[December] January 2001 [February]

It was nice to see the Hobbie’s again, and to see our motorhome, which we left there over the holidays. We unpacked the Suburban and knew it would take us a while to get the motorhome organized, so we planned to sleep here tonight. We had driven all night last night and didn’t sleep much at all. The four of us went out to a local pizza house, and then spent time catching up, and we thanked them for all they do for us.

Our plan for this month then was to pick up the motorhome and boat, drive everything south to Florida, and just start fishing. The B.A.S.S. Invitational on Lake Okeechobee is next week and it’s already been paid for, the first FLW is shortly after that on the same lake, and we’ve done reasonably well on Okeechobee the last two years so there’s a good chance we can make a check. After that we’ll just play it by ear, see what happens.

There was one glitch in this plan though, and that had to do with the boat. We’ve still go the CITGO boat, but we don’t know for how long. It’s not our boat to keep, but for lack of anything else to fish out of at the moment we were just going to keep it and use it until someone took it away from us. Well guess what. We got the call today from our boat dealer in Connecticut. It’s show-season, and a good opportunity for him to get it sold, so he’s ready to take it back. I’d already told him about losing our CITGO deal, and today I told him where we were at the moment, and what our plan for the month was. He agreed to let me keep the boat through these next two tournaments, and I agreed to bring it back up to Connecticut at the end of the month.

Annie writes:
We arrived in Okeechobee, Florida late this afternoon. We are not sure where we are camping for the week, so we slept at the Walmart parking lot. Didn’t do much tonight, just very glad to be here. We had dinner and started making our to-do list for the week. It goes something like this: Dan - fish. Annie - find us a new boat, find us a new sponsor.

The water is down a foot even from what it was in November when we were here. It’s very dangerous, and the fishing is difficult. They’ve just experienced two solid weeks of the coldest and windiest weather this year, though the forecast is for it to warm up through next week.

We moved the camper into an out-of-the-way campground, with plenty of room for us to spread out and no other fishermen staying nearby. We wanted to get away from the crowd this week, so that we could concentrate on our problems, and Annie could work on things like finding us a boat and putting together some sponsorship proposals while I was out fishing. I spent the afternoon working on the boat and getting it organized, while Annie took care of the laundry, and then we both began the task of removing the 4 foot CITGO signs from the motorhome. Craig made it into town and he came over late in the day. He did not bring his boat, so he will be practicing with me this week. We made plans to travel to the south end of the lake to fish tomorrow, and then he went back to his motel leaving Annie and I to spend our last peaceful evening together before tournament practice begins tomorrow.

Craig and I fished perhaps eight hours without a bite, before I reached into my tackle box and pulled out a Norman Crappie crankbait. I had read that this is a bait Rick Clunn will go to when fishing gets really tough, so I had bought some at Bass Pro Shops a few months ago, but had not yet tried them. Five minutes after tying it on I put a three pound fish in the boat, and two minutes after that I caught another! Craig tied on a Norman Baby N (the next size up from the Crappie crankbait,) and he caught a good fish on that, and then missed another.

All of this action was in just one cut, from the canal out into the lake, an area perhaps only 50 yards wide. We moved up the canal to the next cut, and Craig caught one more fish on the little crankbait. That’s all the action we had today, though we fished another two hours. Four fish in twenty man-hours of fishing - not good, but we finished the day excited about the little bait that seems to be working at the end of the day.

Annie writes:
I have so much to do. I worked some more on getting our CITGO decals off the motorhome, but that is such a big project, it will take days to do. I spent a lot of time on the Internet looking for a boat, to help us get through this season. I had to go into town also to look for some printer ink, and finally found some at Walmart. Finally, I donated 4 garbage bags full of clothes from New Hampshire that do not fit, or that we do not wear, to Goodwill.

Dan and Craig came in around 6:00, when I was just leaving for a walk. Craig was gone by the time I returned, so I cooked us dinner and then the night just seemed to fly by. We spent the evening updating each other on our days, trying to figure out our future, and it was 11:00 before we got to bed.

We decided to fish again down around Clewiston today, to see if we could find some more areas where that little crankbait would fool some fish. Once again though the fishing was disappointingly slow all through the morning, and after six hours without a bite we found ourselves close to the little cut where we’d caught fish yesterday. We decided to experiment, to try to figure out whether the bait had just stopped triggering the fish, or whether we were just fishing where there were no fish, so we moved over to yesterday’s cut and threw that crankbait in there. Within two minutes I caught a nice three pound fish. We immediately left and said all right, maybe it’s not the bait, but instead we were just in the right place at the right time yesterday to find those fish.

