It's not too often that a book about the sport of professional bass fishing comes along. And when one does, it's usually based on a common premise: Author knows nothing about pro bass fishing, author curious about how people can be fans of pro bass fishing, author amazed at the secret world surrounding pro bass fishing.

Ken Schultz, in his new book Bass Madness: Bigmouths, Big Money and Big Dreams at the Bassmaster Classic (Wiley, hardcover, $24.95), touches a lot of that. Which leads to some immediate disappointment in the opening chapters. Schultz, who has authored more than a dozen fishing books and spent three decades as a writer and editor at Field & Stream, comes right out in the introduction and explains that he just doesn't get the pro-fishing thing.

But as he also explains, that's why he wrote the book. He wanted to know more. Primarily, he wanted to gauge the effect ESPN's TV coverage has had on the sport. And he also wanted to figure out why there are BassFans.

To learn, he attended two Bassmaster Classics (Pittsburgh in 2005 and Toho in 2006). And the majority of the book is about what he observed.

He covers each Classic in painstaking detail, but not from the standpoint of the competition – more from the standpoint of how the competition was covered on TV. He spares no rod for ESPN, and its conflict of interest in "covering" an event it owns.

Schultz points to glaring ESPN foibles like its treatment of George Cochran in Pittsburgh (and Cochran's quick exodus from the stadium, which left BASS searching for another angler to put onstage for the "Super Six"), its brush-off of Classic contender Luke Clausen to focus on ESPN favorites, and ESPN's positive spin on what appear to be dismal Classic attendance and viewership figures.

There are chapters upon chapters of what ESPN does wrong, mixed with some of what it does right.

And maybe that's at the root of why with this book is good, but not great. Don't get me wrong, as editor-in-chief of BassFan, it's my job to maintain a critical, balanced eye. And I certainly recommend all BassFans read Bass Madness – it's packed with info, and at certain moments, provides the best-ever inside look at the ESPN era of BASS.

But overall, the book itself lacks balance. First, readers will likely come away never knowing that Schultz was a short-lived host of a segment on BassCenter, but was let go early in the life of the show. That appears to have left him with some residual anger toward ESPN.

Also, BASS and ESPN take a pretty solid whipping, but a lot of what Schultz rightly points out also applies to FLW Outdoors. A much stronger book would have come from Schultz also attending the FLW championships, then analyzing the TV coverage and sponsor policies and specious rules there too.

And despite some penetrating insight about the Iaconelli DQ, Luke Clausen's Classic win, BASS's relationship with the media, and other sticky topics, the final third of the book seems dominated by Schultz' personal vendetta against sight-fishing.

And that right there is exactly where this book misses the mark. Schultz never answers the question he poses in the introduction: "What draws people to takeoffs and weigh-ins and sitting in front of (TV) screens?"

Among all Schultz' analysis of the league, the fans, the TV coverage, there's little analysis of what makes fishing such a great sport, worthy of the TV coverage he so carefully picks apart. By that I mean dynamics like pattern vs. spot fishing, fish management, decision-making, local information, mental focus, timing the spawn, boat draws, slumps, adjustments, and all the rest.

In the end, $500,000 prizes didn't create BassFans. TV didn't create BassFans. We're here because we love the sport for what it is. And we were here long before ESPN's entrance, long before the big payouts, and long before the sponsor conflicts.

So ultimately, the only thing BassFans will take from BASS Madness is some critical insight about ESPN and BASS.

But non-BassFans who read it will still be left wondering – probably like Ken Schultz himself – why it is that people like us love this sport so much.

Bass Madness by Ken Schultz is available at booksellers nationwide, or at Wiley.com.