[November] December 2000 [January]

The rest of the ride was uneventful. It took us exactly three days to travel from New Hampshire to Lake Martin. Now here we are on Saturday, 1,400 miles from the cold and snow of New England, and what were they calling for overnight but 3-6 inches of snowfall here in Alabama!

I threw the Shad Rap the rest of the day, and we fished all the way to the back of Little Kowaliga. I managed to catch 5 keepers that weighed about seven pounds, and Craig ended up with 5 that would have weighed almost ten. That would be great if he could do it on Wednesday, when the tournament started. This three-day tournament last year was won with about 25 pounds.

Annie writes:
I woke up in time to drive Dan to the ramp so I could have the truck for the day. I went out to get my nails done and put gas in the truck. I called my Mom to check on her, she is recovering from 2 herniated discs in her back. At 2:30 I went back to the launch ramp, and as I did not know when Dan would be in, I had brought my books with me to study. I don’t think I have mentioned it yet, but I have been taking a college English course for the past 4 weeks, and it has kept me extremely busy. I am really enjoying it though. Dan came in around 4:30, we put the boat on the trailer, wiped it down, and headed back home. Dwayne Horton came over for a visit, and then Curt Lytle, and later I made dinner for Dan, Craig and I. We were in bed by 8:30.

That’s right, I was sitting out in the middle of the lake, returning the call to CITGO on my cell phone and expecting to get a thank-you for recalling our discussions in such detail, and instead we got the ax. The reason given was this: for the money they spend on us, our productivity was not up to par. This theme was reiterated throughout the conversation, and each time I heard it I kept thinking that I wasn’t understanding something. We had been told three times in the last three months that the team would be staying the same for next year. We had been asking since September for our renewal contract, and had been told each time to be patient, it’s coming, and it will be essentially the same as last year. Today’s news caught me so off-guard that during the conversation I was unable to organize or verbalize my thoughts, but I kept seeing glimpses in my head of everything that Annie and I have done on CITGO’s behalf in the past year.

We drive a 40-foot bus around the country with the great-big CITGO logo on it. We stop at countless CITGO gasoline stations to hand out trading cards and team posters. We pull off of the highway so that fans who see us on the road and chase us down can get autographed cards and posters and hats. We were featured in seven CITGO TV commercials that aired every weekend for 12 months. Our website is loaded with CITGO promotions and links to the CITGO site. How many times in our travels have we gone out of our way to patronize a CITGO filling station when it would have been easier and cheaper to buy fuel elsewhere? Who is it that goes up on stage during the FLW weigh-ins when it is CITGO’s turn to draw their raffle winners? And who was the only one to work the CITGO both at every one of the FLW Fun Zone’s last year? It’s Annie, of course. So with all these images flashing through my head as I’m trying to hold this phone conversation, I knew I was missing something, and I interrupted to ask specifically in what way was our productivity lacking. The answer was... fish. When productivity was defined, it came down to how many fish I actually weighed-in at FLW tournaments last year. A statistic that I can’t argue with.

At this point in my life it would appear that I have many of the pieces in place to make for a successful pro fishing career. I’ll be the first to admit though that when it comes right down to it, in the end I just cannot seem to catch the fish. In fact I have been chastised a number of times by Annie for having made this exact comment in public. And while there is no question that winning a major tournament or making a top-10 cut in the FLW would enhance my promotional effectiveness, I have failed to acknowledge (until today) that lack of such performance could have this devastating effect. I had always believed that working hard on the promotions side, and on generating a positive public image for myself and for my sponsors, would carry me through the times of slow fishing until I finally did figure it out, and I made it up there on stage and on TV with a big bag of fish. I was wrong, and now we are going to pay the consequences.

Annie writes:
I was up by 7:00am and began my day. I had done some school work and took a break to make some phone calls. I called our boss at CITGO to ask the status of our contracts for next year, and he said (yet again) that they should be out soon. I hung up and the phone rang back not 20 seconds later, and this time it was the boss’s boss at CITGO, looking for Dan. After telling him I’d try to get a hold of Dan out on the lake, I called Dan’s cell phone. We were both excited, as we thought he wanted to talk about the idea’s Dan had submitted in his letter a few weeks ago.

When Dan returned to camp a little later I couldn’t wait to hear about his phone call. Rather than good news though, he told me that the phone call was to inform him that our CITGO contract was not being renewed. We are no longer on the team. I was in shock, and everything was going through my head. I could not understand why we were cut from the team. They said that it was budget cuts, and lack of fishing performance, but we had always been told that sponsors don’t really care if you catch fish, it’s all in how you promote their product, and I feel we did that very well. It was an extremely emotional afternoon, with our minds going a mile a minute. We have a major tournament starting tomorrow morning, the Christmas holiday after that, and the start of the FLW season in just one month. This is not good timing.