We continued through the afternoon with no success, until finally at about 5pm I caught our second fish of the day. Not very encouraging, so tomorrow, the last practice day, we’re going to try something totally different.

Annie writes:
I spent the day on the phone and the computer looking for a boat, and getting names and addresses to send sponsorship proposals to. Dan came in around 6:00, and we ate dinner, got cleaned up, and went to register for the tournament. When we got home we reviewed our recently received email. We are beginning to get some very nice messages from journal readers regarding our loss of the CITGO sponsorship, and these letters are giving us great moral support, which we need right now, to help us get through everything that is going on.

We were the first boat in the water, and we rode out to the mouth of the canal and stopped. It was 36 degrees, with a west wind blowing about 15mph. Very cold. Also, the wind seems to have blown a lot of the water off the flat in front of the canal. There was a duck hunter out there, perhaps 500 yards out and wading around in the water, and it looked to be only ankle-deep where he was. We decided to wait for another boat to come out. We’d watch him to see if he made it across the bar.

Eventually a boat did come, and he wasn’t slowing down as he approached so we got out of the way and let him by. His rooster-tail was flying as he headed out, but both Craig and I thought he might be headed a little too far left, and sure enough that rooster tail went from white to brown and his forward progress from 30 to 0 mph in about a hundred yards. He was stuck good.

We waited a half-hour more for another brave soul, and when this one came he took a different path and made it out okay. We stowed our gear and strapped our rods down and said that when the next boat came, we were going to follow. A few minutes later our pathfinder arrived, and when he passed we jumped up on plane and chased him out safely across the bar.

All right, we made it over the bar now what? Out here on the flats we had perhaps two feet of water, but as soon as we’d made it into open water the wind picked up and it became very choppy. This is a huge area and we drove probably six or eight miles out with no change in depth. I knew that if I came down off of plane I probably could not get back up again, and this is not what I wanted to happen when the temperature was in the 30’s and the wind was blowing like this. I know there are fish out on this flat, especially in areas where there might be a little depression or ditch, but there was just no way to find them on a day like today. I got the boat turned around and we headed back to the ramp the same way we came out.

We put the boat back on the trailer and headed up to Taylor Creek. This is inside the lock, behind the levee, and guaranteed to be calm water but also guaranteed to be full of other tournament boats. We fished that for a couple of hours without a bite before calling it quits for the day.

Annie writes:
I think I found us a boat!!! I have put in many hours of research, doing Internet searches, sending emails, and making phone calls, it is beginning to come together. Maybe this is where things start turning around for us? Dan came in early, got his boat and all his gear ready for the next few days. We ate dinner, and then it was off to the meeting. Dan met his partner for tomorrow, and is looking forward to going down and catching his crankbait fish in the morning.

Anyway, Charles was just one of many guys who disabled their boat this week either by running it up on the shoals, or crashing it into a submerged object in these dangerously low water conditions. We rode in my boat today and ran all the way down past Clewiston to the little cut where virtually all of the fish I caught in practice came from. The ride took an hour and 20 minutes one way, but was worth it because we both caught two fish, and my two weighed 7 1/2 pounds which left me in 35th place at the end of the day.

Annie writes:
The great boat deal I was so excited about yesterday ended up being far more expensive than we had expected, so it is back to square one. I was on a little high, thinking "YES, it is coming together now," but here is a bit of discouragement again. I will work hard though, and try my best to get us out of this.

Mary Ann (Craig’s wife) flew into town yesterday and today came to pick me up before the weigh-in. Dan was in the last flight and there were a few big stringers that had come in, but also a lot of people with no fish. I was hoping for two, that would be nice if he had two fish. Well, here he comes, to the check-in boat, and I see they are getting out two weigh-in bags. HOORAY! That means that he has at least one fish and will be on the board for tomorrow. I met him at the dock and he signaled to me that he had two fish, and that they are good size. They ended up weighing 7-4, and we are very happy with that; he is in 35th place starting tomorrow. We had a very good night. Dan is in a super mood and believes there are more fish on his spot. James Parker came over to visit, and to borrow a map for a lake he is fishing in another tournament. Then Craig & Mary Ann came over to visit and discuss fishing for a while. Afterwards, I cooked dinner and Dan ran around outside with the dog. It was so nice to see something go right, and to see him happy. We hope it holds out for two more days.

