Byron Velvick - It Takes Balls To Be A Pro Angler on MERCER-191 - MERCER-The Awkwardly Honest Fishing Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
He is
a two time
Bassmaster Classic qualifier,
a three time Bassmaster winner.
He's won 14 boats, a Rolex watch.
He was once the Bachelor
and he returns to the show
when he left us last.
He promised he will come back
and he will lay the dirt out.
And the dirt.
Well, it was layeth.
This one gets a little spicy.
You don't want to miss it.

(00:21):
Byron Velvick joins me this week on.
I'm Bob Cobb for the Bassmaster.
Welcome to Mercer.
Welcome, one.
Welcome, all friends, family,

(00:43):
freeloaders, fishing freaks.
And of course,
you guys,
my jumpers that tune in here
each and every Wednesday.
Welcome to another edition
of the Awkwardly Honest Fishing podcast
that goes by my last name,
which is Mercer.
This is the 191st
edition of the Mercer Podcast,
and I hope wherever you are in the world
listening or watching this show,
I hope life is treating you well.

(01:05):
It is full on festive mode around here.
It literally
looks like hallmark
puked all over our house, but
it should be.
I mean, it is the festive season.
It is December 11th,
which means I am roughly
13 days away from starting
Christmas shopping.
Yes, I am one of those guys.
That does it all at the last minute,

(01:27):
but it's part of my holiday tradition.
I mean,
every Christmas
that it puts me in the Christmasy mood
and I just rush out and get what I
could get. But,
nobody really gets upset.
I mean, I think I'm a decent gift giver,
and not just to my family.
I think
I've been a decent gift
giver to you guys
this festive season,

(01:48):
giving you the gifts to keep on giving.
And last week up for grabs was an Abu
Garcia Revo Premier spinning reel.
This bad boy
and all you had to do
is like, comment,
subscribe and include Abu
Abu Garcia in your comment.
It's really that simple
and it makes a big difference
every like every comment,

(02:08):
every subscription
helps stroke the algorithm
that keeps this show growing.
And I am so thankful for that.
But our winner is listening
right now has not been informed.
It could be you if your name is Cody
Hoosier 3333.
Or maybe, maybe it's Cody Holzer 3333.

(02:32):
Yeah, definitely.
Cody Holzer 3333.
Congratulations.
You have won yourself an Abu
Garcia Revo premiere.
We will be in touch
to get you that prize package.
And I mean,
I love the the Holzer one take off.
Holzer.
How about a jelly eh
good good good good good good

(02:55):
It probably means nothing to some people,
but for those of you
educated folk, that is the great Bob.
Well, it's not them.
It's me
acting, trying to
be like Bob and Doug McKenzie.

So yeah, you're a winner.
Holzer. Right on a no.

(03:16):
I know what you're thinking.
Same thing last week.
I did this same thing.
You know, there's
I just made one listener happy
and, upset the rest of you.
But guess what?
It's not over yet.
The gifts that keep on giving are giving.
And I just packed this myself.
This is a mega pack.
This Plano edge box.

(03:37):
It is the plastic bait organizer box,
but it is ram
jam packed full of Berkley baits.
We got Mac
sent baits,
we got power baits, we got swim baiting.
25 baits in there.
This package alone is worth over $300,
and it truly is
the gift that keeps on giving.

(03:58):
I mean, look at it there.
I mean,
not only what you see here,
but just imagine
all of the memories of the many,
many fish
you're going to catch on these baits.
How do you win?
You're asking plain and simple.
You guys know how this game is played.
All you got to make sure
is you like this video.
I have an excessive amount of

(04:18):
dog hair on me.
Why is hair always such a problem for me?
Last week it was my eyebrows.
I feel they're looking good this week,
but this week it's
the hair of a white shepherd.
All you gotta do is like,
comment and subscribe.
Make sure you include Berkeley
in your comments, and if you do,
you could be next week's winner.

(04:39):
Blow up
the comments
like you guys have each and every week.
It's been a big week for me.
From one
Canadian
icon,
a group of icons, Bob and Doug McKenzie,
I got to hang out with others.
The great Trailer Park boys.
They had their movie
premiere in Toronto, and, I got to be

(05:03):
part of that and hang out with,
everybody afterwards.
They had little friends
and family gathering,
which I was so thankful to be part of.
And, it was all to kick off their movie.
Saw their movie.
It's a great movie.
It, you should go check it out.
It's playing all over the world,
so check it out.
It's called
standing on the Shoulders of kitties.

(05:24):
It is the bubbles in the rocket story.
One of my longtime friends,
Brad Stella, is actually a ship rocket,
so it was good to see him.
It's also good to see Pat Roach.
Of course,
you guys are familiar with him.
He plays Randy. He's been on this show.
We're going to have him on here again
soon.
We've had bubbles on here.

(05:44):
Mike Smith we've had him on in the past.
Maybe that's my new goal in 2025.
We're going to get all the trailer
park boys on this show.
Because I enjoyed hanging out with them.
They're just good people.
What they've done
is truly amazing when you think about it.
I mean, to get the level of success
that they've got,
not just in Canada

(06:04):
but literally worldwide is incredible.
But the fact that it's still rolling
25 years later shows just
how good of people they are and and
how cool of what they're doing is.
It was a fun, fun evening.
Met a lot of really cool people and,

(06:25):
really enjoyed it.
Little late, little late for for me.
But, I guess that's the drawback.
Like, you know,
you look at the trailer
park place and you're like,
dang, that's a pretty good lot in life,
but you can't go home early
if you're a trailer park boy.
It's just kind of their life.
They were leaving Toronto
to go to New York the next morning

(06:47):
and do more premieres.
They had been in LA.
They had, you know,
I think they did one in London.
The been all over the place
doing premieres. So,
I guess kind of the
drawback of their life is, well,
if you're a trailer park boy,
you people expect you to party.
I feel like I kept up well that night.
I don't know that I could do it.

(07:10):
Consecutively, like they do.
But, I look forward to,
seeing them all again.
And make sure you check out that movie,
because they truly are just good dudes.
I mean, there's a lot of movies that,
you know,
you go to and you're like, tend to,
do I really matter?
These guys are very thankful
of all your support.
And, go out and check it out.

(07:33):
Standing on the shoulders of kitties,
the trailer park
boys are back in your life.
Make sure to, enjoy it.
Speaking of
being back in your life,
that's the tale with this week's guest.
Sure.
He's won three Bassmaster events.
He's qualified for two classics.
He's won 14 boats, a Rolex.

(07:54):
He was once the freaking bachelor.
Just say that to yourself.
He was the bachelor.
Most people,
I mean, if I'd have been the Bachelor,
I would literally walk around
with a shirt
that said, I once was the Bachelor.

But it's just one of the many things
that he's accomplished in his life,
his incredible life.

(08:14):
And one of the things
that was so amazing
about the last time we had him on
it was a little over two months ago.
The amount of comments.
You guys are such a great community,
such a supportive community.
You guys always give me great comments
on all of the guests
and I'm
so thankful for all of the friends
guests that we have on this show
and how open and honest they are.

(08:34):
But the amount of comments
that people made
right afterwards that said,
feed me
more of Byron Velvet
because he teased some big stories.
And sometimes people will tease things
and you know that
it doesn't live up to the tease.
But I will promise you,
these are some
freaking crazy stories

(08:55):
that you don't want to miss.
And this tease definitely lived up to it.
So I'll stop teasing this.
We'll jump right into it.
The one and only Byron felt like
the great and mighty Byron Velvet,
a man who started
catching, not catching or collecting

(09:16):
golf balls and became
one of the greatest West Coast pros ever.
I'm only telling that story so I can.
Right?
The mistake
that I made the last time
we did the podcast, Byron,
I made a huge mistake.
I did not call it.
It takes balls
to be a professional angler.
So I only want to start off
telling that story
just simply because we knew

(09:37):
we got a title.
But, well,
that is a great,
Yeah, it takes ball golf balls to fish.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
You know, I love that
you brought that up
because you, my friend,
you did your homework.
The fact you found out that I was,
a ball hawk
to get golf
balls to support a fishing career
at the young in the early days.
That's that's epic, dude.

(09:58):
Kudos to you, Mercer.
Well, takes balls.
We got to tackle. Well,
quite often
we have a podcast with no title.
We have a title.
We just need to do the podcast part.
I love it, I love it.
We got several stories that you teased
last time, but before we get into that,
we had people
all jazzed up about Byron's bunker,

(10:20):
and they went to the bunker
and it's right there.
There's the bunker,
there's all the rods in the corner.
Those are all Duckett rods on sailing
and all the rails in this place.
This is just like a
small fraction of a dude.
It's crazy.
Kind of a lot of cool stuff,
but it's all stocked up.
Last time we did this, it was.
You weren't stocked up,
but you got a ton of stuff there.

(10:40):
Some unique stuff.
We were talking
before we started recording, a VHS.
For those of you
that don't know what that is,
it's something in between DVDs
and a track.
Somewhere along the way, it became VHS.
It had a long run, really.
I mean, VHS was a big thing, but,

(11:02):
I'm excited
about that tape
because never been opened.
But, dude, look at this.
I told you I had it
and you didn't buy it.
I didn't even look like
you're not going to have it.
There's always the Skeet Reese one.
Oh, my gosh, what else do we got?
The smart one.
Oh oh you dumb.

(11:23):
The hits keep coming.
The very rare mark Kyle one
oh there's a dude.
You got the series of them.
And of course the piece de résistance
Byron velvet. Look at this.
You get that here
I was channeling
skeet before skeet had that hair.
Dude, it's like something right out
of, out of. I think it was Top Gun.

(11:45):
I think I was thinking that I was,
I was in
I was Iceman in Top Gun with the spiked
white hair.
That's the shortest day ever.
Was it crazy?
How do you have that series in Canada?
Oh, do you have that?
I'm a weirdo, dude.
I've been into this stuff
for a while, but, I mean, you were.
I look at you.
You were at before I was a thing.

(12:07):
That was back
when swim baits
were literally unknown
around the country. Except for the West.
Yeah, I mean that you have a VHS
and a swim bait
in the same word that doesn't exist
because the kids are like,
I don't know what a VHS,
but I don't know what a VHS is,
but I know what a swim date is.
I got like, I got like 9 or 10 of those.
So I just put one on Byron's bunker

(12:28):
because I'm like,
I gotta sell
a few of those off to bidders
just to see what you just
just for someone to put it
like you did in their collection.
It's cool.
It's cool to to have
I mean, and I appreciate it
because after you did that,
I started digging and came across.
How about these?
I can't believe you didn't have a 1990s
collector edition cards.

(12:49):
What year you started?
What year do you started?
This is before you right
know they had the collector's cards?
No, I started,
I was fishing,
I went fishing all the way back in the
in the 80s in high school.
OG fears.
Yes. Larry Nixon. Yeah.
You know him that.
Oh this is going to be your favorite
right here.
Big John Murray

(13:09):
oh my god Turkey has gone.
He's got a sack too.
I never
I never got invited to do a trading card.
And people would come up to me
and say, can you
can I hand me the deck and say,
would you sign your card?
I'd be like, son, I don't have one.
What do we made the trading cards like?
We're like, I haven't won it.
I don't know
if I'd won the open yet or not.

(13:30):
God that's crazy.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe I had won the first U.S.
open yet.
No. Lonnie Stanley.
It's awesome. Lonnie.
The first year.
Charlie, I was rooting Canada,
collecting all this stuff.
Oh, dude, I'm a weirdo.
I've I mean it, I'm,
This is just been my life.
I also have that's the later one.

(13:52):
The 92, 93, the full freaking set.
The entire set.
Yeah, but I need bunk, right?
I need to put that on pirate bunker.
That needs to go on my eBay site.
I want to sell everything.
You got to jet off it.
Look at that $hit.
I see that guy.
Former Miami dolphin I drew.

(14:13):
Yep yep yep Robert Hamilton Jr
I remember Bassmaster Classic champion
that Robert Hamilton Jr.
That was my classic.
You know how everyone has a classic
I think
like most people that get into this
there's like you were
you remember everything
like I remember like the
I don't remember my wife's birthday
without looking at my phone,

(14:34):
but I literally can remember
his exact words
other than my unbelievable
faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ in the birth of my children,
this is the greatest day of my life
that was
holding Robert Hamilton Jr.
You are a plethora
of like old school information my friend.
A police ora Charlie Campbell.
Okay, one more.

(14:54):
I'm gonna say one more.
That's we have a KVD.
When his body didn't fit his hat
or his act in his body.
There's a cavity.
Oh, my God, you got collector items.
You know I don't have to send you retain.
Now, this is a good thing.
I was expecting you.
Hit me up today on the podcast.
No, no.
Larry and Bobby swim back tapes you like.

(15:14):
You already have it up here.
I mean, up in Toronto,
you're the only dude in Canada
that has that tape.
I will bet money right now,
you're the only guy up in Canada
that has that.
That series of the western, the Western
Lumina Lures.
I think Jennifer Frederick
put it together with Safari Productions.
Dude,
it was,
it was just a Western series of

(15:35):
VHS tapes.
And you're the only guy in sport
that I'm sure.
Yeah, that's just the Western series.
Yeah. I don't tell people everything.
You're a collector of all collectors.
I'm a weirdo, dude.
Like, have you got to have yet?
Have you got the best?
No, no, no,
I don't, because our rec center,
Bryce Center, had, like, two weeks ago.
I can tell you exactly where it is.
It's at the border

(15:56):
because our freaking post
Canada Post is on strike,
so I should have attached it to you.
Man, I should have just been.
Okay. It'll show up.
It'll show up.
I mean, whenever they go back to work.
I mean, nobody needs packages
during Christmas, I mean, this
you see all these boxes
right there where my finger is?
Those are all

(16:16):
base center hats,
and I can't find the loudmouth fast ones.
I'm gonna find you
the loud mouth bass ones.
They're green,
but those are the blue and black
bass center hats from from that show.
And so that's.
I sent that to you, like, two weeks ago.
I can't believe I didn't just Fedex it.
Well, no,
I mean, at the time
when you sent it to me,
they weren't on strike, but, like,
they must have gone in
like the day after.
But it's okay. It's okay.