Dan could not even think about fishing any more today, so I told him to just stay in and work on his tackle for tomorrow. We are keeping the boat in the water overnight, so I walked over to the ramp to retrieve the truck and trailer. When I arrived I noticed that someone had crashed into our trailer and the taillight was smashed and all over the ground. They did not even leave a note. JUST GREAT! Dan called the kids later to try and pick his spirits up, but this just resulted in another argument with his ex, which did zero to lift our spirits and only kicked us down the hole even father. The day was filled with lots of emotions and lots of tears, so all of you who think we have a great life and are so lucky, bookmark this day!

Here’s a recap of the tournament though: After catching a limit every day in practice, I caught only two keepers the first tournament day. The second day I went out and found some more shallow fish (NOT Trip’s), and brought in about six pounds. I was late to check in by four minutes though, and was penalized four pounds for my mistake. The third day I brought in two fish again, so I ended the tournament with 7 fish that weighed about 10 pounds, less the four pound penalty.

Craig’s tournament on the other hand went like this: On the first day he went to his best Carolina rig spot and caught 7 1/2 pounds, good enough for seventh place at the end of the day, and his partner also caught a good bag of fish there. The second day he went back and caught only two fish, but his partner caught 8 1/2 pounds off of Craig’s spot. Having caught only two fish the second day, that evening Craig expressed uncertainty over what he should do the final day. I’m not sure why anyone asks for my advice anymore, but Craig did and I told him to get his butt down there first thing in the morning and sit on that spot all day long. He did, and ended up weighing-in the biggest bag of the entire tournament, 10 pounds, 12 ounces. He finished in sixth place and took home a nice check.

Throughout the long drive and the uneventful days and nights that followed, we have had time to absorb, to reflect, and to project into the future. The simple range of emotions we have gone through during this time is amazing. We have been everywhere from angry and vengeful, feeling like we were conspired against and lied to, to hopeful and optimistic, feeling that change is good and that while we don’t see it now, somewhere, somehow, some good will come out of this. When God closes one door to you, if you just look for it you’ll find that somewhere he’s opened a window.

In order to explain what it means to us to have lost this deal with CITGO, I need to explain what it meant to have had the deal in the first place. Annie and I have worked at developing this career for 5 solid years. During this time and pursuing this dream we have sacrificed a great deal. That is not to say that there have not been good times, or that there are not aspects of our lifestyle that are envied by others. We get to travel to many varied and beautiful places. We get to spend a great deal of time fishing, and outdoors in general. We have met many people and made many good friends on the road. We are self-employed, working for ourselves, and for the most part making our own schedules. We travel in a motorcoach with all the comforts of home wherever we go. There a lots of things about our lifestyle that we have come to cherish and that are indeed enviable. At the same time though, there is a price to pay for having chosen this life.

Let me start by commenting on the motorhome. People come into our motorhome and say "Wow, you guys really live nice." We’re tired of telling them that they go home to a real house between tournaments. We live in this motorhome, with approximately 100 square feet of floor space to move about in, 365 days a year. We live here because it is saving us money, not having to rent hotel rooms and eat out at restaurants while on the road, and having no mortgage and utility expenses to pay back home. Sure it’s nice to have a place like this to live in while fishing a tournament, but I challenge those people who think it’s such a glamorous life to move everything they own into just one room of their house, and then live there, eating, sleeping, cooking, entertaining and using the bathroom, 365 days out of the year.

Next comes the financial price involved in this career choice. It costs in the neighborhood of $30,000 per year to fish as a full-time professional - half of that going just to pay the entry fees, the other half spread out amongst travel, boat gas, equipment, vehicle expenses and the like. That’s just the fishing side - there are plenty of other expenses elsewhere in our lives, not the least of which is three kids at home whom I support, and whom I start putting through college in a year and a half. To pay for all this we have made huge sacrifices. I have sold my home, we have sold many of our belongings, and we have seen the proceeds disappear into bass fishing. We have seen both savings and retirement accounts disappear into bass fishing. We have lived for five years with no job security, no health insurance, no retirement accounts and no retirement security since we pay no social security taxes.

Being cut from the CITGO team is having a disastrous effect on us financially. After four years of funding my own pro fishing education and attempting to turn it into a self-supporting career, it was not until last year that we finally made it to the point where we actually took in more money through fishing than we paid out. This was a huge milestone for us, and while the CITGO contract was a big part of this, there were other sponsors as well from whom we benefited financially as a result of being on the CITGO team. After having budgeted next year’s finances according to assurances from CITGO that the team would remain the same, now, at the height of the Christmas season we are faced with the task of trying to finance a $30,000 tournament year that begins in less than one month.

Finally, this career choice involves sacrifices of the heart - and these are the ones that hurt the most. For five years I have felt I have been sacrificing my children, by not being there for them as they grow up. I’ve tried to justify my absence, by telling myself that I am teaching them about goals, about striving for something you believe in, about taking chances in order to achieve your dream. I tell myself that they won’t understand it now, but that later in life, when they are older, they will and they will forgive me for what I am doing to them now. The other side of my brain is telling me that that is the biggest mistake of all, rationalizing like this and letting my kids suffer. It’s telling me that yeah, I’ve paid some prices and suffered some so far, but the biggest price will be paid in the future, when these kids are off on their own, making their own decisions, and their decision is to not spend their time with me. I cannot even write these words now without crying, I feel so badly about all this.

