Champion Angler Boyd Duckett on competitive fishing
This is the first installment of the The Duckett Exchange, a monthly column about competitive fishing written by Boyd Duckett, a former Bassmaster Classic champion and one of the most popular anglers in the country. In 2007, Duckett set an all-time BASS single-season earnings record. Duckett is also a successful businessman - the owner of Southern Tank Leasing, an Alabama-based company with terminals all over the Southeast and Midwest - and a sought-after public speaker. His column will be distributed monthly. See his blog site at www.boydduckett.com.
Tough economic times call for new and creative approaches - 5 tips that could help you keep fishing and keep your edge
First of all, let me state right up front that you probably don't need to read an article from a pro fisherman to tell you that our economy - top to bottom - is not balanced. You know it. I know it. And we're all trying to work our way through some tough times.
I watch the dips in the stock market. Day after day, it seems to be the same story. Being a pro angler - a person whose career has been helped by corporate sponsors - one story particularly jumped at me: GM dropped Tiger Woods as a sponsor. If you're a major U.S. company and you've got the best golfer in the world on your team … and you drop him? That's amazing. That's corporate America doing what we do every day: cutting costs in a painful way.
It's sad to say that fishing is not immune. I would like to think that we could all escape our troubles for a few hours every week by heading for the lake and fishing. Fishing is a way that a lot of Americans keep their minds off other troubles. Fishing is psychological relief.
Fishing is different than any other sport I've ever known. I can pull up to any boat ramp in America and if my tires spin, another fisherman will stop what he's doing and help. If the truck pulling my bass boat breaks down on an interstate, I'm not the least bit concerned because somebody that owns a bass boat will be stopping soon to help me. That's just the way anglers are.
Nothing against other sports. I like golf, for example. I still occasionally play golf. But if I'm broken down on the road and lean a set of clubs against my fender, I'm not convinced that a golfer will automatically stop to help me.
The point is, there's an emotional tie to fishing and the fishing industry that all anglers share. We're a family. And right now the whole the family is struggling because our economy is in trouble.
I think a lot of people don't realize that fishing, according to ESPN, is a $66 billion industry. That's the amount of money we spend on our sport annually.
Everybody in the sport is affected. We're mirroring what's happening across the country. The companies at the top - the boat and engine manufacturers and the bait companies - are struggling, so are the mom-and-pop bait shops. Fishing is a recreational endeavor, and, unfortunately, buying recreational products comes last.
I'm fortunate enough to compete at the highest level of our sport, but we'll struggle this year the same way weekend anglers will struggle. If one of the largest corporations in the world drops Tiger Woods, do you think we, the anglers on the Elite Series tour, aren't concerned about whether corporate America will invest in our sport?
So at a time when even that simple act of escaping to the lake for a few hours is tough financially, what are we going to do to get through this? How can we survive economically and still keep the benefits we get from fishing? And for those of you who want to keep competing, what's next?
See page two for five suggestions for saving money fishing.
