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FOUR-PAGE PULLOUT A5 S PORTS THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2021 bendbulletin.com/sports MLB OUTDOORS Boston Red Sox 2B Pedroia retires How to salmon-size your trout Dustin Pedroia, the un- dersized and over-achiev- ing second baseman who spurred the Boston Red Sox to a pair of World Se- ries victories with his grit and a third, after a knee injury effectively ended his career, with his mouth, has retired. “I never took one play off, from Little League on,” Pedroia said on a video- conference with reporters on Monday. “I hope I did enough and set the right example in the city of Boston.” Pedroia, 37, was the AL Rookie of the Year in 2007 and the MVP in his second season but played in a total of nine games in the last three years be- cause of the 2017 injury from a spikes-high slide by then-Orioles shortstop Manny Machado. He was the lon- gest-tenured player on the Red Sox roster and the only holdover from the 2007 championship team. “He was the ultimate team player,” said Terry Francona, the current Cleveland manager and Pedroia’s manager and cribbage opponent for six seasons. “He always seemed to save his very best plays for the most important time of the game.” A four-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner, Pedroia batted .299 with 140 homers and 725 RBIs in a 17-year career, all with the Red Sox. He is the only player ever to earn Rookie of the Year, Gold Glove and MVP awards along with a World Series champi- onship in his first two full seasons; only nine other players have accom- plished those feats in their entire career. A salmon-s salmon-sized wild rainbow trout caught on a fly in shallow water. Gary Lewis/For The Bulletin A difference of inches. Remember the last time you caught a hatchery rain- bow trout? It probably measured 10 or 11 inches, slim and trim, a fighter. Picture that fish, its lateral line on the same plane as its eye. Think about the vertical mea- surement from the lateral line to its belly. On a 10-incher, there is a difference of an inch- and-a-half from lateral line to the bottom of the belly. What about a triploid, a couch-potato trout weighing 15 pounds? If the fish is measured in pounds not inches, that vertical dimension might be 4 to 8 inches. A 30-inch triploid with a 20-inch girth will weigh about 13 pounds. That fish’s belly when it is 8 inches above the bottom is about 8 inches from the plane of its eye. If the eye is at 16 inches, the bait should be positioned at 16 to 18 inches. —The Associated Press NFL Packers: Rodgers to remain QB Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and coach Matt LaFleur say they ex- pect Aaron Rodgers to re- main their team’s starting quarterback in 2021 and beyond. Gutekunst and LaFleur made those comments Monday during sea- son-ending Zoom ses- sions with reporters. After the Packers’ 31-26 loss to the Tampa Bay Bucca- neers in the NFC cham- pionship game, Rodgers had said, “there’s a lot of guys’ futures that are un- certain, myself included.” “We’re really excited not only for next year, but the years to come,” Gutekunst said. When asked specifi- cally whether that meant keeping Rodgers be- yond the 2021 season, Gutekunst said, “Abso- lutely.” Rodgers has three years remaining on a four- year, $134 million con- tract extension he signed in August 2018. “What we’re trying to do as an organization and what we’re trying to accomplish, we can’t do without Aaron Rodgers right now” Gutekunst said. Rodgers’ long-term fu- ture has been a topic of league-wide speculation ever since the Packers traded up four picks to take Utah State quarter- back Jordan Love with the 26th overall selection in the 2020 draft. Rodgers has said on multiple occa- sions that the Love selec- tion complicated his own hopes of playing his entire career with Green Bay. —The Associated Press GARY LEWIS To present a bait or a fly to a big trout, think in terms of where the trout likes to rest. Be- cause of the position of a trout’s eyes, its vision angles upward, leaving a large blind spot be- low its body and directly in front of its snout. It can see with one eye anything to the side of its head and behind, but another blind spot exists along its flanks, beginning at the pectoral fins. Picture the large and small trout side by side, both hovering at rest in light current, 6 to 12 inches off the bottom. The big trout will more often be in a position to grab a morsel drift- ing toward the pair. That huge mouth can dis- place way more water than the smaller fish that might try to steal a bait. What really happens is that there are a thou- sand or more “legals” for every brood stock or trophy fish. The problem is to present the bait or fly in the zone where that one big fish can grab it before a 10-incher does. Floating bait/length of leader For the bait angler, the leader length is crit- ical when targeting salmon-size rainbows. The bait is presented with a sliding sinker to a swivel and a 2- to 4-pound monofilament leader. A lot of us like fluorocarbon because it is stealthy. The problem though, is fluoro is heavier, adds more resistance for fish to feel, and can drag the floating bait down. Use light mono. At rest, the biggest fish’s eyes are going to be 15 to 25 inches above the bottom. See Lewis / A6 MOTORSPORTS Stunts in streets for motorcycle virtuoso BY SCOTT SMITH Associated Press C ARACAS, Venezuela — If police aren’t shutting down his street shows for lack of permits, Venezuelan motorcycle trick rider Pedro Aldana is bat- tling coronavirus quarantines or the tropical rains that turn the as- phalt slick and send fans running for cover. Despite life’s obstacles, Aldana — a natural-born showman who performs in wild checkered clothes and dyed green hair — has kept up his performances, which draw hundreds of people to unused parking lots or obscure city streets. “This is my hobby, my art,” said Aldana, who is leading a move- ment to win official recognition of motorcycle acrobatics in Vene- zuela — a sport nurtured in poor neighborhoods like his, where he sometimes mentors young fans in basic mechanics. “This is my pas- sion and my work.” Aldana, who goes by the show name “Pedro Locura,” Spanish for “Crazy Pedro,” is joined by a loyal crew of likeminded daredevils for occasional exhibitions of speed, agility and precision balance. The swarming motorcyclists do wheelies at high speed, often Super Bowl LV Brady has led more than 200 teammates to the Super Bowl BY JOSH DUBOW AP Pro Football Writer S It’s a sport on the rise in Vene- zuela, where many take pride in the motorcycles they depend on to get to work or earn them a living making deliveries. Aldana said he won his nick- name as a youth mastering tricks on his bicycle. By age 11, he’d grad- uated to a motorcycle. ome are Hall of Famers who are among the biggest names in the sport. Others are anonymous role players whose con- tributions went mostly unnoticed by out- siders. There are veterans who joined up for one final run at the title, and wide-eyed rookies who were thrust into the Super Bowl spot- light. Their first names range from A to Z with eight guys named Brandon — a ninth named Brandin — and five guys named Kyle. They all are part of the Brady Bunch, the 218 players who have appeared in a Super Bowl as Tom Brady’s teammate in his record nine previous trips to the title game with New England. That list will grow by more than 40 names next Sunday when Brady plays in his 10th Super Bowl and first with his new team in Tampa. Of those players who have been part of Brady’s supporting cast, 164 got a Super Bowl ring out of the trip, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the players who were on a winning team in the Super Bowl since Brady became a starter in 2001. See Virtuoso / A6 See Brady / A7 Matias Delacroix/AP Stuntman Pedro Aldana performs a wheelie on his motorcycle during an exhi- bition in the Ojo de Agua neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 10. The motorcycle trick rider and adrenaline junkie who prefers the nickname “Crazy Pedro,” draws masses of Venezuelans starved for entertainment to his shows across the country. standing on one foot or a knee from the seat or the back foot peg. Sometimes a young woman stretches out on the seat in a show of her trust for the rider’s skills. In other maneuvers, they turn tight circles in a group, each rider hopping from a normal seated po- sition to sidesaddle while the front wheel is sky-high.