(16:38):
I mean,
I have it hanging right there
next to that.
That cowboy hat right there.
Yeah. That's Ray Scott's hat.
His actual.
Well, that was dude.
That's awesome.
Actual hat comes in. He he it is.
I have it somewhere here.
The box like the box it comes in
Ray Scott signature series hat like.
No. Oh yeah. It's incredible.
It's incredible.

(16:58):
You guys such cool stuff.
Mercer, I want to come to your house
and check it out.
I just want to come look at everything.
You're.
I may steal some of it
and put it on Byron's bunker,
but you can't be there.
That's fine.
I didn't remember half of it until
we started talking about it.
I can't believe you pulled
out the trading cards on the. Anyway, so.
Yeah, I'm selling all this stuff off.
I mean, I got reels
and rods and square baits and.

(17:19):
Dude, I'm just. I'm just blowing it out.
I gotta downsize.
And this is 40 years of junk
that I, that I don't,
I don't call it junk.
We're trying to sell it to people. Byron.
Come on 40 years
because I don't think it's history.
40 years. Priceless.
Priceless treasures.
I got a story for you.
I got a story for you.
I bet these guys are from Canada.

(17:40):
You familiar with the live target people?
Of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay,
so I just got done selling these things.
I just put three of them together
and put them on eBay. Right.
And they sold for I do free shipping.
You know I work with Live Target
for like ten years.
Did you really. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
So I love that
they sponsor me
I flew up there to that to their,

(18:01):
their office up there by yeah.
And then of course yeah. Yeah.
They flew me in to Buffalo.
They picked me up
and they sponsored me at Niagara Falls.
And I was one of the first
freshwater pros they had. Byron.
We were both sponsored
by the same company the same time.
Do you not remember this?
Oh, of course I'm going to.
Mercer.
Mercer.
This bait right here is discontinued.

(18:23):
I just found out
after I sold them for $8,
I had to pay $5 for shipping,
so I made three bucks off
this whole collection of baits
right here. This one's worth 30.
This one's worth, like, 35,
and this one's worth about 20.
So I didn't know that
live targets were discontinued.
And apparently on eBay,
people are buying them
at 30 bucks apiece. Mercer.
I'm not joking.

(18:43):
30 bucks a piece for these things
because you can't get them anymore.
And I just blew out three of them.
Like I said, I paid $5 for shipping,
so I made three bucks off three baits.
And that was last week.
And now I realized
the half
the stuff's discontinued in the half.
This junk
half price.
Others defense company wants.
Somebody wants to go
fishing with that bait,
but they can't get it.
I gotta sell

(19:04):
you need to sell all your live
target stuff. I got a bunch.
I do have a bunch.
You said $30.
I was like, wait a second.
I am not joking.
I just, I and I did the advanced search.
Not what they're asking.
I mean, I'm
looking to see how much these sold for.
And these baits sold
for 30 to 35 bucks apiece on eBay.
And I didn't know this.
And you, you got a bunch of it, too.
You didn't know it either?

(19:25):
No, no, I might open a bunker.
There might be a
Mercer might be happening.
So you don't know the Dolphins do these.
Huddleston back here.
This is a Huddleston.
These are the original Huddleston
from Mesquite, Nevada.
I just looked it up.
It's $100 now for these things on eBay.

(19:45):
Because they're the original ones.
Because they say they say
Mesquite, Nevada on the back.
So when they say mesquite, Nevada,
that's when they originally originally
that's where,
Huddleston was making them.
And I'm like $100 for those Huddleston
swim baits.
But eBay is crazy for the stuff
that's discontinued.
So there's guys out there
that are looking for
those live targets of yours
and these, you know, Huddleston

(20:06):
swim baits that they just can't get them.
So it's a it's it's
amazing what they're going for on eBay.
Really amazing.
So what I take from
this is act now folks.
Before Byron figures out what
all this stuff's actually worth,
I can now go to Byron's bunker on eBay.
I'm going to put the link
in the comments.
I'm going to put the link
in the description

(20:26):
and it's actually got stuff this time.
So a bunch of people went last time
they didn't weren't able to get stuff.
But guess what? That was just the teaser.
And you're
you're going to keep filling it
up, right.
You got
I mean you got a mountain of stuff
I got, I got, I got years worth of stuff.
What it is,
I mean, I,
you know, right now
my daughter is going to school,
she's going to go to college soon.
I just don't need all this stuff.
I'm not fishing.

(20:46):
Send a kid to college, I don't.
Yeah, I need to take you to college,
and I'm just not fishing competitively,
so I'd rather somebody.
Somebody really wants this bait,
you know? Somebody really wants that.
One day back there.
I'm never going to use it.
I'm never going to open it up.
Why even open it up?
So if somebody on eBay wants to buy it,
I just put it up for auction.
And the thing is,
I'm paying for shipping.
So if I do free shipping
on most of my stuff,

(21:07):
then I mean, heck,
they look at the price, it's
$8 delivered to their door
or ten bucks delivered to their door.
And that's the trick is
you're even willing to pay the shipping.
And so you do well with it
if you have a live target stuff.
But I'm going to put mountains
of this stuff on eBay
in the next year or so,
and I'll have a year's
worth of stuff to put up.
All right. We'll check.
And I want your stuff to.

(21:28):
Well, let's get through.
Let's let your pile get a little smaller
before we. I'm a weirdo.
I actually, I keep all this stuff.
I mean, it makes me happy,
but no, I'll sell a few live targets
because I got a few. I'll bet you do.
I'll.
I'll get. Your boxes are insane.
You you you know my target boxes?
They're not like mine.

(21:48):
They're never open.
I mean, these baits are just never,
ever open.
It's like people get to open up a box.
They can't buy any more, you know?
There you are.
Yeah.
That's the stuff you
that you won't get rid of that hat there.
You will get rid of those tapes
in those cards
and all that memorabilia you got.
And I got a bunch of stuff
I'll keep
that has sentimental attachment,
but I've got 30 ducat rods over there.
I need to sell 30 Duckett rods.

(22:09):
I'm using tripod now.
So what am I gonna do
with the Duckett rod or in Abu
Garcia reel or, Duckett reel?
I got all those reels over there.
I got to get rid of two anyway.
All right, I digress.
Pirates bunker.
Check it out, folks.
Send a child to college.
I mean, they mention
if they mention your podcast,
I'm going to send them some extra stuff.
Oh.
So anybody
anybody messages me when they

(22:30):
when if they get the winning bid
and they say,
I saw you on Mercer's gig,
I'll send them some extra stuff for free.
Sam. Is that cool?
Yeah, 100% cool.
Doug I just
I just hope I get at least one person.
I hope I get one person
that is like we were talking about it
for the show.
Of the seven people
watching this podcast right now,

(22:50):
if one of you buy something on my.
I'm talking about
the audience
reaction of your seven people
that religiously watch you. Mercer.
If one person buy
something a Barnes member,
I'll give them a free hat.
Yeah. So awesome.
Yeah.
I've got some stuff in for Mercer,
not the Mercer posse.
Do you have a name for your posse?
No, no, I actually do the jumpers.

(23:12):
We call them jumpers because
I started weird.
But the show comes out on Wednesday,
so someday.
But,
Yeah, that's the name of your group.
It's not. You're the dumpers.
I mean,
everybody's proud to be a jumper,
but be insane clown posse, the Juggalos.
Yeah, yeah, Saint Cloud posse, if you're.
Yeah, if you're a Juggalo
and you're a hump.
You got the hump. Was that.
Yeah, yeah. Do that.

(23:33):
Who knew Insane Clown Posse?
I just threw that out.
I mean,
I had no idea that was going to be
that reference, but,
I, I'm a fan of it
and saying I will not reference P
Diddy this time.
Okay, beloved, please don't please don't.
We almost
broke the internet last time,
but I brought up
that I said he did he.
If those of you watching

(23:55):
guys will see me accidentally
throw out P Diddy.
Mercer had a a coronary on that one.
I did it, dude.
I did it on bass
live last year in the fall.
The story wasn't this big.
Well, Trey McKinney,
the 19 year old kid
who almost one angler of the year, he's
he's doing past life with me,
and he shows up and it just starts

(24:15):
raining while we're there.
So our producer throws
a umbrella,
he catches it,
and he's holding the umbrella.
And I just kept talking.
Then I was like,
I feel like P Diddy
because he always had the dude
with the umbrella. I forget his name.
And then
like I immediately was,
no, I do not feel at all
like P Diddy whatsoever.
I'm just a man

(24:36):
standing beside another person with
a brella,
you know, that's like I did.
I did not mean to reference that.
Nothing, anything I p Diddy
nor I've ever felt like.
And I've never had a white party
or a white out party or anything else.
Oh my gosh,
we've thousand at a thousand bottles of,
oh, of GHB laced blue h b laced.

(25:02):
Know
all my years of alias I never experienced
GHB laced lube.
Oh my gosh, you put it on.
You think you got baby oil
on your goes into your skin
and your date rape.
I mean, to get into this,
how do you
how do you order that many like.
Okay, well, this is the good stuff.

(25:22):
Get me a lot a thank you here.
They said Costco.
They actually reference
somebody in his defense mentioned
he has a big house and Costco's
nearby like. So that's your logic.
And you
might have to Costco
toilet papers over here.
I have paper towels
but I don't have a thousand lubes
because Costco had a sale on them.

(25:43):
It's crazy, it's crazy.
But, sorry, everybody.
Yeah, we'll move on.
We'll move on.
You,
you're one of the most eagerly
anticipated returning guests.
Like, if you read through the comments
from our last podcast.
I mean, there's a lot of time
almost everybody comes on the show.
People will say nice things.

(26:03):
That was good.
I really enjoyed getting to know
that person better. Whatever.
But people just wanted more.
Byron, you left us wanting,
which is I am,
I guess I am
of, of a pro leaving them wanting more.
I just want to say I read the comments
and I want to thank everybody
that's currently watching.
And that said, anything nice
because I was literally sharing them

(26:24):
with my daughter
with Livingston Lures, my sponsors,
you know everybody Michelle Mercury
I agent all my sponsor.
I go, hey, look at this.
Mercer's podcast
had these great people
that had great things to say,
and they were so complimentary.
And we had a lot of fun.
And I just want to thank the people
that watched listen and commented and
and I think you've inspired me.
I definitely think I will venture off

(26:46):
and split off and do my own,
you know, with your tutelage,
a podcast of my own, possibly.
I think that you
you brought it up
and I thought, man,
I've been talking, thinking
maybe that would be fun to do.
I don't know,
I think it'd be great, dude,
I mean, you what are your guys?
One of your guys said,
I'm stamping
Byron Valmiki
on my bingo card to take zonas place.
I know I said that a bunch.

(27:08):
I was so flattered.
I'm like, no way.
They're actually like,
giving me a vote of confidence
to, like, sit next to Tommy again.
I used to do stuff with Tommy, but I.
And I appreciate all that.
I unfortunately, I'm, you know,
I gotta pick my daughter
from school today,
and I'm going to take her to school
while every other day
besides the weekend.
So but
but that was a compliment
to have just for people to say,
put Byron in Jonah's retirement spot.

(27:29):
And I love Sona,
I love Tommy,
I love you, but
thank you guys,
the audience, for even being so nice
to me.
That was,
you know, you usually expect
a lot of trolls and a lot of trolls.
I, I think you have a great fan base
that were very complimentary.
And I mean, if you follow my heart, I was
I was really touched
by all the great things everybody said.
We had a lot of fun
and I and I and I love that.
It's, it's it is.

(27:50):
I'll say it's a really cool community.
We've kind of weeded out.
I mean, every once in a while, a little
angry person will get in there.
But that's the cool thing, too,
because the community that watches
this show is so cool that they actually
I don't even have to deal with them.
Half the time
that, you know, they'll deal with them,
so they'll they'll deal with.

(28:10):
So if the angry person gets in the
the other hoppers,
take the little angry person
and just Pamela Harper, get out of here.
No, no, no need to.
Makeovers.
They were super nice.
Even the ones that said
they never had heard about me before
didn't know anything about me.
Which is
totally understandable because, you know,
I was a West Coast kind of swing big guy,
but I was no Kevin Van Dam,

(28:30):
I was no Rick Clunn or anybody,
you know, that incredibly high level.
But but even that,
they just getting to know me through
the podcast was a big company
because a couple of guys said, hey,
it was just need to get to know a guy
that has been around,
you know,
and never knew me, but, but,
but like what they heard or saw
when we shared our crazy stories
and those were genuinely

(28:50):
really nice things
and they really it made my day.
Your comments really made my day.
And I and I did enjoy sharing
with my friends and family
and with sponsors.
Well, I'm glad, I'm glad I'm glad.
So just to be clear,
would you,
if you were offered that job,
is that something you'd be interested
in or.
No. Yeah.
So, you know, a while ago they asked me,
there was another organization, asked
me,
and I tried doing the FLW thing back.

(29:12):
What was FLW?
I can't do any jobs, really.
And, you know,
if if it involved being at home,
if I could do it
remotely, it's one thing,
but I literally can't
travel anywhere because,
you know, my daughter's at a critical age
right now. She's a young teenager.
She definitely needs her dad around,
you know, with the shotgun in the shovel
and the gun and the alibi.
I got it all.
I got that, I got the beautiful daughter,
the alibi, the shovel.

(29:33):
I'm ready, I got
I says that I actually have a shirt
that I, which just gave it to me.
And it's exactly that set of quotes.
But, you know, a 13 year old daughter.
I take her to school every day.
I pick her up.
I could never go to these tournaments.
I can never get back on a trail.
I'd have to do
any kind of a trail remotely.
I gotcha, I gotcha,
but I,
I appreciate people

(29:54):
actually voting me to be there because I,
you know, I,
I love Tommy and I go way, way,
way back in Zona and you and all of us.
And it would have been fun to be able to,
to kick back into it
if the opportunity wasn't, you know,
was there for me to do that.
But hey man, family first.
I love my daughter and she needs a dad
that proves
you got your priorities straight
and those scoundrels
ain't going to shoot themselves.