I know that I’ve done it all to myself, that I'm the one who made the decision to leave home and go fish for a living. The trouble is that I’ve come so far with this that now I’m afraid to quit. If I leave now, it will be with a profound sense of failure. I want to make it all have been worthwhile. I want it to have been for something. I have not accomplished what I started out to do, I have not achieved anything, and yet I have paid all of these prices and made all these people suffer along the way. Being a part of the CITGO team was truly the high point in my career. It was something that I could point to as an accomplishment, and something that I could at least hope my kids would be proud of me for.

What being on the CITGO team meant to me. We have worked hard and sacrificed in many ways in pursuit of our dream. After four years of struggling it was not until last year, our fifth, that things finally seem to be falling into place. Being a part of the CITGO team really made us feel special, like we’d actually accomplished something, and was a huge, huge ego boost. We were being seen on TV every week, we had a great big bus with CITGO logos and the words "CITGO Pro Bass Fishing Team", we were driving a big, bright orange boat that turned heads everywhere we went, we had boxes full of team posters to hand out, and we even had our own sports trading cards. We were signing hundreds of autographs every month, every day it seemed we’d have people honk and wave to us out on the interstate, and we’ve actually had people pull off into the rest areas with us just so they could get autographs. We’ve pulled into new towns thousands of miles from home, only to have people come up to us in a parking lot or a gas station to wish us luck and to tell us they’ve seen us on TV or they read our ESPN journal.

Finally now, I've got to tell this story: As we were pulling the boat out during the weigh-in on the final day of the B.A.S.S. tournament last week (three days after we got cut from the team, but before anyone else knew about it,) a 13 year-old boy approached with his mom and dad and shyly asked if he could get his picture taken with me. His parents explained that he knew all about us through our website and our journal, and that he had just completed an 8th grade term paper on professional bass fishing. Now, I know I was whining a little earlier about sacrifices, but I’ve got to say that this is the kind of thing that makes it all worthwhile. I was able to smile and pose with the kid, and we even went all the way back to the camper to get some posters and trading cards for him, but all the while I was thinking that this is what CITGO has just pulled the plug on. Either they don’t want this for their team members, or they don’t even know it’s happening - either way it doesn’t matter now. The decision’s been made. The result of that decision is that if I can’t find the strength and the means to struggle back up this hill, then this could be the last time any kid ever asks for my autograph, or looks up to me as a role model. I sure don’t feel good about that.

Emotionally, getting cut from the team has been such a blow, and has left such a bad taste in my mouth, that right now I feel I never again want to even see that bright orange CITGO boat, or one of those team posters, or either one of Annie’s or my trading cards. These were the highest symbols of our success to-date, the only symbols perhaps, and things that we were so proud of, and now I am too ashamed and too embarrassed to even look at them.

We are angry at the way this situation came about with no warning, made us feel that we’d been led-on, and left us feeling like we had few options in the end. On the other hand we cannot fail to accept some of the responsibility ourselves, and to acknowledge that there are things we could have done differently which may have resulted in a different outcome. There are lessons to be learned, and we have to be open to accepting them.

The whole team concept was new to everyone last year, us as well as CITGO. They made some mistakes in their first year with it, in management, in prioritizing what was important, in their focus, and in letting the team know exactly what was expected of them. We made mistakes as well, by not catching enough fish, by not acknowledging the importance placed on catching fish, by not maintaining regular communications, and by not ensuring that CITGO acknowledged and appreciated our promotional efforts in the field. In general, we simply did not convince them that they were getting their money’s worth out of sponsoring us.

The experience we gained by being a part of the CITGO team last year, and the lessons learned both good and bad, should only help us to become even more effective promoters on behalf of any new sponsor we attach to in the future, and we look forward to being given the opportunity to demonstrate this.

Annie writes:
I just finished my college English final this week, and now I must start planning for Christmas. It has been a difficult couple of weeks, as I have been trying to concentrate on my course, but had everything else hanging over my head. Dan got to take the boys snowboarding for a day, which he needed to do to take his mind off of things. Of course, that just made him question this fishing career even more. Maybe it is a sign that we should be here, in NH with the kids, and maybe the fishing wasn’t meant to be. I honestly don’t know what to make of the whole situation. I try to be optimistic, but it has become very difficult to find the bright side sometimes. I would like to think this is just another hurdle, and something grander will come out of it, but until then what do you do? If we give up and come home, buy a house, get regular jobs, will that make our life easier? Maybe, maybe not. What little spare time we have will be taken up by something else. At least with this career summer is our slow season and that is when the kids are out of school. With a "normal" job we would be working 12 months a year, probably at a job we would not care for, have two days off per week, and still not enough time to be with family. My other side says stick with it, find a way to make it work. It has to happen, we have put so much into making this dream come true. We do not really have the holiday spirit. We try, but when you end up back home at night and things start going through your mind, it all comes back to what are we going to do? So, I only have one Christmas wish this year... Santa, please bring us a new sponsor!