With ‘Top Hooker,’ Animal Planet tries a new trick

OFF THE COAST OF SAN PEDRO -- Tricycles are rarely meant to be pedaled on the water, and if they are, they’re probably not meant to be fished from.

Yet several miles out at sea, there were Chris Wright, Patrick Crawford and a number of other fishing enthusiasts riding giant plastic bikes on the water while casting lines they hoped would nab them some piscine prey. At one point, one of the tricycles began to take on water. “We seem,” Crawford said with wry amusement, “to be sinking.” A rescue boat headed out to offer him and Wright a new one.

The aquatic cyclists were contestants on “Top Hooker,” the punchily named series that premiered Sunday night on Animal Planet. Known for years for showcasing creatures real (“Puppy Bowl,” “My Cat From Hell”) and, more recently, fictional (“Mermaids: The New Evidence”), “Top Hooker” takes the Discovery-owned cable channel into somewhat different territory.

This show doesn’t focus on the animals--the fish make brief appearances, then go back whence they came--but rather on people and their foibles. The series turns its attention away from the affection for animals and toward the love of competition (and cash and vehicular prizes), setting up 10 competitors from around the country to play with and against each other in a series of unusual fishing challenges, like catching fish while riding water tricycles. It’s “Project Runway” by way of Ernest Hemingway.

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On this sunny but windy autumn day, the scene was something out of a surrealist movie: nearly a half-dozen motorboats tricked out with production equipment and camera crew surrounding bright red and blue tricycles, like a shark circling its prey. From the plastic vehicles, contestants cast their lines and began racking up the totals, going from single to double digits and getting more excited or frustrated as they went. (They would eventually release the fish back into the sea.)

On another boat, the host, standup comedian Reno Collier, offered a play-by-play—or attempted to, given that the sea is large and fish are small.

Wright, a boisterous 29-year-old from Hawaii who says he has traveled the world on fishing trips, punched his hand in the air as, a few minutes later, he disembarked from a tricycle and boarded the production boat. “This isn’t ESPN where you throw a couple lines into the water,” he said excitedly as the boat prepared to make the half-hour trip back to the shore. “These guys are throwing some curves at you, man.” “Those fish were begging to be on Chris’ line,” added Crawford.

Extracting themselves from another tricycle, Dan Devries and his partner for the challenge, Melanie Housh, were more despondent; their poor showing could mean one of them was going home. “Couldn’t quite get them in,” said Devries, a bass pro champion, wet and mournful.

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Animal Planet executives say they hope that “Top Hooker” captures some of the mojo that network and cable shows have found with other competition series, in which producers take a subculture of specialists and show them in their natural habitat, often with an NCAA Tournament-like spin.

Fishing, however, does present some unique challenges. For one thing, you can control a design studio or restaurant kitchen much more easily than you can control the open sea.

“It’s not easy to shoot when fish are your main character. They don’t always listen,” said Noah Mark, a veteran reality producer (“The Great Food Truck Race”) who’s at the helm of this show.

And any fishermen worth their tackle will say this is a sport of patience, with battles won and lost not just when you get a bite but in the hours between. And the hours between, needless to say, don’t make great television.

“Editing is definitely a fishing show’s best friend,” said Keith Hoffman, an Animal Planet executive who also serves as one of the show’s executive producers, in a phone interview last week. “But sometimes I think the most interesting moments are when they’re not catching fish.”

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Although to some, the idea of a reality fishing show may indicate that the 500-channel universe is starting to scrape, well, the bottom of the ocean, Hoffman said he saw “Top Hooker” as no different from many of cable’s biggest success stories.

“To me it’s like ‘Top Chef’ or ‘Project Runway,’” Hoffman said. “You don’t have to be interested in fashion to appreciate the skill or the personalities. And fishermen have very big personalities.”

Back on the shore, the contestants had gathered for lunch.

Fishermen, it turns out, come in as many breeds as the creatures they pursue. Some contestants, like Crawford, a wisecracking bearded man who runs a fishing tour-boat business with his wife back in Charleston, S.C., were freshwater experts who’d never seen the open sea before being cast on the show; others were from places like Hawaii and California and had been doing the coastal thing their entire lives.

Like oenophiles discussing the best vintages, they throw out names of fish they enjoy catching--calico bass, yellow perch, lizardfish--sharing tips on the best way to lure them and occasionally one-upping each other with stories of tactics and size of the catch.

Then the discussion turns to boats. “Man, I am loving this no-carpet thing,” Crawford said of one boat and style of fishing that required less cleaning of the guts-and-grime of fishing. “Bleach is your friend,” said Devries. “Bleach is your friend.”

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