(30:14):
So somebody's gotta be around
because there's all
the scoundrels in the world.
There's a lot of.
I've had a couple bad
kids situations already, and I got
one kid expelled from her school already.
Damn. Wow, a high school boy.
This is a problem.
My daughter's school is.
It's middle school
and high school mixed together.
She was a seventh grader
last year,
and a high school guy was had is.

(30:35):
She's five foot eight,
you know, stunningly,
she doesn't look like a seventh grader
or an eighth grader.
But there was a high school boy,
and I, Boy, I tell you what,
I beat the drum real hard.
And I ended up getting, getting him
it deservedly, because he had a pattern
for going after middle school girls.
I got him expelled.
If he need to be expelled,
he's at an all boys school
here in San Antonio now.

(30:56):
Because of his.
Because of his
his dalliances with middle school girls.
While this podcast.
You know,
I don't ever play it,
but this is gone
in a whole different direction.
I mean,
we went from Diddy
to getting kids expelled for you.
Make sense?
We go back to fishing.
This is a fishing podcast,

(31:16):
not a not a parenting podcast.
No, no, I, I,
I appreciate what you're doing
because I think that's
I mean, being around for your family.
I always say
you will never regret time
you spend with your kids.
Like never once will you be like,
oh, jeez, you know, that was horrible
that we did that.
Like, I mean, that's
and that's all they want.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, like,

(31:37):
I remember one year, my daughter.
So we have this tradition at home where
on New Year's it started
where I'd always ask
my kids, my wife, you know,
what was your best memory
from the whole year?
And then we started doing that
actually at dinner.
You know, best part of your day?
We just focused, like,
just something that happened.
And it can be something simple.
It can be something huge,

(31:58):
but it's just a good way
to get people noticing.
The good stuff happens every day.
But it started as a New Year's thing.
And I remember
I asked my daughter
one year, I said, hey,
what was your best memory
of the whole year?
And this was a year
where, because of what I do for a living,
we get to go to some cool places.
And it was a year
we we went to Disney,
which you think as a parent,
oh, that's being a good dad.

(32:20):
And we went to,
you know, we went to an IndyCar race,
got in the pits and everything.
We did a lot of cool things.
And she so
I'm thinking, you know,
you're thinking like,
I know what she's going to answer.
It's going to be this
or it's going to be that.
And came to super thoughtful.
So she really spent
a lot of time thinking.
And she says
since that day with the pictures
now, I was like the David, the pictures.

(32:41):
And it was a day
that we were sitting on a dock
at a cottage that we had rented,
and I was just down there, Ty and Bates.
But we started taking pictures and,
you know, selfies
and she'd make a funny face and one
and then I'd make a funny face.
It was just a joke.
We ended up
taking like 100 pictures,
just laughing, making fun of each other,
you know what I mean?
Let's just have fun.
But of all year. Wow.

(33:03):
That was her favorite day.
So it just proves to you
all your kids want.
I mean, yes, sure,
they did love the Disney thing.
And I mean, we're coming up to Christmas.
Sure, they would love to get that
amazing gift that they think
is so
awesome at that time,
but ultimately
they just want
their parents to be around.
So how old was she that year?

(33:23):
How old was she that year
that she had that that that thought?
I think she was probably
probably nine, 9 or 10.
Maybe she still had the wherewithal
at 9 or 10 to sit there and say that day
with the pictures on
the dock was the day, oh, yeah, it's
it's the deep thinker.
Deep. That's so cool.
Yeah.
You know what?
I so I, you know,

(33:43):
when I was going
through the whole divorce
and all that stuff, we had that
child psychologist involved in,
you know,
they said that kids,
you probably heard this before,
but kids don't understand
the concept of love.
They don't really.
You say I love you
love, love, love, love, love.
They don't know.
They don't know
what they're you're talking about.
And they said that a kids
the way a kid defines love.
You spell, they spell it Timmy.
Timmy is how kids love.

(34:05):
That's what they know.
Yeah.
If you're putting in the Timmy,
they're feeling the love.
But if you say love you,
love you, love you.
But I'm always too busy.
I'm always doing all this
and this and that.
But I love my kids now.
They need Timmy, not love that.
You're.
You're your lip service.
You know what I mean?
Very. And I'll give you an example.
It's funny you said that.
Hey, so last night,
the Lions game was on,

(34:25):
and my daughter and I,
before she goes to bed,
the routine is right
before she goes to bed.
Obviously, no cell phones.
And you know,
and I'm watching Lions game.
And she sits down with me
and we're watching
the Lions game together in the
in the bedroom
before she goes into her room
to go to sleep.
And she's just sitting there watching it.
And I'm thinking to myself, you know,
I remember watching my football team
with my dad
and this will be something

(34:45):
I remember forever.
And it's just a Lions game, you know,
it's just me and her watching.
She's 13 years older
and she starts getting tired.
Eventually she goes to bed.
But I'm thinking for her whole life.
So remember the Lions
as the dad's football team.
They know it's cool.
Yeah.
And I had that moment
just watching the game with her.
I thought, this is so simple.
But at the same time,
I'm thinking I'm building,

(35:06):
you know, for her,
she doesn't really care,
and she's kind of interested.
She'll ask a few questions.
She sees the game going on.
She's not bitching
and moaning about it, but
but but I thought to myself,
she'll remember this
when she's 30 or 40 years old.
Whether she likes the lions or not.
Remember, dad used to like them,
you know, it's.
Yeah, it touches your own.
You know, you're,
you know,
you're not gonna be around forever.
And you know that

(35:26):
that's something she'll carry with her.
Her whole life is knowing that
I always like watching that
that particular football team
play football.
And I mean,
you know, that was dad's team.
Everybody has a team.
You have a team, everybody has a team.
And now
you're actually handing off a nice
I mean, to be a Lions fan.
Up until these last few years,
it was a brutal existence,
made it very traumatic.

(35:47):
Oh my gosh.
And I mean, I have the little helmet on.
There's pictures of me
as far back as diapers.
You know, my family's from Detroit.
Oh, my next question.
How did you become a Lions fan?
The whole family.
I was the first born out of Detroit.
So every winter, every summer,
we always went to Detroit
and hung out with the whole family.
My grandpa lived right
close to the original Lion Stadium.
Okay, so we were down
like we could walk Lion
Stadium from my grandpa's house.

(36:09):
Yeah.
And, you know,
not a good neighborhood, by the way.
What's your favorite
one to watch was that the Silverdome
was that they did play somewhere
before that?
No, it was downtown Detroit.
It was not the Silverdome.
It was right downtown Detroit.
It was, what was the name of?
It was on Michigan
Avenue, off Michigan Avenue.

(36:29):
And it was a big stadium,
and I cannot remember
the name of it, somebody.
But it was, oh,
I mean, we're talking like,
you know, the original downtown stadium.
So it wasn't a Pontiac.
It wasn't in Pontiac, Michigan or this
the Silverdome in Pontiac. Right.
You know,
this was the original stadium right off
Michigan Avenue, right? Downtown Detroit.
Wow, wow.
My mom's going to kill me
for not knowing this.
Now she'll watch this podcast, say,

(36:50):
how could you not remember
the name of that stadium?
But I don't know,
mom.
Thanks for watching.
Oh, she loved the show.
You loved you my mom.
She said you're the best podcast
she's ever watched.
Come on, she's only watched one.
So anyone else? You.
She's home.
She watches other things from my mom,
and she'll be watching this one.
And she said that guy,
he really seemed
to do his homework on you.

(37:11):
He knew a lot of stuff about you.
I'm like, yeah, yeah.
As embarrassing as that was, showing mom
Astro van and stuff, I'm like, Mercer,
shut up.
It's nothing to be embarrassed about.
Mom really enjoyed your podcast
and she's watching this one right now
when it airs on Wednesday.
Well thank you.
I appreciate her tuning in.

(37:31):
We have we've her.
What makes it eight instead of seven.
Now you got it's eight.
You got another viewer.
Yeah.
And she's probably
and half the crap anyways
just to support her boy.
No.
No.
And the
viewership that takes Mercer's
podcast from seven audience,
seven hoppers to eight. I'm.
Yeah,
yeah, it's weird
that your mom's a jumper, though.
I got a box.

(37:51):
Oh. I did my homework.
Did your homework?
Watch it.
All right, let's bring this ship in.

When we last met,
we were in the middle of a story.
But you're going to have
to recap the whole thing,
because in case people
just watch the first time,
the railroad bridge story.

(38:12):
Where did I.
Okay. Yeah.
You know, there was a lot to that story
that I didn't get to tell you.
So recap
I you remember where we left off with it?
Yeah. Go back. No, but wait.
I mean, people might be tuned into this
for the first time.
So you got to
I mean, we're going to hit
all of these stories that you teased
last time okay. Okay.
Do we want to start this one?
Yeah, yeah,
we were at the Harris Channel.
I'll do it real quick.

(38:32):
It was the Harris thing.
It was the year
folks that won
the fish were horribly hard.
I guess I got my full sense, I think.
No doubt you that
you were going to
say right there.
So folks that won that tournament,
the fishing was awful.
There was a huge fish kill.

(38:52):
I mean, and I'm not joking, I,
I was after to win a rattle trap.
One of the lakes,
one of the many Harris chain lakes.
And I snagged the carcass of a bass.
I brought up a dead bass
and what was happening was the fish kill.
The fish weren't all floating up
a lot of them had died
and gone to the bottom.
So when I was just going through
the trap,
I was kind of fishing off the bottom,
and I said,

(39:12):
you know what I thought
was like a rag or something?
And I brought it up
and it was one of the dead
bass, all these dead bass everywhere.
Dead bass.
It was
it was a toxic situation
that happened in Florida.
I don't remember what the reason was,
but the fishing was awful.
I mean, absolutely awful.
And it was a place called Trout Lake
that was spring fed,
but you couldn't get a boat into it,

(39:33):
and it was this little offshoot pond,
and they had a bridge that went over it,
a railroad bridge, that went over it.
And, and there was a long trap in there,
and I was
I was right in the middle of my absolute
go crazy
living bass gypsy career,
sleeping in my astral man,
hanging out at the campgrounds,
you know, just 360 days a year fishing.

(39:56):
It was all I was doing
was eating, sleeping deep,
you know,
drinking bass, fishing and being on tour.
And I wasn't touring, I was guiding.
So I was 100% in, and I was looking for
any angle
I could to try to win a tournament
or do well in these Bassmaster events.
It was my early years of Bassmaster.
Back backward was the top 100.
You know, I think it was the BP 100,
or it might have been
the BP 100 or whatever.

(40:16):
It was just the 100 guys.
And it was like, that was it.
There wasn't my fault.
Or, you know, the regional stuff.
That was just the elite tour,
but it was the BP one
hundreds or whatnot.
I go to the long
trap, I drop in over there
and the water looks different.
Like as soon as you got in Trout Lake,
the small little pond,
there was this water that was beautiful.

(40:37):
And I remember it was practice by myself.
Go to that little neighborhood
launch ramp down the launch ramp.
Only guy that did this
drop my bass boat in there,
which I knew
would not fit under the bridge.
Well,
I went up to the bridge
and I could see the pretty
water coming out.
So I pull up there with my boat
and I'm looking all that pretty water
coming out.
I'm looking under there and I'm like,
there's some pretty water back there.

(40:57):
I see some boat
docks and stuff back there.
I look at my map,
you know,
we don't have cell phones back then.
We don't have,
you know, we have the hard maps.
And I see that there's a neighborhood.
I launch my boat over there,
and, I mean, I mainly catch fish
in practice.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
And a healthy, beautiful bass
and another healthy, beautiful bass.
And Dave, I'm like,
this place is untouched.

(41:18):
Nobody's getting in here.
And these fish are in here.
And it's unlike anything you talk
to all the guys
you know,
on the Harris chain
and people are getting like one bite
a day.
Two by today, maybe no bites a day.
Everybody is dying on Harris chain badly.
And I'm like, man,
I got beat multiple times
in the 1.5 hours I was in there.
So now
I take my boat while I'm in there

(41:40):
and I try to go out,
you know, and I
and I get the boat
wedged trying to get out
because I'll explain this.
There's a bridge,
there's this railroad bridge,
and there's these posts
that go all the way down along it.
And these posts, there's these
these posts up here
are the ones that are
that are on the bridge.
And these posts here
are just along side of it,

(42:00):
but they're cut off.
They're like support posts, okay.
But they're all the way
above the water line.
So I'm looking at this and I'm like,
maybe if I just cut these
and get these down and bring these down,
I can
I know, I know, I'm going
try I'm not doing anything
all the different fingers.
No, no,
I'm just laughing that you thought,
these support boats, that
there was no surprise

(42:21):
help the boat over there.
I got out, and this is alligator country.
I'm a golf ball, all right?
I walked back and forth in that canal
to see if it was deep enough.
And there's water flowing out,
and there's. I can get in there.
So I'm like,
there's enough water depth wise,
and there's these posts.
I'm looking at the posts,
so I and and this is all during practice
and have been the first
or the second day of practice.

(42:41):
The first day was awful.
The second day I fished up to it.
Then I go put my boat on the trailer,
go over there,
the I come back and I go, okay,
I got to figure out how to get in there.
I try wedging my boat in there
and it's just too wide.
So my epiphany was to go get a chainsaw,
which I had to rent from a hardware store
and cut the post to story.

(43:02):
So I go to a hardware store
near the Harris chain.
I find a place that rents chainsaws,
and I'm going to be honest,
this is a West Coast guy.
I've never used a chainsaw in my life, so
I'm not a lumberjack.
Bro.
This is not my forte,
but I've got to get in there, man.
I mean, this is the winning spot.

