Corliss “Big Nasty” Williamson, who helped the Arkansas Razorbacks win the 1994 NCAA basketball championship, has a passion for bass fishing.
The former Razorbacks All-American forward and longtime NBA veteran took a trip on the Arkansas River in Little Rock with Little Rock native Tyrone Phillips on Thursday.
Williamson, an assistant coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves, retreats into fishing as a refuge. With a gap in his busy schedule, he eagerly accepted an invitation to spend a day on the water with Phillips, a seasoned tournament angler and expert on fishing the Arkansas River.
The morning was very pleasantly cool when we met at the boat ramp in Murray Park. A bright, waning gibbous moon dominated a clear sky. A light breeze ruffled the water. The sun was beginning to scorch the eastern sky as we launched Phillips’ boat, a late-model Ranger with enough high-resolution color screens to control air traffic at an airport.
“This is what you need if you want to compete,” Phillips said, eagerly demonstrating the capabilities of his forward-facing sonar to Williamson.
Young anglers, highly skilled with modern electronics, dominate professional bass fishing – much to the chagrin of older anglers whose power fishing tactics are no longer competitive.
“Major League Fishing sent me a questionnaire last week asking if forward-facing sonar should be banned (in MLF tournaments),” Phillips said.
“This genie won’t go back into the bottle,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Phillips said. “You have to adapt to the times. I’m not fighting it. I’m learning it.”
This conversation piqued Williamson’s interest. Why is this technology so controversial, he asked.
“Because it’s put all the veterans out of work,” I said. “The young guys have used it to open up a whole new world of fishing. They’re catching fish in quantities that would have been unthinkable 20, 30 years ago, and they’re catching fish – lots of fish – in places that people used to ignore.”
Williamson understood that. NBA veterans face the same pressures in a league dominated by young players.
“How does the quality of high school basketball compare to when you played?” I asked.
“It’s better now,” Williamson said. “Definitely better.”
“You really think that?” I asked. “How many Division I recruits were on the field the night you played (Little Rock) Parkview in the semifinals?”
Williamson smiled and named them. Derek Fisher. Maurice Robinson. Dion Cross. Kenneth Taylor. Wes Flanigan. And those were just the guys from Parkview. Fisher and Williamson had long NBA careers.
“But I don’t want to be the guy who always says everything was better in his day,” said Williamson, earning laughter in his artificial, grumpy old man’s voice.
“Did you ever think as a kid that you would get this far with basketball?” I asked.
“Not even in my wildest dreams,” Williamson said. “It wasn’t until I got into AAU ball that I started to see the possibilities.”
It was during AAU ball that Williamson earned his nickname “Big Nasty.”
“Clarence Finley (of Little Rock) was the one who first named me that,” Williamson said.
“Clarence Finley started this? No joke? That’s my cousin!” said Phillips.
Like fishing, basketball has changed. The emphasis is now clearly on mid-size players who can shoot from outside.
“We saw the beginnings of this on the Razorbacks team you played on,” I said. “Darnell Robinson was a 7-foot-4 player who shot threes.”
“Darnell did it, and so did Dwight Stewart,” Williamson said. “I was the smallest of the three, and I was the one shooting inside. But someone had to do it!”
“I wrote asides about the visiting teams when you played,” I said. “I had to visit a lot of gloomy locker rooms and try to get quotes from a lot of disgruntled players and coaches. I just wanted to thank you for making my job so difficult.”
This made Williamson laugh and led to some inside stories from that golden era.
“What are the most important things you learned from Coach Richardson that you can do today?” I asked.
“Two important things,” Williamson said. “He taught me how to motivate people and also the importance of conditioning.”
“How difficult is it to convince players to buy what you sell?” I asked.
“Not hard,” Williamson said. “They’re professionals, but they’re grown men, so you have to deal with them differently than you do with college players. In the NBA, the players have all the control. They’re more willing to go along with it when you’re winning. It’s harder when you’re not winning. And because I played myself, they respect my perspective and input more than they would with someone who hasn’t played.”
The most lasting result of Williamson’s time with the Razorbacks is the universal affection he enjoys from people across Arkansas. As much as Arkansas residents appreciate his performance on the field, they also appreciate his character.
“The Williamson name is very much appreciated in Russellville,” Williamson said. “My father, Jerry Williamson, and my mother, Bettye Williamson, have excellent reputations in the community. I always wanted to make sure I represented my family and community well and honored the legacy they created.”
As we talked, we tried with all our might to coax a bite out of the stubborn bass in the Arkansas River.
“The river is tough in August,” Phillips said. “There’s a 14-inch limit on largemouth bass and a 12-inch limit on Kentucky trout, and they’re pretty hard to get this time of year. In the summer, you only need about 9 pounds to win a tournament here.”
Williamson threw a Pop “R” chugger lure with his baitcasting equipment. Phillips threw a Yamamoto Senko, a lure he learned to appreciate while fishing with its inventor, Gary Yamamoto.
“I won an FLW tournament with it as a co-angler,” Phillips said. “There are many other brands with the same design, but Yamamoto is the best.”
“They should be, as proud as Gary is of them,” I said.
“He’s really proud of her,” Phillips said. “He told me right away, ‘I’m not going to sponsor you, so don’t even ask. But I’m going to put you in a position to win this tournament.’ And he did!”
The bass were biting so easily on Williamson’s surface lures that they were avoiding the hooks. The activity at this spot was quickly dying down, so Phillips took us to the inlet between the river and the bay at Burns Park. Williamson switched to a Texas rig worm. The current was rushing through the inlet and the bass were biting at the bait. We caught several largemouth bass, Kentucky bass and white bass there. It’s a strange place. The current was rushing in the inlet and then out again. The locks at Murry Lock and Dam were out of service, so there was no explanation for it.
Our next stop was, appropriately, the USS Razorback.
“This is where Aaron Martens almost won the Bassmaster tournament about 15 years ago,” Phillips said.
A drain pipe on the Argenta side feeds a small outlet. There is always fresh, clear water there, even when the river is muddy. Phillips and Williamson caught one each there, and I caught one on a jerkbait next to the submarine, reeling it in from front to back.
Our next stop was the remains of a bank below the I-440 bridge. The bank is surrounded by deep water. I tied on a lure I hadn’t used in decades, a lemon-lime flavored Bomber 6A crankbait. I caught a 14-inch Kentucky on the first cast, a drum on the second, and a white bass on the third. Further downstream I caught another Kentucky. Those were the last fish we caught.
Around 1 p.m., Phillips began negotiating heatedly with someone on the phone about some buffalo ribs.
“I was craving buffalo ribs,” Phillips said. “He said he was running out, so we’re going to have to get out of here pretty soon.”
This sparked a whole new discussion about seafood from the South.
“The only places I eat catfish are Memphis and Arkansas,” Williamson said. “I’ve had it in California and elsewhere, but it doesn’t taste right. Tastes mushy. That’s the only thing that really makes me ‘boojie,’ catfish. I don’t eat it anywhere else.”
“Man, I have to say, I’m impressed,” Phillips said to Williamson when we got back to the ramp. “I really thought you were going to give up after about an hour. You kept going!”
The bass were tough opponents that day. Big Nasty is used to tough opponents. He was ready to play until he beat them.
