Oh, the rewards that can come from a love of the sport

MILWAUKEE, Wis. - Many of the outdoor television shows bore me almost to the point of tears.

As I've mentioned in this column several times in the past, there are only a handful of these programs worth watching.

And in my opinion, so much of what is put on the air is targeted for the southern viewer, hosted by "good old boys" who mumble their way through each and every sentence and episode.

Many of the outdoor hunting shows seem to be hosted by individuals who don camo clothing and swagger their way through the brush and woodlands without teaching anyone anything.

The programs with value are the ones that teach an angler how to become better at his hobby in a professional manner.

So there I was, on the shores of Lake Michigan, perched over a couple feet of ice, watching young Nate Berg applying his skills with a television camera. Every time the call "fish on" went out, this high-energy guy raced by me by me like a Japanese bullet train.

With his camera perched on his right shoulder, 30-year-old Berg kneeled down on the thick ice and pushed the record button. Berg was part of a two-man crew videotaping our ice-angling exploits on Lake Michigan.

Our mission was to catch brown trout and steelhead, while Nate's job was to capture good footage so he could put together another great, fast-moving episode of Babe Winkelman's Good Fishing outdoor television program.

Berg's personal history reads like a fairy tale. He grew up in Blair, Wis., fishing area lakes and the Mississippi River.

I don't care much for the word "obsession," but in Nate's case his angling escapades bordered on just that, a burning need to be out on the water all the time.

In fact, at age 13, Berg was so driven to have a fishing rod in his hand that he documented his fishing exploits for 1,281 days in a row.

It wasn't long before one of the major television networks heard about the "kid" and his angling adventures. He was interviewed on one of the network morning shows, and that's how Winkelman discovered him. Babe made contact with Berg and had him come to the Brainerd, Minn., area and shot a show with him.

It was some years later that Nate expressed a desire to be in the television business, and Winkelman subsequently hired him to be on the production staff.

"I've got a job where most of my time is spent on the water or in the woods," Berg told me in between his running from spot to spot, filming brown trout catches. "This is literally a dream come true for me."

Constantly displaying a never-ending amount of boundless energy while he's shouldering his camera, Nate acts more like an eager black lab pup running in the field.

Some observers would call this progression of years for Nate something of a fairy tale for a young Wisconsin lad. I would rather refer to this scenario as a reality tale stemming from a rabid love of the outdoors.

• Mike Jackson's radio program can be heard 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM. You can reach him via e-mail at angler@mikejacksonoutdoors.com.