
I asked K.J. and Teddy to verify this assertion by telling me what it was like to fish with Uncle Buck for five days, and they solidly vouched for his bold claim. Both of them told me stories and indeed, it does sound like a rollicking good time with some dang good fishing mixed in as a bonus. However, none of the stories they told me are suitable to print in a family oriented small town newspaper, except the fishing ones.
Corday hires the same skippers every year, whether they have a boat or not. Because B.C. does not, he was quick to say he appreciates that Capt. K.J. and Sea Genie II owner Jamison Wyatt opened their arms and their boat to Capt. Crawford for use in the TART. It’s unclear if Wyatt understood that B.C. and Uncle Buck would be along as well. If he did, he didn’t care because Jamison even gave Crawford three practice days to get used to the boat, his new crew and to try and regain his sea legs and fish finding skills. Regain them he did!
Uncle Buck and crew caught one fish that weighed in at 511 pounds, released another one about the same size and a 200-pounder – all in one day. To this they added three more marlin tagged and released for a total of 1,511 points.
Their nearest competitor was a legendary character in his own right, Capt. Jeff Fay on Humdinger with 559.5 points. None of the other boats caught a single fish. Some muted grumbling was rumored because Sea Genie II was the only boat with a special kind of sonar. Again, Captains Robertson and Hoogs were quick to go to bat for B.C. — both saying, “We only saw a couple marlin on the sonar. The rest was all B.C. and to tell you the truth, we have no idea what he was doing either. How could we?”
Stands to reason. Think about it. How would anyone get inside the mind of someone who already has three characters living in there?