Fishing Outlasts Reality TV for Mary Delgado
By David Figura
The Post-Standard
Sometimes a successful stint on a sexy reality TV show can lead to new and exciting things — such as professional bass fishing.
Take Mary Delgado, the Season 6 winner of ABC-TV’s “The Bachelor.” She’s scheduled to appear Saturday for autographs at the Syracuse Crunch’s home game against Hershey.
Delgado, a former cheerleader for the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was a contestant on “The Bachelor” in 2003 and 2004. In her second appearance, she was proposed to by bachelor Byron Velvick, a professional bass fisherman from Nevada.
The two have since split up, but Delgado, who lives in Tampa, Fla., really got into bass fishing while the two were dating. She learned a lot from Velvick’s friends on the BASS tour, and she is still competing on the BASS regional circuit in the South.
Four years ago, she wet her line in Oneida Lake as a co-angler in an Elite Series competition, finishing in 60th place.
I gave Delgado, now 42, a call this week to talk about her fishing.
She told me she grew up in Cuba, where her father owned his own salt-water fishing boat. When she was little, she said, he took the whole family and left the country in the middle of the night for America.
“Me, I’m a tomboy. I love anything outdoors,” she said. “I used to go (fishing) a lot with my father and my brothers.”
She said it was Velvick, though, who introduced her to freshwater angling. He and his friends showed her the finer points of bass fishing. She has since competed as a co-angler in a number of bass tournaments, some at the Elite Series level.
In this state, Delgado has fished Oneida Lake, Lake Champlain and Lake Erie and to date she has $4,250 in career earnings, according to Michael Mulone, a BASS spokesman.
Her best finish as a co-angler was 2007 at Lake Tohopekaliga in Kissimmee, Fla. , where she finished 10th. Her biggest bass so far was caught on Lake Falcon in Texas.
“It was 11½ pounds,” she said.
Today, Delgado works as a Realtor. She also hosts a couple of outdoors TV shows, does “voice over” narration and is working with a girlfriend to put together an English/Spanish-language fishing show.
As for fishing, she said last year she sold her 21-foot Triton bass boat with its 250-horsepower Mercury engine. This past year, she fished two of the three regional BASS Open Series tournaments in the Southern Zone, but her busy schedule prevented her from fishing in the third, she said.
In the coming year, Delgado is looking forward to fishing as a co-angler in several regional tournaments. The BASS women’s circuit no longer exists, so she fishes against men. That doesn’t intimidate her.
“Fish don’t know what your gender is,” she said. “You just have to work hard like everyone else. It comes down to doing your homework and knowing (or learning) the area. Using the Internet really helps.”
I asked her if the future man of her dreams has to be an angler.
“No, he does not,” she said. “He doesn’t have to be a fisherman at all. As long as he is passionate about everything he does — and that includes taking the garbage out with a smile. That’s what I want.”
Delgado will be available for autographs and to answer questions during the hockey game’s second intermission in Memorial Hall at the War Memorial. Game time is 7:30 p.m.