(43:22):
So I get in the water
on the last day of practice,
I went to the last day of practice.
So if anybody sees me,
I don't want anybody to run by the lake
and see me in there.
So I don't even put my boat in.
I just go rent the chainsaw
and I go to the bridge
on the last 3 or 4 hours
before the lake goes off
limits until dark.
I'll never forget
the sun is setting

(43:43):
over the lake that connects
to Trout Lake, the Dead Sea
that that is out there.
And I got this chainsaw and I'm like
me and I'm cutting these posts
and these are big round posts like this,
and I'm cutting them.
And as soon as I cut them,
I grab them and I put them back up.
So if anybody else happens to come by,

(44:04):
they can't tell that they've been cut.
And I and I go underneath there
and I've got all these posts
that are cut off one two story here.
All true.
So not only are you
cutting this posts
that are supporting a bridge
so that I never cut the ones I only,
I only cut they were there for a reason.
Byron.

(44:24):
They were they were there, but they were,
they were lower. So I just did this.
I just did a little,
I clipped them,
I just took them down about that much.
I don't mean to be flipping people off.
It's what I just
cut the post
that was alongside
the posts that were holding it.
I thought, well,
maybe those were old posts.
Maybe they redid it.
Yeah, you know,
those posts are alongside it,
but they don't connect
to the actual bridge.
They're just supporting the posts

(44:44):
that's beside them.
Quite possibly. Yeah. In retrospect.
At some
point this
Mercer, I'm just going in there to fish.
I'm not really worried
about the support
close to the Amtrak train,
but what's funny to me is that you put

(45:04):
cut down posts
that were most likely there for a reason.
You put them back up
so that nobody could tell.
This is where it gets good.
I got
I mean, this is
I hope he watches this show
because he's I,
I'm going to throw the name out
because here comes the draw.
It's appropriate draw.
I cut all the posts down
going all the way
in on the last day of practice.

(45:25):
I cut every one of them.
There's like 5
or 6 of them on both sides.
So I got to cut ten posts
and I to put them all back up on
both sides.
But I want it
so that now that it's low enough
that my boat has enough depth,
but it got,
I eliminated the width situation
so I could wedge the boat in there
and go through, in my opinion,
but I never tested it
because it was actually a practice.
I did not want anybody to drive
by and see a bass boat

(45:45):
coming in
and out of that pocket for sure,
because that would have
been the death of me.
So what I do is I put all the posts back,
I go to the drawer
and I and it's appropriate,
you know, remember the old days. Yeah.
And you draw a different pro every day.
My first day draw was
and I gotta make sure I get this right
because it was Tom
and junior was my first day.

(46:07):
You know, Tom and junior
got his card too.
Is he still around?
I don't personally know.
I think he sure, yes.
Because, Tom,
if you get a chance to see this.
Tom, Tom,
Tom was the best part
of this whole thing.
Tom's like,
well, he goes, how bad is it
suck for you?
And I go, I got one idea what to do.
And he goes, well,

(46:27):
I'm not touching anything at all.
He owes me that early boat number.
We got to go to the the alligator hole.
You remember?
You know,
I don't know if you know
you're familiar with Harrison.
There's a place called the alligator.
Yeah, and a deep middle lake
that everybody fishes in.
And it's just got a it's like a old.
It's like an old gravel pit or something.
I think that they flooded.
Okay.
It's called the alligator hole
at Harris Chain.
And so he goes, let's get in there.

(46:49):
Let's get over to the,
alligator hole early and fish it.
And if that doesn't work out,
we'll go to stuff.
I'm like, great, we'll do it.
He goes, you want to take your boat
or my boy?
I go, we've got to take my boat
because I, I definitely I take my boat.
He goes, I don't care.
He goes, I really don't care either way.
Like he's already defeated.
That's how bad the bite was.
So Tom, Matt, Junior
and I run to the alligator hole

(47:09):
because he wanted to start there.
It's shared.
It's not shared weight, it's share water.
And I'm like, hey,
you can start wherever you want.
I know where I want to go
and I don't care what time we get there
because I'm thinking it's a blockade.
No one's going to go there.
I, I have it to myself.
And so, we go to the alligator hole,
and there's 20 boats
in the alligator hole,
and they're all fishing,
and one guy catches a bass

(47:30):
in the back of somebody else's
boat, and everybody claps.
I'll never forget
everybody because they go,
hey, dude,
you're leaving the turtle, man.
I mean, that's how bad the bite was.
Mercer like one guy on a 20 boats
in the alligator hole caught it.
And I'm thinking to myself,
I can't wait to get into Trout Lake
because it's on fire. Like.
And one guy fought a bass the whole time
we were there. About 9:00.

(47:50):
Tommy and Junior goes,
what do you want to do?
I go, I got a spot. We got to go to.
I run to that pocket.
I run up to the bridge
and he looks and he goes,
where are we going?
I go, we're going in there.
And he goes, what?
And I go, yeah,
we're going to go up in there.
I go, there's water
and there's a lake on the back side.
He goes, you got to be kidding me.
So I get on the trolling motor
and I put the big motor up

(48:11):
and I took motor up
and I'm coming in right.
And he goes and he goes, that's that.
You're bony going to fit in there.
It's too wide.
And as I get up to the first post
like, hey, I go up to the post and I go,
boom!
It splashes down and he goes,
he looks at me with these big eyes.
He goes,
he looks up to the bridge and he goes,

(48:33):
did you? Every one of those are cut.
You cut every one of those.
I go, every single one.
He goes, let me help you, son.
You sit there with me.
So Mercer's on this side,
I mean, Mercer,
Tommy and Junior's on one side
and I'm on water.
We're
just blocking these posts down,
and we're dragging the boat up,
and we're dragging the boat up.
I'm like, we're getting in.
And as we get under the bridge, the.

(48:56):
The motor hits the top of the bridge
because it's trimmed all the way up.
And as I trim it down, it
catches, you know,
it catches and it won't go.
And he hits the, it hits the
the sandbar on the trim down.
So I trim it up and he hits
the top of the the
this is a low bridge,
you know, it's a low little bridge.
And as I as I gets back down,

(49:17):
it hits the gravel on the bottom.
It's bottoming on.
It's lifting the boat up.
So I'm going up and down,
up and down, up and down.
We're stuck
because of the motor in the back.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
Like this is a disaster.
And I can't get in.
And we try, try, try try try.
We give up and we go in.
And so that is the day sucked.

(49:37):
I don't think either
one of us caught a fish.
I can't remember if we ever,
either one of us made to
when nobody was making a twin.
Like I said, it was the all time lowest
winning weight ever. Correct.
I think you remember that for tournament.
Yeah.
No, I think it might have been. Yes.
It was like
it was like 9 or 10
or 12 pounds for the three days,
you know, it was horrible.
It was really
I guess I had to look it up to see.
But it was probably the lowest
winning weight ever in a tournament

(49:58):
for a bass master.
We didn't have anything. The day sucked.
So I go to a good friend of ours
that you're going to know the name on the
the evening after the first day.
I'm frustrated
and I know somebody who's
been kind of a friend of mine
who is pretty good
at getting boats into tight places.
Randy block it,
and I go to block its room

(50:19):
and I go, Randy,
I go, listen, man,
I got this spot
and I got to figure out
how to get my boat in.
There I go,
I tried going
in, I go,
would it work if I went backwards
and trimmed in? He's.
So I laid out
everything in the hotel room to Randy,
block it, everything.
And I even show him on the map
where it's at. This was a huge mistake.
And I'll tell you later.
No, no. Yeah.

(50:41):
Bad mistake.
And I go in and I go,
what if I went backwards
and he's asking me all about?
He goes, are there fish in there?
I go, oh dude,
I was in there for an hour,
hour and a half.
And I mean, they're beautiful
big green bass
and they're he's like listening.
And I'm like,
you know, this is
this place
is where you win the tournament.
And so block it tells me, yeah,
try going in backwards,

(51:01):
trim the motor down
as you're
coming towards it,
and then maybe the motor will clear
because there's just a sandbar.
You know, I'll grab a ball
and maybe the motor will go past it.
So I'm like okay.
So the next day I draw a woman angler I,
I can't remember
is free to leave or no, somebody's wife.
Some of these wife
fish the tour
and I can't remember her name now

(51:21):
but I drew a lady the second day
and sure enough, man,
I blast straight over there and I.
And by now I'm
making phone calls
to get an aluminum boat.
Because now I'm looking for a
aluminum boat as well,
because, you know,
I talked to Dewey Kendrick,
who was the tournament
director at the time,
and he said,
you can switch boats
during the tournament.
You know, you're allowed to switch back,
then you're allowed to switch,

(51:41):
and you can use aluminum.
As long as I had to live
well as a kill switch,
you know, it met all the requirements.
You could do it. So,
I wish I can remember the lady's name.
I feel bad I can't, so I did.
Wasn't Jimmy Houston's wife?
Was it because she fish for a while?
Harley Ingram's wife
or one of the older
guys had a wife that fish.
The tour was not Jimmy Houston's wife.

(52:01):
It was one of the other guy's wife's.
And he fish the tour.
Older guy and his wife fished as well.
And she fish to imitate.
She fish the tournaments she was on.
I wonder if she's an observer
or something like that
because she want to qualify.
But anyway, she was on the tournament,
so I had this lady,
we backed up to it
and I put the trolling motor down
and I can't get in there.
I can't get in there.
I'm pushing it back in the troll motor.

(52:23):
The big motor is back then.
I mean, I'm doing
I'm fighting to get in
this thing on day two
and I can't get in it.
And I'm disgusted
and I'm like, forget it. You know what?
I can't get in.
I, I can't remember again
if I caught a fish or she caught a fish,
we blanked again.
It was just a it was a horrible deal.
But I'm still hell bent
on getting in there.
So I find a guy that lets me,

(52:43):
a guy has a woman on a boat,
and on the end of the second day
I get aluminum boat setup.
Now I'm set.
I'm excited.
Do we?
Kendrick says,
let me check your boat out.
I need to know.
I got to get my insurance paperwork.
Remember,
you got to get your insurance paperwork
and I will stuff,
and I get this boat insured
and it's got a killswitch,
and it's just a piece of junk.

(53:04):
Old John boat and I got.
I'm all excited and I'm.
And he goes,
and I get everything to Dewey,
and I'm at Dewey Kendrick's hotel room
on the end of the second night,
and he goes.
He goes, well,
he goes, you're good to go for tomorrow.
And I go, great.
And he goes, I just want to let you know.
Somebody else requested
aluminum boat for the last day to.
Oh, no.

(53:24):
Do I go Randy block it.
He goes no, it's Roland Martin.
And I'm like, what?
Roland Martin? And he's in Florida.
He's got an aluminum boat coming.
And I'm like, what?
Roland Martin has some aluminum
boat coming.
I know that Randy. Block it.
It's gonna.
They must have told
Roland Martin and Roland.
Martin's going,
you know, because I'm the word man.
And I told Randy I'm sorry buddy,

(53:46):
and I am freaking out.
And do you want to come down?
And he sees me losing it, and I'm like,
no way. No way.
And he goes,
I just thought you should know
somebody else.
Tomorrow is going to be an aluminum boat
beside you
because he knows everything
that I'm going through.
But he
didn't know I cut down the bridge
that came out later.
This is the long story, but I apologize.

(54:07):
No, no, no.
So do you wonder?
It tells me that somebody else
has the aluminum boat,
and as I'm walking out the door, he goes,
he tells me it's Roland Martin.
And he said, Byron,
he goes, one more thing.
I go, what?
He goes.
Randy Block gets paired
with Roland Martin for tomorrow.
Yeah.
So what happened
was Randy
drew Roland and said,
get us an aluminum boat.

(54:28):
I know where to go.
This was what happened.
And so yeah, dude, straight up.
So I now have to deal with Randy block it
and Roland
Martin and me and my John boat
with whoever I drew the last day.
And I'm sitting there the next morning.
Mercer and Rick Clunn's
my mentor, and Rick Clunn's my friend,
and I'm telling Rick Clunn everything.

(54:48):
Night before I got tears in my eyes.
I'm trying so hard, you know, I've.
I've cut down the railroad bridges.
Now, Randy block it.
And Roland
Mark are going to totally
screw me out of this tournament.
And I can win the tournament
one day there.
And so the next morning, Mercer,
this is the craziest thing.
The next morning,
I'm sitting there and Randy
won't even make eye contact with me.
He's got this
thing on

(55:08):
and he's looking down and he's in Roland
Martin's aluminum boat.
And Roland sitting there.
Hey, man.
Hey, you got the two of
you still see you there, Rollins.
Chalking me up like laughing me up.
He goes, hey, wait.
Well, did you catch in there?
And I'm like,
I don't care if you're Roland Martin.
I ain't talking to you
like I'm mad as hell right now.
I'm done thinking that.

(55:29):
What?
I could just imagine him. Oh, son.
He's funny. Sorry. This morning.
You want me to tell him
where the fish are? They're.
They're going to unchartered waters,
but they know I prefaced it.
That's the world wants me to, like, like,
kiss his butt and tell him where to go.
Fish. Right.
I'm not.
And Randy is doing this.
Randy is just doing this stuff over here.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.

(55:50):
So I remember it's cold, really cold.
And and Rick Clunn pulls up to me.
He pulls up in his mouth.
There's only two women on boats
and all these big shiny bass boats
except for these two aluminum.
And Rick pulls up
and I got a piece of junk
beater aluminum.
I don't have the Roland Martin perfect.
Just brought in from Clewiston Marina.
Gorgeous.