My partner had no suggestions, so he let me pick all the spots today. Though we hadn’t been able to practice there Wednesday due to the wind and the cold, I decided to run back up to the "north shore" area and fish the flats. When we got there there were 25 or 30 other boats doing the same thing. We threw a Rattletrap and some other reaction-baits for a while but got no fish, and we didn’t see anyone else catching fish so we left with about an hour of fishing time remaining. Looking back on it now, I’m glad that we didn’t catch a fish there. If we had then we’d have stayed until the last minute before racing back to the weigh-in, and we’d have been late. We’d have been late because when I tried to get the boat up on plane to leave, it was just too shallow. In fact it stayed shallow for a long, long ways, and it was a good 30 minutes of idle time before we found water deep enough to get moving in. That 30 minutes would have cost me the one fish I did weigh-in today.

Annie writes:
My morning was spent on the phone, trying to find some new sponsors, and letting people know that we are no longer on a team, but would like to be considered for a new team. I am also putting together Dan’s portfolio to send out to prospects, but I ran out of paper so now am at a standstill until I get to the store. Mary Ann came to pick me up again to go to lunch and the weigh-in. When Dan came in, they got one bag from the check in boat, so that means he has at least one fish. I am happy with that. He had only one fish though, so that will drop us some in the standings, but one fish is better than none when conditions are tough. There are over 300 people in this tournament, and only 420 fish were caught yesterday. Today it was 421. So, we concentrate on tomorrow.

I ran out to Walmart after we got home, to get printer supplies so I can continue my project tomorrow. My sister-in- law called and we chatted for a while, she knows things are tough, and checks in to see how we are. There are not many people who know our current situation, and it is difficult to explain to everyone, because we do not know where we will be next week, never mind in one month or six months from now, it is easier at this point for Dan and I to just try to figure it all out.

From what I’ve heard so far, it sounds like ALL the big bags of fish, that is the 20-27 pound one-day sacks, have come out of Harney Pond Canal. Inside the canal that is, not out on the flats. It appears that a great number of fish moved INTO the canal when the water dropped, as opposed to out towards the main lake. That’s going to make for some crowded fishing in two weeks, when the FLW comes here.

Annie writes:
I worked some more on Dan’s resume (sponsorship portfolio), and then got the house ready for travel, although we have decided not to leave until tomorrow. In fact, we don’t even know where we’re going tomorrow - we’re going to have to make some decisions about that tonight.

Mary Ann came over for a little bit and we rode over to the weigh-in together. Dan came in with only one fish, and I was sad, but I was also pleased that he caught fish each day of the tournament. We visited with and then said good-bye to lots of our friends, then returned to the camper for our last night here. We are faced with a big decision now - whether or not to fish the FLW here in two weeks. We have arguments both in favor of and against the idea, and tonight we’re going to have to decide.

Afterwards, I informed my husband that today we were going to start getting back into shape! We got dressed and went out for our very first jog, and it felt great! Well, it felt great after I finally got my breath back and my pulse rate returned to normal. The rest of the morning we worked on scraping the CITGO signs off the camper, and managed to get one side totally done. Around 12:30 we left the campground and drove to Vero Beach, where we will be staying a few days to visit with Dan’s mom. We got a campsite there, got organized, and went over to see Mom for the evening. We expect to stay two or three days before heading north to New Hampshire.

I spent most of the day on this project, but managed also to respond to some email, research selling the bus, and look into a few houses for sale in NH. We are not exactly sure what our plan is yet, but these are some of the different options we are looking into. We did take time out to go for another walk on the beach - this gives us a nice break to get away from our work and then go back with a clear head. Dan called and talked to Kate, who’s 17th birthday is today, then we had a nice dinner at Mom’s house and went back to the camper around 9pm.

We left Tennessee the next day and for the third time in a month made the marathon 1000 mile ride back to New England in 17 hours, arriving at our boat dealer in Connecticut at 5am. Our CITGO boat is now sitting on the showroom floor at Boat Works of South Windsor, available for sale to the general public. Anyone interested in learning more about it can contact Boat Works at (860) 282-0100 or visit their website at www.ctBoatWorks.com.

