As far as professional competitive fishing goes, I’d rank it right up there on the sporting pyramid with bowling.

But marketing can make just about anything look good. And so ESPN is doing what it knows how to do, selling this year’s 35th Annual Bassmaster Classic with humor by framing the competition as a classic sports duel of man-against-fish, complete with trash-talking bass.

The campaign, which carries the theme “The competition is wild,” has many online and offline elements. There are virtual trading cards of fish bearing names like “Lance Bass,” “Gordon Van de Bass” and “Larry Bassman,” listed as playing “defense” (versus “offense” for the human competitors in the tournament, which takes place in Pittsburgh Friday through Sunday). In television commercials, the fish lip off to the fishers and take questions from reporters just like their human counterparts…

[The athleticism-based humor] is most noticeable in the print ads, which present data about each competitor to try to determine which has the advantage over the other. For instance, one ad describes bass as “so sensitive they locate and capture minnows by vibration alone,” while men are known to “give their wives bowling balls as gifts.” (Advantage, bass.)

Another print ad declares bass “won’t strike at the same lure twice” while man “drinks spoiled milk after smelling it.” (Advantage, bass, again.) A third print ad says that man “teaches his children how to fish” while bass “eat their children.” (This time, the advantage goes to man, though, W.C. Fields, were he still alive, might disagree.)

I can’t say it’s going to lure me to watch the switch-and-bait action, but I am looking foward to catching the ads.

Stuff like this should certainly be food for thought for my favorite sport. The NHL can’t market its way out of a paper bag, and it needs deft promotion now more than ever.