(56:11):
You know, the best
aluminum you could ever
have is what he has.
And and
and I have this piece of junk aluminum
that's like,
got this horrible little motor on it.
And I know I'm going to be
the last guy there.
And, Rick pulls up to me, goes, hey.
He goes, about your spot
and this is on the water.
While we're waiting for blastoff,
he closes the grass and I'm like, no,

(56:32):
I didn't see much grass.
And he goes, well, he goes, he goes,
there's been a big heavy front.
Came in last night, so catch him quick.
Because when the sun hits
the water, it's going to be dead.
And I'm like, well,
what are you talking about, Rick?
You know, like,
I don't care if the sun hits water.
This place hasn't seen a bank
the whole time. It's going to be great.
You know,
this is the prophet talking to you.
This is
this is the guru efficient at the time?

(56:52):
What America's
you know,
the number one
angler in the world
voted the best angler in the world
at the time, Rick Clunn.
And he tells me
he goes,
just be ready to catch him quick,
because when the sun hits
the water, it's going to get real tough.
And I'm thinking, man, I'm
going to blow the doors off this thing.
I'm going to win this tournament
on the last day.
If Randy block it and Roland
Martin don't get my way.
So we take off, blast off and I'm going
and boats are blowing behind me.

(57:14):
Paul Elias
kind of sprays me for fun
because I know Paul
and I were on the same team
and he takes that boat, runs
right alongside me
and gives me a big shower in the morning,
and I'm just me and all the guys are by
you because you're doing 25 miles an hour
and all the boats are going
50, 60 miles an hour past you,
and you're just going like this.
And of course, Roland and Randy

(57:34):
get there before I do,
and they're just pulling up.
They're lost.
They're just kind of pulling up.
And I come up on him and I see him.
Mercer I pull right up
and they're already inside
and they're already
going under the bridge.
And I get up
alongside them,
and as soon as they get through
the bridge,
Roland jumps up and grabs
the troll motor,
and and

(57:54):
and Randy won't even look at me
like he is literally, like,
widely embarrassed
about this whole thing.
And Randy's not even making up.
Not embarrassed enough not to do it.
Like,
oh, you know what?
He he got a hole the wrong one.
He's totally making a video about this.
Just so you know,
Randy has got a rebuttal video
that's coming out only hours.
Oh, I know Randy stories.

(58:16):
If we ever want to go on a Randy story.
Is that on my podcast?
Whoever gets into that, I got
I got blocking stories
that you can't believe,
but that's another world, okay?
Him and I finished with him.
He's in my boat before. Another story.
Not. Not today.
So let me pull up Mercer
and they drop down right past the bridge
and they just start fishing.
And as I'm idling by and I'm

(58:38):
scowling at him because now it opens up
and I'm idling by. Look at him.
I'm in one of those,
hey, this one is pretty in his helmet,
you know, what point did you fish?
And I was in there.
There's some boat docks.
There's some canals on
the right hand side,
and they just start fishing
as soon as they get under the bridge
and I go past them,
get out into the lake,
run over to the canals that I know about

(58:59):
because, I mean, I practiced the thing.
I know they're decision blind.
And I get out there.
What, three pounder.
What two pounder?
My guy catches one whack.
I'm like, oh my gosh, I mean,
and he's freaking out.
He's like, oh my gosh.
He goes, there's fish.
Like, this is going to be amazing.
And I lose another one.
And it's freezing as cold and the sun

(59:21):
hit the water day
and literally the bite stopped.
And it was crazy
because it was like what Rick said about
cold front.
Clear sunny day post front Florida bass.
It like shut off.
You get these bites every now and then.
You get these like poop
and then hit it and they drop it.
You're like, oh my god, I just got bit.
But he dropped it.
It was like though

(59:41):
the thing shut off
and I got like a three and a two,
and I think it might head a little small.
And he had it. He had 1 or 2.
I mean, it was on fire. Dave.
I was like, yeah, oh my gosh.
And all of a sudden when it got
when that sun came up over
and it was flat
calm and freezing cold
and we're in Florida, that was it.
And so, mid mid day rolling in block

(01:00:03):
it found me.
Wow. What you got.
And I will not talk to them.
You know I'm
not in any kind of all
you know Roland Martin
and he's my friend off tour.
And I love Scott Martin.
We're all friends.
But on the water, because of this day
of what's happening now, at that moment.
Dude, all bets are off.
I'm ignoring you guys.
I'm not going to tell you what I got.
I fish around them

(01:00:24):
and they fish and,
Yeah, it was a sad day.
That was the end of the.
Oh, okay.
So the end
doing Kendrick at the weighing barn.
Velvet.
Did you cut down a railroad bridge?
You know,
because I'm going to have my person.
Was this my assistant trip? Well, then
you get on a trip.
I don't go do that.
Go out there and look at it

(01:00:46):
down two.
Well, we drove to the bridge
to see
if I compromised
a live Amtrak train bridge.
You know,
to this day,
if any of you live in Fort Harrison,
go to that bridge or you notice
those posts are just a little bit shorter
and a chain saw.

(01:01:10):
25 years ago,
I guarantee you
that I really want to go back someday
and just look at that bridge.
Just memory of
sitting there knee deep,
waist deep in water
with probably alligators,
trying to figure out
if they should eat me or not,
and me
chainsaw him
down every one of those posts.
But you know, it
didn't go as well as planned.
I think I still made a check
in that tournament with the two fish
I got.
If I'm not mistaken,

(01:01:30):
I checked that tournament,
but either way it was,
it was a complete disaster and and trip
well and went and I was exonerated.
I didn't get in trouble.
But yes, I was questioned by bass,
and they wondered if I had
a railroad bridge in Florida,
and that's why still.
And I'm sticking to it.
I could just hear trip
Dewey, there's

(01:01:50):
definitely been some tomfoolery
that has happened with this bridge.
So.
Oh, my God.
Oh, here.
Yeah. Dude, this is.
I'm flattered that what he's like.
I need that investigated.
It's what he thought.
I compromised the Emily

(01:02:10):
Emily track bridge.
So before we move on from this story,
I have to clear.
Or not.
Anyway, Amtrak train him anyways.
Makes great. So too.
So there's there's Mike folks that right
there is. There he is.
That's him.
Tom in junior is living alive and well.

(01:02:30):
Good to let you know.
I didn't want to start rumors.
He's a guide on Okeechobee.
So you can actually go fishing with Tom
Mann junior, so. Oh, my.
And if Tom Mann junior and I.
Yeah, I would I he anybody know Tom.
Engineer.
Tom you heard the story about the train
Richard. Buyer velvet.
Yeah.
The hair is chain hell in it.
That's awesome.

(01:02:51):
I'm going to go
try to see him like I want to hook up.
I want to find him
when we're in Okeechobee this year
because he's a guide there.
Now, if this next thing
happens to be true,
I'm going to get into poker.
Because while you're telling that story,
I'm I started filing through the cards
because I said I had the Mike
folk start, folks, that Kurt.
And there was a card

(01:03:11):
right behind his card just randomly and I
and and it was right around
the time you started talking about
the lady
that you had in the boat on day two.
If it is this person,
I mean, screw this fishing stuff, dude.
I'm moving to Vegas
and doing card tricks.
Was it Charlie Reid's wife,
Valerie?

(01:03:32):
Yes it was, yes it was.
Dude. Valerie.
Yes, sir.
Yes, it was looking dude, you get up on.
Why?
No, I swear to you,
I pulled this stack of cards
while you were talking.
While you were talking about that story.
If you go back
when you watch the replay of this,
you see me
pull and I'm down here
and I'm looking through the cards

(01:03:52):
looking for Mike. Folks, that.
That's all I'm looking for.
I find folks,
then I pull it out
the card literally right behind it.
I yeah, it's right there.
I wonder if that's her.
Yes. Charlie Reed's wife. Boger.
Reed I Vogel Reed was in my boat.
Oh my gosh. Magic.
Yeah. I could have never guessed it.

(01:04:13):
Magic cards.
This is some weird design
that we got going on here.
This is
this is like this crazy
cool voodoo stuff.
But that Vogel Reed was who
I drew the third of the second day.
Wow.
Oh, that seems mazing. Dude.
It was the next card.
Like the folks that and I'm literally.
I mean, I'm trying to make it.
I could see the guy.
I remember

(01:04:33):
the guy had really been the guy.
I mean, I drew the guy,
I remember the guy,
and it was an older guy.
It was Charlie Reed and it was his wife.
Yes. Oh, go. Wow. Wow.
I mean, that's a huge wow.
God, if I had had done it,
like in front of everyone,
if I had held the cards up and done it,
it never would have worked out. Sorry.
In my life, dude,
everything is wonderful.
With a little caveat a shit

(01:04:53):
like I didn't show it to everybody,
but it just blows me away that like,
he could have been anyone like look it
and then along, wow,
people are going to totally think
we set this up.
They are I that's that's impressive.
And it's honest to God
I am shocked and it's true.
And there's there's no I hear it.
This is not one of those videos
that are I or staged.

(01:05:14):
This is a very authentic,
natural, real jackass.
Nothing.
No sleight of hand, nothing up my sleeve.
That's amazing.
Dude, I can't believe you makes fish
the tuna back then. That's
Wilbur Reed was fishing
the bass masters at that time.
Yeah, Charlie Reed's 1986 Bassmaster
Classic champion. Wow.

(01:05:35):
I didn't even to let you know.
If you watch when I hold this card
up, I'm like,
is this the person
I didn't know how to say her first name?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I remember fishing over there. Boba.
Vogel. Reed I remember Bogan.
Well, you can read.
She was one of the few lady anglers.
Wow. Wow.
That's impressive dude,
because I would have
never remember her name
if you had done that.

(01:05:55):
I'm gonna never pull that one out, dude.
And there's several female anglers
in this collection.
Yeah,
it just blows me away that
that was the like.
It was literally the next card
I pulled folks
that in her cards
right there, and I'm like,
wait a second, that's
Charlie Reed's wife.
Wow.
Did I know we don't have all day today,
but there's a gender on folks that I,

(01:06:18):
you know, Bassmaster, where I set
the record had 83 pounds.
That was pro pro draw.
One of my draws was folks dad.
And that
is I know we don't
have all the stories today.
Bring it, bring it.
Oh my gosh, that was a tough one, folks.
Dad, folks, dad was in his prime.
And Mike and a couple of the other guys,

(01:06:40):
they were like the West Coast Mafia.
They did not like the young guys
coming up.
And I'm not talking to Aaron
because Aaron was still pumping gas
and he was in high school,
but me and Robert Lee and John Murray
and Brett High was younger than us.
You know, some of the other guys,
skeet was younger than us, but he was
he was almost there.
But there was a group of guys
that were kind of like,

(01:07:01):
we had a hard time.
We were stealing
candy out of their candy store.
Yeah, that makes sense.
You know, we go to Orrville,
we go to Folsom, we go to
the Delta, we'd go to Clearlake,
and we were stealing money
out of their candy store
because they were the Kings.
So you mean even back then, veteran pros
did not like the young pros?
This just started this year.

(01:07:22):
Wow.
Yeah, it was horrible, man.
I, I stuck up for Aaron
so many times when he was young
and Aaron was getting Aaron got hit hard.
I mean hard on some stuff
like poor Aaron one time.
You know Aaron right now
you'll you'll appreciate Aaron Martin's.
We're at Casitas
and Aaron's

(01:07:42):
catching trout
because he wants fresh trout
and he's got his bass boat
and he's catching trout.
He's putting him in his livewell
to go home to. Yeah.
Awesome.
Aaron, want some sushi fresh
Aaron wants to hear Melissa slip
there, slip their gills
and eat them within the hour. Right.
Well, poor
Aaron is putting fresh
trout in his livewell

(01:08:02):
and suddenly the
the posse heard about this
because I think
the fishing game showed up
and they said, son,
you know, you can't have trout.
And I think the boat was on the trailer,
if I remember correctly,
like he was there
where they had just stocked the trout
and the boat was on the trailer.
He wasn't even fishing.
But he's catching these trout
and he's putting them in the livewell.
He's going to take them home.
End of the day, fresh trout for Aaron.

(01:08:23):
You know, eat them raw.
You know,
do his little crazy stuff
that likes to eat the eyeballs
because they got more protein.
You know,
maybe they're healthier for you.
You really eat the eyeballs.
No, no, I just said oh, it sounds like.
Yeah. Does it.
It's like, oh yeah, you do that.
I'll give you the best tell.
So you need the eyeballs.
You need the eyeball, bro.
I don't
I don't know how you live life, bro.
How could you.

(01:08:44):
So that's what
Aaron
Aaron got
written up by the Fish and Game.
And of course, everybody called him
a live trout fisherman.
Aaron would never know about ever.
And a posse, this, this militia,
you know,
and I'm not saying folks
that actually was part of that one, but
but there was the veteran anglers
that were really beating

(01:09:04):
the crap out of us. Yeah, I drew folks.
Dad, when I set the record
for Bassmaster,
I drew him on the last day
or the second last day.
It was a
it's a great whole story of the whole
the whole process of catching 83 pounds.
But the swim bay bike
was definitely unheard of back then.
And I knew I had baits
that nobody else had.

(01:09:24):
And I go, folks, dad, and we go out.
And the whole time
he's bugging me for this bait
when, when,
you know,
I do give him one and I'm like, man,
I don't have very many of these.
I can let me get my limit first
when I catch my limit.
You know, he
he every time I catch one,
it was back when you had nets.
You're allowed to use that.
And this isn't.
I'm going to get in trouble

(01:09:44):
for saying this story.
But the camera guy pointed out,
he goes, dude, he goes, folks,
that is lunging at each of your fish.
Like like lunging at them
when they come up
his netting technique was to poke it,
poke it, and the camera,
I goes,
dude, he's doing everything he can
to get those fish off your hook.
And it was.
And it was bad.
I'd be like,
get it, get it, get it, get it.
And he would whacked the fish.

(01:10:05):
I get it, all right, I get it, I get it.
I'm trying to win the tournament
and homestead is in my boat.
And he's like mad at me
because I won't give him a lure.
So he's knocking my fish,
like hitting him,
poking him with the net. And I'm like.
And Mike and I have been butting heads
for a while at this point.
And to draw him,
I'm like, dude, I will give you a bait.
Let me just get enough
to win this tournament.

