Fishing Hurt

Published 11:16 am Monday, December 28, 2015

Athletes get injured. Football and basketball players tear up knees. Baseball players hurt shoulders and elbows. Even NASCAR racers can hit a wall and break something.

I fell in the driveway and broke my wrist.

I missed the last half of the BASS season. I was having a good year until then. I missed the Major League Fishing series.

I am fishing again and it is getting stronger every day. I still don’t know how it is going to do once the Elite series starts in March, but I think it will be OK.

Although it doesn’t happen a lot, there are fishermen who have to get a medical leave and drop out of the tour like I did. There are others who are not able to fish at all.

Jared Miller had to take a leave last year. He had to have his appendix out while he was on his way to New York to fish an Elite Series tournament on the St. Lawrence River. He had to stop and have surgery in Joplin, Mo.

Dustin Wilks doesn’t fish anymore after he had elbow surgery and Byron Velvick had to have neck surgery.

All the casting and retrieving, it catches up with a lot of fishermen over the years. So does standing up all day fishing especially with high winds and waves, and riding a boat in rough waters. People will laugh at getting hurt fishing, but come out and fish seven days in a row from dawn to dusk on the Great Lakes with 30 mile per hour winds.

You have to have a drive and love to do this. That is the only way you are going to be successful in competitive fishing. Injury and pain, there is stuff like that all the time. You have fish through the pain. I have been amazed at some of the pain guys have competed through. You don’t stop. You can’t stop. You have another tournament the next week.

I have been lucky and never had any other injuries. This isn’t a fishing related handicap, but if it doesn’t heal back correctly I could have problems.