Ralph’s intelligence training and his inquisitive nature led him to break ground in the fishing world and dispel many myths perpetuated by the outdoor press and angling authorities, based on his biological knowledge and skeptical approach to “tradition.”
June 04, 2025
By In-Fisherman Staff
In this issue, we acknowledge the many contributions of Ralph Manns. Longtime In-Fisherman readers know Ralph as a master of interpreting scientific information for anglers—avid bass anglers in particular. In this process, he didn’t shy away from calling out questionable practices of both fishery management agencies and anglers in his quest for better bass fishing. We published his first article in the 1982 June/July issue, entitled “The Home of the Black Bass Is . . .,” an analysis of tracking studies of black bass species, including his own work with Guadalupe and largemouth bass in Lake Travis, conducted as part of his M.S. degree work. Around that same time, Ralph became a regular contributor to the magazine’s Bits and Pieces column, where he’s shared science shorts on bass and other species. He remains on In-Fisherman’s masthead as a contributor to that column to this day.
But few readers know his background, as writing about fishing was his second vocation, after a career in the U.S Air Force. In the Air Force, he was navigator for a crew with the 26th Bomb Squadron out of Altus, Oklahoma, where he was first exposed to bass fishing. Growing up in Southern California in the 1930s, Ralph’s earliest exposure to fishing was with his grandfather who took him to a trout farm at age-6, near their home in Pasadena. This was decades before the now-famous southern California bass lakes were built.
Fed up with South Dakota’s frigid winters, Ralph’s father had packed up the family and headed to California in the 1930s. An engineer by trade, he invented a cooling system for tuna boats fishing out of Southern California, where two-and three-man crews would “jack-pole” yellowfin on short rods. Once World War II started, he built refrigeration systems for our fleet of Liberty Ships.
Ralph joined the Air Force and Strategic Air Command (SAC) stationed him in Altus, Oklahoma, for eight years with the 26th Bomb Squadron as a Navigator-Bombardier. He then left SAC to go to Washington, D.C., to attend school to become an intelligence analyst. Then, after serving in the Phillipines and Viet Nam, he spent four years at the Pentagon for the Department of Intelligence (DIA), starting as a watch officer and then as one of several editors of a daily DIA intel summary sent to the President (then Nixon). He fished several waters around D.C., catching bass in the Upper Chesapeake and in Maryland. He lost a huge bass in the lake in Quantico Marine base. He also fished Santee-Cooper in South Carolina. After a transfer to Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, he retired from the service in 1975, joined a bass club there, and became more involved with bass fishing.
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Bass behavior fascinated him and he enrolled at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University ) and studied fishery management and black bass biology, earning an M.S. in 1981. For his thesis research, he conducted electronic tracking and also scuba-dived to observe bass behavior. He considered working for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) as a biologist, but he had disagreements with some TPWD programs and wanted freedom to debate issues openly, so he focused on writing for fishing publications as part of his Fishing Information Services business.
Ralph’s intelligence training and his inquisitive nature led him to break ground in the fishing world and dispel many myths perpetuated by the outdoor press and angling authorities, based on his biological knowledge and skeptical approach to “tradition.” He was quick to call into question proposed length-limit regulations or stocking policies, based on his understanding of fishery biology and bass management.
Mr. Manns was way ahead of his time. His contributions were many over the next 35 years as he used various media, including the budding Internet, to inform anglers of timely topics. On the “Bass Fishing Home Page,” he responded to questions from readers concerning bass biology and management, and wrote a regular column for Jerry Dean’s Honey Hole magazine.
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As a member of the American Fisheries Society, Ralph perused scientific journals and studied other information on bass, reporting these findings in popular articles. His in-depth features in In-Fisherman explored the nature of bass and their habitat needs, behavioral characteristics, and feeding strategies, as well as addressing management initiatives to improve the quality of bass fishing and production of big bass. He was often able to meld scientific data with fishing strategies to provide sound advice on how to adapt fishing tactics to the physiology, habitat, and location of bass.
He emphasized the importance of habitat quality in production of good fishing and called out the powers that allowed agricultural, industrial, and community development to abuse land and water resources. He was also fervent in warning about situations that threatened the quality of bass fishing, such as barotrauma, hooking mortality, and environmental damage.
Ralph regularly encouraged proper care and handling of the catch by anglers. He was the first to draw attention to the problem with the way anglers sometimes hefted huge bass for photos, using the lower jaw for leverage. David Campbell, longtime director of Texas’ ShareLunker program, revealed that when 13-pound females caught by anglers were brought to the hatchery for propagation, some had broken jaws due to such handling, reducing their ability to feed. In the decades since, we’ve seen the practice decline and nearly disappear. Ralph also encouraged the benefits of using barbless hooks, particularly for hooks taken inside the mouth, as opposed to lures like rattlebaits, which would be thrown easily.
On these and other topics, his recommendations were way ahead of their time. Back in the mid-1980s, he wrote, “Wherever possible, we recommend on-the-water measurement and the immediate release of fish.” Not surprisingly, he was very pleased to see the popularity of the Major League Fishing model and how it has trickled down to local events. He also helped In-Fisherman and other publications sell the concept of catch-and-release of large bass.
He and his wife Phyllis lived in the Austin area until 1998 when they moved to Rockwall to be closer to family. Ralph continued to fish many Texas waters and wrote articles and columns for many years. He and Phyllis now live in an assisted-living facility there. At age-91, he still gets out to fish occasionally with a companion, but is no longer up to writing. We continue to consult his contributions for the many important principles he revealed.
Steve Quinn compiled the information for and wrote this tribute on behalf of In-Fisherman. As a decades-long Senior Editor for In-Fisherman and now Field Editor, he has had a longtime collaboration with Ralph Manns, being the primary editor of his work.