(01:10:25):
Let me get, let me get,
because I don't have
a lot of these baits.
These are primitive.
I,
I guess
these are super primitive swim baits
and I don't have a lot of them,
and I certainly don't
want to give it to folks.
That and have him,
you know, win the tournament
in the back of my boat on my bait,
like I did with Skeet at Guntersville.
And
you.
Oh, you did.

(01:10:46):
I gave the
made the skeet and he won Guntersville.
So anyway,
I didn't want to do that back then
with folks.
Dad, I wasn't rooming with him
like I was risky, but I, I, I ended up,
ended up, the camera guys,
everybody said, dude, that guy
tried his best to knock off
every fish that you hooked.
And I knew he was.
He was the hardest dude
I've ever, ever, ever.
Besides Gary Clunn, I guess we gotta go.

(01:11:07):
That story.
Oh, besides Gary client,
that was one of my toughest draws.
Very talented folks that were my 2 or 3.
And I love you, Gary.
I love you, Gary.
It was when you were young.
And when I was young
and you played mind games with me.
It was just. It was. It was a different.
It wasn't Gary Clunn
now it was Gary Clunn
when he was, when he was the Gary Clunn.
He was the Clunn.

(01:11:27):
Well, it's competition.
I mean things, dude.
In the sport,
you talked about the Lions and stuff.
I mean, football things.
People do what they can,
So, yeah, you made it. Perfect segue.
So let's go to your Gary Clunn story
because that was two.
That is number
two of the three requested stories
you teased.

(01:11:48):
Let me see what time it is,
what time we got.
Oh my God,
Byron, you can't play this hard to share.
Damn, I was in school. But we're good.
We're fine, we're good, we're good.
All right, that one.
But these are great stories.
I know they got, like, long bandwidth.
I'm sorry.
So this was.
This was not as bad. It's not as long.
The train bridge one was long.
And so the other one, the,
Talladega Nights, wanted to come up,

(01:12:10):
but Gary Clunn.
All right.
So, yeah, I want to you opens and.
Yeah, I think I told you the story about
I started off
not catching any basket by US open.
So when I was a kid in college,
I'd save up all my money
up with bass fishing.
Fishing,
all the red mans in the region stuff,
all the regional weekend warrior stuff.
But every year, save up your money
to fish the US open.
And, long before I won the first U.S.

(01:12:32):
open at 25 or 26,
I would save up my money as a kid
and I would go to the US open.
And fishing was tough at me back
then, and I like
I think I told you I drew it. Clunn.
And he caught two fish.
I mean, I know some of you,
I haven't seen the previous show.
You know, I brought Rick Clunn.
We fish all day long.
In the middle of the day,
he catches two back to back, you know.
So I come in that day with none.

(01:12:52):
Like most of the time.
And Rick Clunn comes in
with just two because drawing Rick Clunn,
he even told me he goes, I'm not on them.
You don't want to take your boat.
And I go, Mr.
Clunn, I don't have a boat, you know?
He laughs.
Because he's got this college kid
who doesn't even have a boat,
who paid $1600 or $1300 back
then, which was a lot of money
to fish the US open.
And I'm fishing without a boat.

(01:13:13):
So every day I draw a guy Pro, pro draw.
You got to go pro pro draw.
No shared weight,
none of this other stuff.
And I'm there without a boat.
Just a passion to fish.
Just a love for fishing.
Hoping to win a boat.
This is cool. Story.
Back then at the US open every day
the big fish want a brand new boat
every day.
It was a boat. Fish every day.

(01:13:35):
You could fish every day for a skeeter
bass boat.
This is when the heyday of the US open.
And you catch a fish
and you'd say boat fish.
Like you'd have a big one on.
Because if it was the biggest fish
that day, it won a boat.
How cool is that?
So I was always thinking
I was going to win my first boat.
And I mean, it's just all you had to do
is catch a 4 or 5 pounder.

(01:13:55):
I mean,
I had,
Keith
Breashears was in the back of my boat,
and he won a boat.
He won a boat. Fish.
He was in the back of my boat
with a spoon.
Catches a fish. He's from back east.
He reels this fish in, flips
it in, throws it down, puts it
livewell goes to fish, and I go, dude,
what did you just do?
And he goes, I got a good one.
You know, he's from Missouri.
So it was a keeper.

(01:14:16):
Here's the guy that owned so Warhawk
spinner baits or something like that.
Anyway,
I you know,
I wish I remembered all my facts,
but the dude puts the fish in livewell,
goes back, makes another cast,
and I go, dude, you just want a boat.
And he goes, no, man.
He goes, that's a good one.
I go do that.
We're on Lake Mead and that's a boat.
Fish.
Like,
that's the biggest fish of the whole day

(01:14:37):
right there, for sure.
You just want a boat
because it's like a solid four
and a half, 5 pound bass.
And he want a boat.
You know, that was another story.
But both fish back then.
So I always dreamed of winning a boat,
drawing these pros as a college kid.
Back before the kid,
one in the back of my boat,
one about, you know, one a boat, fish.
But in my young days
I would go without a boat.
They're hoping to just have a showing,

(01:14:58):
you know, do something.
And I'd go there with my mom
and my girlfriend at the time,
and we'd all go. There was a big deal.
See the Tropicana?
You know, kid
from the California in college
saving up his money.
Look, I you're this
go way younger than that.
I could show you a picture,
but it's it's a lot younger
looking, dude. It's way younger.
And I won't go dig pictures out, but,

(01:15:19):
But it was that.
So I, I brought Gary Clunn,
and the
night before I was going,
I was pretty frustrated
because I had blanked the day before.
And, you know,
I really wanted to catch a fish
because at the way.
And there's my mom and my girlfriend
at the time, my college sweetheart
and I wanted to walk up and weigh in.
Would be really nice.
Your friends, your family are there,

(01:15:40):
you'd like to weigh in.
And I was cursed.
You know, I couldn't
catch a basket yourself
and saved my life.
And, And I draw Gary Clunn,
and we get in the car
and he sees that I'm kind of bummed out,
and, we're driving to the lake together,
and he goes, what's wrong?
I go, oh,
you know, I'm having problem
with my girlfriend. We're fighting.
He goes, oh, really?
What about I go, you know, whatever.

(01:16:00):
You know, I'm just we're making small
talk on the way to the lake together.
So, he said he can tell him different
from the night before.
Like, I'm
kind of bummed out the next morning,
and he just sees a personality change,
and we go fishing together,
and I go, well, I go,
we're going to take your boat.
I go, is it okay
if I fish up front with you?
And he goes, well, I prefer you don't.
And I go, well, okay.

(01:16:20):
But if I can't fish up front with you,
then I might have today.
Are you going to fish
in the back of your boat?
Yeah, it's it's an honest question.
If I'm not allowed
to be up there with you
because what we're doing
is we're targeting these reefs
with Crankbaits.
It's got down the chip beds
and there's these
shadow pockets in the reefs, and he's.
It's real obvious what he's doing.
He's running
these long reefs
that have a shallow pocket

(01:16:41):
to him, and he's firing.
And I'm in the back of the boat.
I, you know, I'm fishing
completely dead water.
So I'm like,
am I going to be able to fish a
problem with you?
And he goes, no.
And I'm like, well,
then I think on my half a day
I'm gonna have to ask you
to go to the back of the boat.
Well, Gary Clunn didn't like that at all.
Like he's like you're.
It's fair
because if I'm not allowed in the front,
then you should be allowed in the front.

(01:17:01):
We got to share the boat.
Share the water.
I'll go to my own water.
I'll say I'll get off yours.
But he's, But he was.
He was being abrasive.
It wasn't going that great.
So we'll fine come up here.
So then we're up there and I time it.
You know the deal now.
So now you're fishing against this guy
and we're going down these long breaks.
I wait
until this baby gets about halfway back,
and then I make a fresh cast, like.
Right.
You know, I make a fresh cast

(01:17:22):
and some fresh water.
Like, I can see the shade pocket
and the next spot. Yeah.
So it's time he gets in.
I'm hitting some good water
and then he's firing
because this is a really tough
lake to fish.
And all you're going to get
is like 1 or 2 fish off a spot
maybe at the most.
And you're not going to catch anything
if you're fishing behind a guy
throwing a crankbait in dead water.
And I, I had to be fish
in the fresh water, too.

(01:17:43):
If we're just going to share
the boat, share the water.
And so we're hopscotching
as we're going down ledge and he goes,
you know, he goes,
you should probably listen
to what your girlfriend said.
Maybe she's right about what
she you know what?
He started
bringing up my girlfriend
and our fight in the middle of the day.
Honestly.
I remember going, what?

(01:18:05):
And he started going on about like,
maybe I was at fault
for the fight that I was having
with my college girlfriend.
And I'm like, whoa, we're fishing.
Like,
that's the last thing
on your mind, right?
You're in a tournament.
All of your stuff is back at the dock.
I am 100% laser
focused on where
that next Crankbait is going to land,
and it was going to come off
that ledge, right?

(01:18:25):
If a bass is going to come out of shape,
I need it.
I don't need my college
girlfriends fight in my head.
Incline broad right back in,
brought it right around
and brought it right into that boat.
And I mean, it was a tough day again.
He caught like
three fish or four fish that day.
I didn't catch any that day.
And I was like, man,
that was a pretty good mind,

(01:18:47):
you know, getting in someone's head.
He got he got hit on that one.
So that's my Gary Clunn story.
So you think it was straight
up like that's he was just like,
I'll distract this kid.
Tell him about the trials
and tribulations of his relationship.
When I got aggressive upfront,
that conversation never came up
until I started making casts
that he didn't like
because they were timed perfectly

(01:19:07):
to put my bait in the freshwater
Mercer.
It was it was obvious.
I mean,
I you know, I'm in college, I'm
an English major, a philosophy major.
You know, I'm a mr.
Brainiac at the time. I'm I'm pretty.
I'm not as dead as I am now.
My head is not as cloudy and unfocused,
like I was pretty sharp
as as a pre-law student, you know? And I.
And I could see things

(01:19:28):
and read things and I'm like,
this dude waited till about
1030, 11:00 in the morning
when it became obvious
that I was shoulder to shoulder with him
in the front of his boat,
and we were sharing water,
and I was being effective
like it was effectively happening.
It was it was getting good.
And that's what he said.
I gotta shut this kid down.
I got to shut him down.
Best way to do that?
Bring up the fight with the girlfriend
and, yeah, it was.

(01:19:49):
It was a classic.
Gary, if you're watching, it's
a classic Gary Clunn move.
Back then when he was young
and he was aggressive,
and now he's the nicest guy in the world.
I love him and his wife.
Wow. Wow.
So many hard feelings. Gary.
It was just,
It was
it was when we were young and
very competitive.
So many things happened.
Like with those draw.
Like, I don't even remember who it was.

(01:20:10):
So I'm
not even going to guess who it was
because I'm not certain on
who told me so.
But I remember someone tell me the story
when they finished their first open.
So they had told the guy
they were
somebody said, hey, just be real open.
And you guys say, I need to be here.
We're going to split.
So they had told like,
I got a big fish ahead
right here that he's you know,
I think it was on a bed or whatever.

(01:20:31):
And the guy's like, oh, okay, whatever.
And I'll give you space or whatever.
So dude's like lining up.
And this is whoever it was,
this was their first draw tournament.
And he's lining up
and getting ready for this fish.
And the guy goes,
you big fish is right there.
And he says, yeah, off the second pylon,
second pylon closest to the shore.

(01:20:54):
He goes, okay, so he's
and he's lining up.
And buddy's
giving him all the room in the world.
And he's about to catch.
And he's like hey,
hey how big is that fish? He says.
And he goes, oh it's big.
It's eight, nine, 10 pounds.
It's like it's a giant.
He goes, oh, he goes,
you might want to retype.
No, no.
Again, this could be urban myth.

(01:21:15):
But the person who told me it,
I remember the story
being told to me, told to me.
And it was very it sounded legit.
And, and he's like, oh,
yeah, I probably should.
So he sits down to retie string,
cursed dude, roast the fish
and said, oh,
I thought you meant
those other two pilots.

(01:21:37):
No way, no way.
Oh my
gosh,
that sounds like such a bad
tour of that story.
But oh, that's
that is a monster of a hoodwink.
You know what happened?
I mean, I don't know the names.
You know the names,
and you're holding them back
because you don't want to say
no, I'm not certain of the names,
so I don't want to put.

(01:21:58):
Like, if it's not who I'm thinking of,
but that's.
It doesn't need it doesn't need a name.
I mean, it's just, you know,
I it's great when you were fishing.
This is so funny
because you just remind me of something.
I drew Guido Hebden at Raber,
and you know him.
There was a side
fisherman back then, but little
did he know that I was a West
Coast site fisherman.
And I won my first U.S.
open when I was 25.
Bad fishing like so.

(01:22:19):
I have been bad fishing.
That's the first thing I was good at.
Like as a kid.
You know,
I figured out bad fishing
at a very young age,
and you could just go around
lake and pick off dead fish
and nobody knew how to do it.
And, you know,
Hibbing was a site fisherman.
Lake shore
brings me back in the day when.
So I drew Giteau at Rayburn and Mercer.
When there's two pros on a bad fish,
you're fishing the fish,

(01:22:40):
and he pulls up to a fish and I'm like,
well, I guess we're officially snitch.
I mean, there's like one fish
and he zoom in on it
and it's pro
pro draw, and you're both looking at it
and he's shaking that little gets it.
Maybe like a gets is a thing
that's like a two with a little tentacles
on the back.
For the younger viewers, the fact it's

(01:23:02):
I get a good looking thing
with tentacles on the back,
but he's throwing this gets it,
and I'm throwing my black ring worm.
And I got all my tricked out little bad
fishing mates
because he told me
we're going to be safe fishing.
And it was spring
and we fished a little bit off
shore stuff,
but we were about fishing and, and
and about the time
the fish turns off of his bait
and starts looking at mine,
because we're both fishing
the same dead fish.

