AP Photo/Mel Evans Mike Iaconelli is kicking bass.

That's really something when you consider I've fished perhaps four times in my life, all as a kid.

But mastering casting won't mean I can do what he Iaconelli did the other day on the Delaware River: pull in 50 bass in a few hours' fishing.

Most of us will never fish as well as Iaconelli, who has won about $1.5 million in fishing tournaments and has endorsement deals worth hundreds of thousands each year.

AP Photo/Mel Evans Mike Iaconelli is known to taunt fish, whoop and even break-dance on his boat.

The only thing he has in common with the good ol' boy stereotype of a bassmaster is a drawl he's developed over his years of competing in a sport dominated by Southerners.

Ike, proving gracious for a guy named this year as GQ magazine's sixth most hated athlete, gave asap a few fishing tips:

LEARN TO THINK LIKE A BASS

It takes practice, but you don't need to live on a famous lake, or even remotely pristine water.

Ike honed his skills right here in the Philadelphia suburbs — he grew up in Runnemede, N.J. — in little lakes, including the one where he took me, a dammed creek alongside a busy road.

Since then, he's fished all over the world and he says has confirmed that bass behave the same wherever they are.

DON'T BABY YOUR EQUIPMENT

AP Photo/Mel Evans The Bassmaster: Mike Iaconelli hunts his prey.

But the point is this: He isn't afraid of getting his vessel close to where the fish are. And the fish usually aren't in open water.

"Fish are going to gravitate around objects," Iaconelli said, looking out over the little lake. "It could be anything. There's a red shopping cart in the water over there." Indeed, another fisherman tells him he caught a 4-pound bass — in New Jersey, that's a big one — near the discarded cart.

BE CREATIVE

AP Photo/Mel Evans Sean Flynn, right, looks on as Mike Iaconelli autographs Flynn's fishing rod.

He also sometimes modifies his lures while he's fishing because he thinks the fish might respond to something different.

LOVE THE JUNK

Don't stress if you're catching a lot of "junk fish" — for example landing bluegills when you want bass. Bass feed on bluegills. So if you're catching them, it might mean bass are nearby.

"I'm a big believer in the circle of life," he explains.

For an angler of my incredibly limited experience, Iaconelli has this even more basic wisdom: Release the line at the instant during the cast that the momentum of the rod moves forward. That will get the line far out of the boat tangle-free, something I didn't manage to do on all of my casts from the bassmaster's boat.

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asap contributor Geoff Mulvihill, the Associated Press correspondent in Mount Laurel, N.J., knows just where to find the best fish: on restaurant menus.

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