Overland Park ? When Harold Ensley was a youngster back in the 1920s he fished in a pond on his family’s ranch near Healy, north of Dodge City. Metal pins from feed sacks were his hooks and grasshoppers, when he could catch them, were his bait.

Television was still science fiction, radios were for the rich and people who fished often were considered lazy.

Well after Ensley had switched to store-bought fish hooks and mastered the art of casting with a rod and reel, companies like Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Ford Motor Co. were paying him to fish.

In September 1953, he made a deal with a brand new Kansas City television station, KCMO-TV, to produce and host “The Sportsman’s Friend” a weekly fishing and hunting show.

“That contract was made with a handshake and called for me to do a live, 30-minute show, 52 weeks a year,” Ensley recalled. “I was so excited about getting the show that I didn’t think about a vacation.”

Pressured as he was, his timing couldn’t have been better.

Television was the sensation of the ’50s. Those were the days when people watched every, snowy, hissing, black and white show their horizontal hold knobs could keep under control … and many that it couldn’t. If the $300, 12-inch televisions were too pricey, people watched their neighbor’s set.

A generation grew up picking Ensley’s show over the likes of “Peter Gunn,” “Ben Casey” or “Combat.” To the younger set he was Captain Kangaroo with a bird dog and a string of fish.

TV, radio and in person

If you missed him on TV you could catch his daily 15-minute radio show that told you where the fish were biting or read his daily outdoor column in the Independence (Mo.) Daily News.

His television celebrity status and his ability to sell got him front and center at sports shows throughout the Midwest. He drove his trademark, a red Ford station wagon with his name on the door and the words “goin fishin” on the back. He averaged 60,000 miles a year on the trail of fish, game and an occasional sponsor.

He’s fished with movie stars like Henry Fonda and sports celebrities like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. He waded the Platte River at 3 a.m. with cowboy star Roy Rogers in a quest for geese. He did guest shots on “Gunsmoke” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.” He played golf with Fred MacMurray.

He was good friends with the late Sam Walton, co-founder of Wal-Mart, who arranged for his store to handle Ensley’s fishing rods on an exclusive basis  and still does. He taught Walton’s wife, Helen, how to cast well after he’d taught actor Jimmy Stewart how to flip his wrist. When Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt invited Ensley to watch a ball game from his private box he was flanked by Walter Cronkite and artist Thomas Hart Benton.

He had came a long way from chasing grasshoppers in Healy.

When Ensley wasn’t traveling the world fishing, on the banquet circuit talking to students and conservation groups, addressing a funeral directors convention in Mississippi or recovering from a heart attack, he took time to invent a fishing lure called the Reaper. It gets high marks.

Outdoors respectability

Ensley’s show and his athletic, teetotaling image helped change the public’s perception of hunters and fishermen. Many non-sportsmen thought most outdoorsmen were usually an arm’s length from a case of beer or within range of a no-hunting sign filled with bullet holes. Ensley helped bring a new level of respectability to outdoor sports.

“The Sportsman’s Friend” had been on television for 20 years when KCMO-TV commissioned a four-state poll to find what names rang bells with the man on the street. It was shortly after Len Dawson led the Kansas City Chiefs to a Super Bowl victer over Minnesota in 1970 … their second championship appearance in four years. Sixty-five percent knew Dawson played for the Chiefs. But 85 percent knew Harold Ensley as the sportsman’s friend.

Today, you mention his name to anyone older than 40, sportsman or beautician, and the odds of getting an “Oh, yeah, I remember him” are from good to very good.

His name became synonymous with fishing.

“Catch any fish today?” someone might ask. “Who do you think I am, Harold Ensley?” might be the reply.

Earlier this year, Ensley wrote “Winds of Chance,” a book filled with stories and pictures that follow his life and times spent behind a rod and reel and on both sides of a camera.

Although he won’t say for sure, Ensley is close to 90 years old.

“My mom and dad were there when I was born and they’re not available with that information,” he says, laughing. “Or, you could just say what a Minneapolis newspaperman said once, that ‘I was older than dirt.'”

Still handsome and full of self-confidence, Ensley lives in Overland Park. These days, he’s moving around on a walker, recovering from knee surgery. And he looks like he could move without help if he smelled smoke.

“The language you hear on television these days makes me sick at my stomach. And how in the world can anyone call something ‘The Best Damned Sports Show?'” he asked, shaking his head. “We’d been thrown out of television talking like that.”

Ensley didn’t buy the global warming argument.

“When God gets ready to take this old world he’s goin’ to take it whether it’s warm or cold,” he said.

He’s a longtime member of the Church of Christ and has packed Spanish language bibles along with his fishing gear on trips to Costa Rica.

Getting started

He got into broadcasting in the late ’40s in Independence, Mo. At the time, he was selling advertising on commission, no salary, for the Independence News. He also worked for a weekly shopper and a 1,000-watt radio station … all owned by the same man.

“I saw an opportunity to get some $10 radio spots if we would broadcast Little League baseball,” he said. “I’d never broadcast baseball and my boss said I could do it if I’d do it for nothing.”

Ensley jumped at the chance. “Great experience,” he said.

The broadcasts were a hit and advertising picked up.

He asked if he could do a radio fishing show and again got the go-ahead, but no pay.

He contacted fishing guides and boat dock owners in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas and told them if they would call in a fishing report he’d put them on the air. The show was a hit, but the advertisers didn’t bite.

He took his fishing program to KCMO’s 50,000-watt radio station and its bigger audience. Ensley was live at 5 p.m. … drive time.

Bingo.

“Every fisherman in the Midwest listened to that show … five days a week,” recalled Blair Flynn, a premier hunter and fisherman now living in Overbrook. At 84, Flynn can still blow away 85 of 100 clay targets with his 12-gauge and can still find fish.

“Ensley is honest and people trusted him,” Flynn said. “I spent a lot of time with him and a pole in my hand. He didn’t fake his fish pictures the way some of these guys do today.”

Trend setter

As early as 1969, Ensley was releasing fish he’d catch instead of stringing them. He encouraged others to do the same and many have.

“There weren’t many people who could have done for fishing what Ensley and his shows did,” Flynn said.

The “Sportsman’s Friend” was shown live, 52 weeks a year for 25 years. During that time, Ensley didn’t take a vacation.

When he went fishing he had to produce, had to catch fish, had to get movies that he shot himself.

“Light might be better over there,” Ensley said last week when he was posing for a picture.

“This was live television and we didn’t use a script,” Ensley recalled, laughing. “Every mistake you can make doing live television, I made twice.”

He also produced 5,000 radio shows.

In 1975, his show went into syndication and ran 20 weeks a year.

“We were on from Bakersfield to Bangor, Fargo to Orlando and hit some big markets like Chicago,” Ensley said proudly.

The show stopped in 2001.

Does he miss the action?

“I’d never written my book if I was doing the show … plus I’m just finishing my second book about hunting,” Ensley said.

While he was shifting upright in his chair, he seemed ready to launch into a story.

“I can remember the day I shot my first mallard,” he said raising his arms in the air. “They were comin’ in over the pond …”