(01:23:22):
He'd reel in and slap the water,
slap the bait on the water notes.
No kidding.
And I'm like, I love deal him.
That's like one of my heroes,
you know, like Gary Clunn.
Anybody else from like,
wow, we're going to play like
that, So I mean, we're fishing.
And once again,
the fish looks at us, gets it,
looks at my black
Re1 kind of likes the black ringworm,
runs over to it, starts going up on it,

(01:23:44):
you know, starts getting up on it.
Here's my little breath ringworm.
And all of a sudden,
you know, reels in and splashes
the water again,
skips his bait right
across the bed and splashes
all the water in,
you know, screws the fish up.
And I'm like,
we're not saying a word, Mercier.
We're not saying a word to each other.
But now Gaydos changes his to a black.
Great black gets it.
I remember he put it to a black,
gets it, throws it out there.

(01:24:04):
And now the black gets it's
completely bad.
And the fish goes over to
his black gets it.
And it's looking at I go son of a gun.
I realized I splash the water
and he grunts, giggles, goes home.
Lord, you know, dies.
He goes,
And I reel in and he fishes and I fish.
He goes, well, let's go.
This isn't going to work.
And that was the end of our bet.
That's oh, God,
neither one of us caught the fish

(01:24:26):
and we both realized we could screw.
Well, I,
I realized I had to pay him back, but he.
When he started getting that activity.
Dude, it was pro. Pro draw was a monster.
Yeah, always a beast.
And I loved, you know,
we had a great time.
But at that very moment,
we both knew
we couldn't Memphis with each other
because he knew enough about it
and I knew enough about it
that neither one of us
was going to catch that fish

(01:24:47):
when we got the other one. Catch it.
Wow, I remember yeah. True story.
It's competition though. That's how.
I mean,
I think that
one of the this
services that this sport
has had over the years, I mean I love,
I love
I've clearly
with what we've talked about,
I love everything about the sport.
Yeah.
But there has been like a little
bit of fakery out there
where everybody's like, oh,

(01:25:08):
everybody's vanilla.
Whoever wins, we're going to cheer for.
And it's.
And in competition, people
in other sports, it's celebrated.
I mean, Dale
Earnhardt, The Intimidator,
I mean that yeah, that got celebrated.
But in fishing it's almost like,
oh no, nobody
nobody doesn't ever get along.
And people think this is new,
but it it's been happening forever.

(01:25:30):
I mean, then I didn't even remember
the airlock.
Remember Aaron and I at Falcon? Oh, yeah.
But, you know, Aaron and I had Falcon,
you know, and everybody,
we were dear, dear, dear friends.
But people took that and ran with it.
You know,
I could imagine what it would be like
if that aired.
Now with social media being what it is,
I can't imagine the trolls
and everything else, you know.
And Aaron, I reconciled and,

(01:25:51):
you know, we were back,
we were good and everything was that
we put all that behind us
after a short while.
But, but but the, the,
the primitive internet
watching the Falcon
showdown between me
and Aaron on a spot
that I invited him to come in on.
I mean, I said, come on over
because he's my friend,
you know, and Aaron, come here,
they're loaded here.
And then we catch hundreds of pounds off

(01:26:12):
this one
foundation, that Falcon, you know.
But that's
that's just another example of where,
like you
said, of Talladega
Nights, you know,
or the Earnhardt thing, it's
it's it's
back when there was man,
they really played up the drama
for Bassmaster Television.
You know for me and Aaron on Falcon.
And it got a lot of
I had a lot of people
ask me about that,
you know, react to it passed away

(01:26:32):
thinking that we were
at each other's throats.
We were like lifetime enemies.
I'm like, oh my God, no.
You know, dear friends, it
put it behind us.
But I had an altercation on the water
because, you know,
the because of,
of of the last day,
things going the way they went.
It's sports, it's competition.
You look at I mean, I'm
obviously a huge Chiefs fan.
If you look

(01:26:53):
when they played the Raiders
a few weeks ago,
Max Crosby is trying to take
Patrick Mahomes
his head off the whole time,
like screaming at him and everything.
But the first two guys
to walk up to each other.
You know,
I think Max Crosby's exact words
were, hey, go get another one, brother.
Like go get another Super Bowl.
They're divisional rivals.
Like it's competition.
I think

(01:27:14):
Paul Nick once said it in
one of those doc interviews,
he said, he said,
as long as I have one foot on this,
we all love each other.
But he says, when both
my feet are on the boat,
I want to beat them all. And that's
how you
have to be in how you should be, I think.
Yeah.
Talladega Nights, Jean Girard,

(01:27:34):
John Girard,
however you want to pronounce
that you were the original slap.
What happened
is the slap heard round the world.
Oh my gosh.
And I can't believe I'm
going to tell this story
because I haven't for this one
in forever. Ever, ever.
Never like it.
So pro pro draw.
I'm on fish.

(01:27:57):
I'm. I'm on fish. Pretty good.
I I'm, Once again,
we're back at Rayburn on this 126 nine.
I never forget this.
And I draw not
you remember twin neck Marina, right?
Yeah.
We're next right down there at the thing.
Yeah.
So, I, I draw a kid the first day,
and and,
Do I say his name, or do I not say his?

(01:28:19):
I mean, that's totally up to you.
Before we go any further,
I gotta say, this everything is is just
we're just we're just talking.
It's just.
I mean, that's all.
Yeah, well, these
watching, it's just you and me.
You shut that thing off right there with.
Yeah.
Here we are. There, there.
Good show, great show.
Byron, tell me that story now.

(01:28:41):
I'm not going to say his name.
I'll. I'll leave it out.
I don't know what his story
is, and I
don't want to get,
you know,
I I'll just I'll leave it out,
even though I want to
say it in the worst way.
All the guys on tour back
then know exactly who it was.
I draw this kid
whose parents have a lot of money,
and he basically had plenty of money
to go fishing
and somehow he ended up on the tour.

(01:29:02):
But back then, I.
I think it was more of
if you had the money
because, you know, like,
there wasn't
the big qualification process,
you know, it was it was the tour.
But it was kind of
like you could just get in
through sponsor exemptions
and companies could get you in.
If you had a boat, you know, it wasn't
it wasn't like you had to go out
and really go through like school,
like you do now.
And that's to that point.
That's why Vogue Reed was in my boat.

(01:29:25):
You know, Vogue didn't qualify.
I don't believe, through
a series of tournaments to be there.
It was just that we were in our infancy
of the big Bassmaster tour
with Ray Scott hosting it, you know, and
and it was glorious.
Days before Fish Fishburn was hosting
it, Ray Scott was still emceeing
these events. Fish was fishing.
There's was fishing,
I think, for fish we'd run together.
So fish
Fisherman was fishing them

(01:29:45):
with us to that point.
Exactly. Claude.
What?
Claude would block fishermen.
Yes. Claude.
And so I drew this kid
who didn't have a very good reputation.
But I didn't know that
until after the incident
that I'm about to tell you.
And I draw the kid, and he's like,
I got nothing.
I go, I'm catching them.
And so we'll just take my boat.

(01:30:05):
And he goes, great.
And so we go out
and we're fishing all around
and we're catching fish.
And I got a really good pattern going.
Big swim baits, cowbells.
Back then they were like cowbells.
Big giant like ounce, ounce and a half.
Swim baits
big giant willow leaf blades on it.
It was like throwing a cowbell out there.
And it would thump the rod
and you would go to these grassy
long points
around farmers flats,

(01:30:26):
and you'd be out on farmers
flats on these big swing big,
I mean these big spinner baits out there
and slow rolling and spinner
bait come from thump thump, thump.
And it would pop to the grass
and these fish would smoke it.
And I had an amazing run going.
I had
I got second by myself
in an Angler's Choice tournament
shortly before this event
and I had like 20.
It was my first almost 30 pound bag,

(01:30:48):
which was unheard of
for me as a kid out West,
you know, to catch a 30 pound bag.
But I had like, I can't remember.
It was over 3030,
but was right in that crazy way.
But Pruitt, Bud Pruitt walked him out.
He goes, you catch him.
I'm like, dude, I got him.
Like, I got him so good,
I don't know what I got.
He open the well, he goes, oh my gosh.
And they're just all vegans, you know?
And that was all in Rayburn
Farmers Flats. And I'm a West Coast kid.

(01:31:09):
But I figured out this big spinner
bait on these grass lines
and these big fish were eating it.
And I had like a nine or a ten,
an eight and a six,
you know, and I,
I walk up and I like
I said,
I had like either a close above
or below it, right in that 30 pound mark,
which to me was unbelievable
because I'd never seen such a thing
back then.
And and then I, I

(01:31:31):
the Bassmaster tour comes to town.
I'm on the same bite.
It's not as good as it was for the,
Anglers Choice Tournament,
that I fished.
So I get this kid in my boat
when we're catching on.
We have a good day.
I have, like 16, 15 pounds or whatever.
He catches,
like 12 out of the back of my boat.
But I draw a guy who's in,
like, fifth place who had like 22 pounds.

(01:31:54):
And you know the rule, right?
Like the rule is on a pro pro draw.
You go with the guy
that's doing well, you know, flipping
a coin,
you know, you know, tell him I'm going to
I caught 17 pounds.
I can get more and more.
We got to
you know, this guy's got 22 pounds
and he's in the top ten.
And I got like 16, 17 pounds,
but I got to defer to the guy.

(01:32:14):
I'm like, well, I got fish.
And he goes, well, you know, I'm
racking them out in Black Forest.
You know, guys that are watching,
you know, Rayburn
Farmers Flats, Black Forest,
humans around the Black Forest.
And so,
I wish I could remember his name, too,
but I'm old,
so I'm
too old to remember anybody's name.
A known pro, but but a young guy,
a young known pro from back east,

(01:32:35):
probably a Texan or somewhere out there.
But he was a raker.
He was just a Texas type breaker guy,
real good fisherman.
And, he had these ditches in Black Forest
in 22 pounds.
Man. We're going to your stuff.
You know, I got stuff to go to, to.
Well, Todd
as well aware of the fact
he sees me the next morning
and I'm not him, he paid attention
because he knew
I drew a guy in the top ten.

(01:32:56):
And of course, we go to the guy's fish,
22 pounds fish ditch area.
And it ain't happening.
He catches like a four pounder
right off the bat.
And then it ain't happened.
And it ain't happening at all.
To the point
where at about 11:00, he goes,
you got anything I got?
Yeah I do, I can save us.
You know,
I got my stuff
and we haven't got to it yet,

(01:33:16):
so let's roll. He was cool.
So we go down there
and as we come around the corner, it's
my very best shot.
There's Todd's boat sitting there.
Oh, did I say whoops.
There's the guy's name.
It looks there's a lot of Todd's there.
There were a lot of times.
And it's not John Faircloth

(01:33:37):
anybody that guess is Todd
if you if you private chat this
and guess it, I will confirm it.
But I will not say it.
But this guy could have been hella cool.
J that's his real name. Todd.
Yeah. Todd.
Maybe it was at the two that year.
He had a lot of money.
I mean, what's the name that was it.
I love the okay,
so Todd, not Faircloth lived here.
Parker. Great guy.
Todd Faircloth
you know, I'm being like Trump right now.

(01:33:58):
Not maybe the best.
Todd Yeah, you're the best.
Todd I love you.
You know?
You know,
and I knew
I feel like I'm rambling
like Trump right now when I do that.
So I, I pull around the corner
and there's the Todd sitting on the spot.
And as he sees the boat
come in, he knows it's us.
And he pulls up a troll motor
and he starts idling away

(01:34:19):
and I'm like, let's go talk to him.
And the guy
that's with me, he's talk to me.
He goes, dude, we need to fish.
We need to catch fish.
I'm in like eighth place.
You're like in 30th place
or 28th place or whatever you are.
We're both in the money
and we need to fish.
And I'm like, putt putt, putt putt putt.
And I'm watching the boat go away.
You know Todd boat go away.
And he goes,
you know this is your best spot.

(01:34:39):
Let's fish it.
So we start fishing. That my spot.
And within sight of that spot
is another one of my spots.
And I'm like oh,
he better not be running over
to that point over there.
And as I'm fishing that spot,
I watch Todd
run across the lake
and shut down at the other spot.
So I am livid.
Lee flipped out
and I'm fishing
and the guy's going, you know,

(01:34:59):
hey, man, help us out here. Let's talk.
And I'm shaking and I'm watching this
and we I go memorable catching him.
Maybe 1 or 2 or whatever,
but it was irrelevant to me.
I'm just seeing Red,
whether we're catch him
or not was not the issue.
Now I'm like,
let's go there
next right to where that boat is,
because he just went to
my other best spot he is.
All right, let's go.
So as we're running there,

(01:35:20):
we're getting close.
And he's picking up the troll
motor again.
He's he's trying to avoid us. Right.
And I go oh my God.
And so as we shut down
I go, dude, if he goes over there
and I point to the next spot, right,
I go, if he hits
all of these main points right here.
And and so this guy is like, dude,
you need to protest.
Like you got to protest him.
He goes, I'm a witness to this.
You're telling me where he's going to go

(01:35:40):
next and he's staying out
of yelling range, staying away from us.
But he's out there.
And as he sees the boat come,
he runs away, runs away, runs away.
And I'm like,
freaking out, man,
because we're fish on these spots
and I'm having to literally
take my milk run
and compete
with my partner for day one, who
who is staying out of yelling range.
But but the guy my boat goes,

(01:36:02):
you need to talk to Dewey.
Do we can't talk again.
You need to talk to me about this.
I'm on your side.
This is wrong.
You got we got to protest.
This is totally unsportsmanlike.
So this guy's got me fired up.
We're both not catching them, I think.
I don't remember if we.
I don't even remember what we called it
in caucus. It was a whole nother.
My mindset was totally gone,
and I can't remember the gist
of how the day went with us.

