One of the things I like most about this time of year is my guiding. I do some of this during the Bassmaster Elite Series season, but I have a lot more time to book trips once we wrap up the annual Northern Swing.
I love being on the water, and it definitely helps keep me sharp during the offseason. But what I like most about chartering is the people I meet and the relationships I make.
Need a good example? Here’s the best one yet.
In 2013, a girl called me about booking a charter for her dad’s birthday, and he brought her along on the trip. A few days after I had her and her dad on my boat, another charter caught a 13.88-pound bass with me.
I texted her and said, “You were a few days early.” We talked about that a little, and then I asked, “Can I take you out to dinner?”
She said she had a boyfriend, so I apologized, because I didn’t know.
A couple of months went by and she texted me again and said she wanted to book another trip for her dad in the spring. I told her to just let me know when she was ready.
She contacted me when we got closer to spring to see if I had any dates open. I told her I did, and she asked me, “Do you still want to take me on that date?”
I said, “Heck yeah! What happened to the boyfriend?”
To make a long story short, she was no longer with that fella, so we started dating. It all worked out just fine, and that girl’s now my wife and the mother of my daughter.
Along the way, I’ve met a lot of new friends through guiding, and I’ve gotten to watch their families grow up. One of my big sponsors started bringing his son fishing with me when he was 11 years old. Now, he’s full grown, graduated from Baylor University and working for a big insurance company.
It’s cool watching people who’ve been a part of my life through guiding grow up like that. A lot of great relationships start that way.
There’s no question, some of my best friendships have come through guiding, but on top of that, I’ve met a lot of sponsors as well. Some of the sponsorships that I have today came from contacts I made guiding.
Part of the process over the years has been learning — through good experiences and bad experiences — how to effectively communicate with people. From the personal friendships to the business relationships, my boat gives me a private setting to work on those communication skills that are so important to my career as an Elite angler.
Whether you spend a few hours after a business meeting fun fishing with a sponsor, or you go out for a steak dinner, these relationships are huge. And you just cannot overemphasize the importance of nurturing relationships that could come full circle down the road.
You never know when someone may start a new company or go to work for a new company that might want to get involved with supporting my tournament fishing. It all circles back around, and it starts with building good relationships.