We were at Boat Works primarily to drop off the boat, but we were also anxious to talk to the owner, Tom Krivickas, about our future relationship. The "sponsor boat program," and the whole team concept which tied us to CITGO last year, involved a lot more than just us and CITGO. Aside from actually building the boats, Ranger administers the overall program, and thus are a key player. Also, the Ranger boat dealers are saddled with the task of selling the boats at the end of the year, so they are integrally involved. In fact CITGO’s involvement, (or that of any of the other team sponsors, to my knowledge,) extends only so far as contracting with the individual fishermen, and choosing the colors for the team boats. They don’t pay for the boats, they don’t own the boats, and they are in no way involved in the disposal or resale of the boats once their term of usefulness is fulfilled. So, as far as the boats go, Ranger builds them, the sponsors get the advertising from them, the team members get to fish out them, and the Ranger boat dealers get to sell them at the end of the year.

As I said we were anxious to talk to Tom today about our future relationship. Primarily we wanted to make sure he knew how grateful we were for his help last year. Because dealers like Boat Works are such an integral part of the whole sponsor boat program, no one gets on a team or gets to run one of these boats without first getting a commitment from their dealer to buy the boat at the end of the year. In return for this commitment the boat dealer needs to realize some value in return, and some of the things we offered to do for Boat Works last year included coming down from New Hampshire to work shows, and taking Boat Works clients and customers out for a few days of the fabulous Smallmouth fishing we have here on our native New Hampshire waters. We wanted to assure Tom today that though our CITGO team relationship is now over, we still feel we owe him and his dealership a debt of gratitude, and are more than willing to follow through on our earlier promises even though we are no longer in possession of the Team CITGO boat.

When finished at Boat Works we left and continued our trek home to New Hampshire, arriving at Mom & Dad’s (Annie’s parents) just after lunch-time. We got moved into the house, we got the computers, the printer, and all our stuff set up so that we can be generating proposals this week, we visited with Mom & Dad for a while, and then we climbed into bed about 8 p.m. We hadn’t been to bed since 8 o’clock yesterday morning, 36 hours ago.

In fact, we’re very pleased with the progress we’ve made updating our business proposals. The list of prospective sponsors whom we had targeted in the past had been made up almost exclusively of companies from within the fishing industry, and our portfolio and resume’ had been reflective of this fact. This past month though has seen us making a significant shift in our business strategy. We have re-written a great deal of our proposal material, gearing it more towards introducing non-traditional sponsors - large companies from outside the fishing industry - to the potential benefits of marketing to the 55 million anglers currently in America. There are thousands of businesses out there who are unaware of the huge potential marketplace made up of fishing enthusiasts nationwide, and introducing some of these companies to our sport and to the current state of professional bass fishing is our new focus.

On another note, we’d like to say a special thank-you to all those readers who have sent us letters of support following our recent career crisis. We have received countless letters of encouragement, prayers, and wisdom, with many letters urging us to "hang-in-there, something good will come of this," and we can’t tell you enough how much these have helped us to get through a tough time. Keep ‘em coming.

Now, many people have also asked how they can write directly to CITGO, and some have even informed us that they have chosen to boycott the company. Annie and I have discussed this situation and have agreed to take the following stance: We would prefer that people NOT write to CITGO expressing their displeasure. We don’t feel that this is benefiting anyone, and if someone feels a need to write and express their feelings they are more than welcome to write to us personally. As far as boycotting CITGO, we would ask that our readers not adopt this course of action either. As each CITGO gasoline station is independently owned and operated, the only person hurt by this action would be your local, neighborhood entrepreneur, who is just trying to make a living for himself and his family. A boycott would have little or no impact upon CITGO as a whole, but could have a significant negative effect on your neighbor, who had nothing to do with our situation in the first place.

So once again, thank you all for the hundreds of support letters you’ve already sent, and any further comments can be directed to either Dan@DanielKeyes.com or Annie@DanielKeyes.com.

Important Note: There is a possibility that ESPN.com, host site of our "Life On Tour Journal" for the last two years, will not continue to post journal entries through the coming season. For this reason, the journal will concurrently be posted, along with archives dating back to the beginning, on the www.DanielKeyes.com website. We would like our readers to continue accessing the journal through ESPN.com so long as it remains available thereon, but also to make note of the alternative address, www.DanielKeyes.com, in the event we should disappear from ESPN without warning.

Link to: February 2001