(01:36:23):
All I remember is we got to the weigh in
and I'm I'm done.
We had fish
because obviously we're winning.
If we pull up the boat to the
to the way over there
and we go get our bags
and I'm like, Dewey, Dewey,
I gotta talk to you.
I mean, I'm freaking out.
And the guy, we weighed our fish.
So we go up on the scale,
we weigh our fish,
and now we're going to find
the tournament master to the guy,

(01:36:44):
the tournament director, Dewey.
And he comes marching up with me
and my guy, and he goes, hey, man.
He goes, he's got to talk to you.
I witnessed it,
I witnessed it, and he's like Byron.
And whatever the guy's name was, he goes,
I ain't got time for this right now.
He goes, you guys handle it,
you handle it.
And that's what he told me to do
was handle it.
And I'm like, fair game. I'll handle it.
So, you know,
they have the board over there
where the partner preparing us

(01:37:05):
for the next day.
I walk over to the partner pairing
and there he is.
And Todd's waiting around
trying to find his partner.
And I walk up to Todd and I go, hey, man,
what the hell are you like?
I mean, I light up,
yeah, light up on the guy.
And he goes,
he's like, well, no,
I really wasn't fishing your spot.
I was fishing up to them.

(01:37:26):
And he goes, and I wasn't fishing
where you were fishing.
You and I were fishing.
I was just fishing,
you know, 100 yards further down.
As a matter of fact,
I want to let you know
I found something else.
Like.
Like he's
trying to tell me more about my areas.
This is where I already caught,
like, 30 pounds in a tournament,
you know, a short while back, you know,
when the lake was open for fishing,
you know, in a tournament

(01:37:46):
just a month or two before
whatever it was,
we were out there practicing.
I know these spots
like the back of my hand.
This is my milk run we're talking about
and I got Todd telling me where and
and I'm like, dude,
you ran to every one of the spots
I took you.
And he's like, well, no, not really.
I was kind of fishing
and he and I y'all.
And I'm like,
dude,
I go, you have no business being there.

(01:38:09):
And he goes,
well, I didn't catch him anywhere else.
I caught him good today,
so I'm probably going
to go back tomorrow.
And then
and then I made the mistake.
Now this is the joke
because I was from California at the time
and I slapped him.
I slapped him across the face
like I just slapped him.
I wasn't a good old Texan.

(01:38:29):
I didn't just punch him in the ground.
I mean, they were laughing
because they're like,
you hear that guy
California slap that guy?
I have California plates on my truck.
I got long hair
and I slapped him across the face.
And I was like, wow.

(01:38:50):
I mean,
I just open handedly whacked him
because he's like, oh,
Todd,
you had no business being there today
and you know it.
Do not show up there tomorrow
because it will be really ugly for you
if you do.
Like I was going to kill him,
but I slapped him and that's all I did.
Looking at it, that was it.
And we go back to the boat

(01:39:10):
and we get in the boat.
Now, Robert, I don't know if you're here.
The problem
is that.
Oh my God, dude, Kendrick's paging me.
This is not going to be good.
Aunt Melvin, please come to the stand.
I walk over there, man.

(01:39:31):
Come on. Me.
Remember Dewey Kendrick?
Yeah, yeah, he was about four foot tall.
Apparently.
He walks me around to the back
of the whole
grandiose thing
for Bassmaster
with all the crowd
and everything in the front bar. Right.
Did you slap Todd?
I won't say his last name.
I almost did.
Did you see?

(01:39:51):
I talked like a blank,
and I'm like, what?
And he goes,
you know, he goes, did you hit?
Did you hit Blankety blank?
I'm like, what?
He did? You hit Todd?
And I'm like, well, no.
I slapped him in the face
to get my point across
because he said he was going
to fish my fish.
And yes, I told you to handle.
I didn't tell you to go off and hit him.

(01:40:12):
I no, I didn't hit him.
I slapped him across the face
when when he said
he was gonna go back to my spot
the next day.
Mercer.
As God is my witness,
he goes by and he goes,
you are banned from bass for life.
And I was like, what?
And he goes, take your stuff, go home.
You are banned from bass
for the rest of your life.

(01:40:33):
And I mean, it was woosh
like floodgates, which I was doing.
Kendrick banned me from bass
at my very young age
for the rest of my life, and I lost it.
And, I mean,
Clunn was my mentor at the time,
and he talked to me from

(01:40:54):
I was going to go
because I knew where Todd was staying.
Oh, yeah, I was kicked out.
You might as well.
I'm gonna go out
my lower unit and Todd's face.
We're going to be together at the time.
We'll go up there.
I was going to take
Todd's had his little bit.
He had. He was a small, small man.
There's a hand who?
This little Todd guy was,
and I was going to

(01:41:15):
mush his head into my lower unit,
so my prop was blood red.
I wanted to kill the dude, kill the dude.
And I'm like, I have nothing to lose.
I've been banned from bars.
At the time, Haskell was my sponsor.
Ron Pearce was there.
Ron said, we will get you back in.
Don't worry.
Rick Clunn said
the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
That's ridiculous.

(01:41:35):
And,
there was this whole surge from the guys,
and I didn't know this.
Fun fact
there was a knee jerk reaction
from Dewey Kendrick because.
And Rick Clunn told me that's true.
It's like,
you do realize why this happened, right?
Because for a while, do you remember
bass master
got into the salt water scene?
Yeah. Yeah.
You remember Dewey was running

(01:41:55):
those tournaments?
Dewey was running the saltwater
inshore tournaments.
Well, there was a protest
filed down in Louisiana. Venice.
Or maybe it was Galveston Bay,
but there was a bad situation
that happened.
And Dewey got knocked out by an angler.
Come on.
Knocked out, knocked across the stage.

(01:42:16):
He didn't want nobody hit nobody,
because Dewey
got flattened across his back
and knocked into the frickin the stage.
They said the canopy fell down
because he he he he disqualified
one of those roughneck
Gulf oil Derrick dudes.
You know what I'm talking about.
You don't mess with those times.
Yeah,

(01:42:36):
it'll slap you like a telephony guy.
They don't.
They don't slap you in the face.
I mean,
these guys took Dewey Kendrick out
and he protested at a team,
got protested. He disqualified them.
They went to the award ceremony
and they knocked Dewey on his ass.
And that is why Dewey
is when it by that time when I.

(01:42:57):
When I slapped time,
it was like,
oh no, we're not doing that here. Okay.
This man, this
you don't even have this happening here.
Let's get Byron out of here
because he's liable
to be like those guys on the Gulf Coast
that knocked the dude out badly for life.
My all my
peers, thank God, rallied around me.

(01:43:19):
Larry Nixon came up and shook my hand
and said, dude, if anybody had it coming,
it was that guy.
I had more pros come up to me,
and I mean, I go on and on.
It was
it was so many of them
that came up to me and were like, dude,
they all drew him
and they all had hell
to pay for drawing him.
If he did, if he didn't,
he would literally take his boat.
Go back to your spots

(01:43:39):
and fish against you on your water
while you were there.
Like he was a rich kid.
That had zero etiquette.
I happened to be gone
for the first half that day,
while my spots got blistered by him
and he caught him on it,
so he had a decent day.
On the second day,
best thing he could do was get rid of me.
The third day. Send me home.
I drove back to California
in my Astro van with my bass
cat on the third day of the tournament.

(01:44:01):
Tears coming out, man,
I think in your career,
your dream, your career, it's over.
Everything's over.
Everything I had fought for,
everything I had saved up
all my life for a dream come true,
you know?
Still golf, balling to pay the bills.
You know, still rubbing nickels together.
Very few sponsors,
you know, just not lucrative at all yet.
Just trying to build a career.
And Todd almost said his last name again,

(01:44:23):
you know, had destroyed all that.
And I wanted to kill Todd, but,
I went home
because literally it was Clunn
and Ron Pierce from bass Cat.
You know who you know? Rest in peace.
You know, run.
Your friend of mine,
he was my first sponsor.
You know,
my first Mercury was my first sponsor.
But but Ron Pierce and Basquiat were
also one of my first big sponsors.
And between Mercury and Mascot,

(01:44:44):
you know, they were like,
we're not going to let this happen.
You know,
you're not going to be banned for life.
You know, you're
you're an asset to us and we love you.
And man's great company.
Frank. All. Rick.
Everybody went to bat for me.
And then the pros went to bat for me
because they said this kid had it coming.
They said, you know, he deserved
they wanted to kill him, too.
So this kid had such a bad reputation
that they
I stayed
I was out for the rest of that year

(01:45:05):
because the season was almost over.
And so I got back
invited back to come next year.
And that was it.
That was the slap heard around the world.
What,
what what did Todd do?
Like when you slapped him?
Like,
I would feel like if a man slaps
you, you're going to like,
did you just, like, take it?
You just he just he just slap.
I slapped him, he just looked at me.
I think he was so embarrassed

(01:45:25):
for what he had done.
And I think that it was afterwards
he realized if he protested me,
maybe he could go fishing
on my spots again.
I think he really
he just wanted to get those spots
to himself.
Like he he didn't do anything.
He was just sitting there
kind of more than any shock and
and still embarrassed
because I was laying into him
and people were listening.
And the guy that fish with me
was right there with me,
and he's like, dude,

(01:45:46):
you are a scumbag, dude.
You know, you
you need to go find your own fish
and we shouldn't
have to compete with you.
He was right there with me
and we were all we.
It was such a
it was like
it wasn't much more than a wake up
kind of slap. It wasn't like I, I didn't,
you know, and that's
where all the jokes were.
California slap.
Any Texan would have knocked him
on the spot and then.
But we can't really figure out
because he got knocked on his body

(01:46:06):
in a saltwater tournament.
So dude, we lost his mind
and I didn't knock him in.
The dude, he didn't smell.
But it, you know, it was.
I wish I could remember
the Talladega Nights slap,
but I don't remember if he had.
He takes his glove off
and slap some dumb.
That's the glove slap.
I mean, it's right there.
Yeah, it's it's it's it's that minimal.
But it was it cost me.
Oh it almost cost me my whole career.
If I would have had sponsors

(01:46:27):
to save my butt.
Wow.
What the five fish say to the scale slap.
Oh, my
God, I love to play every living monster.
Oh, my gosh,
the slap heard around the world.
Who brought that up to you?
We were at the hall of Fame thing.
Who? Who was it? Murray. Murray.

(01:46:48):
Murray. Murray.
Say, I'm sorry about the suit.
I pulled out my phone immediately,
like I,
I one thing I've tried to work on
this year is being really present.
Like, I've turned my phone off.
I leave it in my office
a lot of times at night,
but when I'm at events like this,
I just hate when you're talking to people
and they're always,
but I literally I said, I'm
taking my phone out.
I better forget some of these.

(01:47:08):
You were doing your research
at the Hall of Fame event.
Not only are you hosting the thing,
but you're also doing research.
It just started flowing
and I wasn't going to stop it.
Oh that's incredible.
Sometimes a man needs slapped.
Just
like you said in
the beginning of this podcast.
You got to have balls.

(01:47:29):
You got to have balls to run.
I thought he could walk
somebody in the face.
But when you
when you're
when you're masculine enough
just to slap a guy, okay about it
and that's it.
Yeah, that's that's that's
you got to have golf balls.
You got to have ball.
That's the the title of this podcast.
I just feel really bad for
anybody named Todd

(01:47:49):
that is tournaments back there.
All the everybody I love.
It's going to be like
every one of the old timers right now.
Every one of your old timers
that fished with him or knew him
know exactly what I'm talking about
because he had nightmare after.
I can't tell you
how many people shook my hand.
I can't tell you
how many people came me out of boys
at the Bass Master Classic at.
I guess we used to.
I can ask you like, dude,

(01:48:10):
I heard what you did to Todd.
Who knows?
You know, got to come in
like anybody
that's watching this thing
that fished with us back then was like,
damn right that guy had it coming.
He was a jerk, and I simply slapped him.
But boy, do he jump on me for it.
No violence in this sport.
I don't want to.

(01:48:30):
I don't know what's going on. Guys.
Like, we're never going back.
Oh, I mean, had the person that was there
told me that
Dougie got knocked down
and went into the,
the, the,
the drapes that they have
on the stage of the team
and oh my God, that was like a
poor Dougie got knocked up
and he was knocked back

(01:48:51):
into the back of the stage,
took the drinks with him,
the great Dewey Kendrick.
I mean, he just got inducted
into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame
just a few years ago.
Oh, I saw that
when we were there together,
I saw that I saw that when we were there.
Oh, my God, you did a great job.
By the way. You hosting?
It was phenomenal. No.
Yeah. And tastic.
It was a joy.
Next year, I'm

(01:49:12):
just going to go up there and be like,
hey, guys,
why you're looking at auction items.
Here's a little bit history lesson with
Byron Velvet. Story time.
Story time.
No. And John Morris, too. Still like me.
Johnny was like me and him
and his wife were very kind.
And I don't want.
I want Johnny Morris
not to look at me sideways
when he knows I'm

(01:49:32):
slapping people at the turn.
Yeah, the great Johnny Morris,
by the way.
Also in the cards, a Johnny Morris card.
Look at that.
Oh my gosh,
dude, you are just throwing them out.
I mean, they're just
Gary Clunn.
I mean
oh my God, that's that's about the time.
That's when he was hot heavy.
And that's when he was aggressive.

(01:49:52):
He was 35 in this picture.
Wow 35.
So he was the age of Brandon Clinic
basically I think Paul necks
right around 36 or something.
That's probably about the time
I drew him.
So that's probably about,
you know, I don't know how old is he?
He's kind of ageless.
He's one of those dudes.

(01:50:13):
A card on the back of the car,
does it say their birthday?
No, it just says that. Well, in.
And yes, actually, he was born in 1957.
October 11th, 1957.
Yeah.
So how was that made now?
Yeah, eight or so. Yeah.
Yeah. So that would have been about that.
So 35 would have been about. Yeah.
A little bit earlier than that
was when I drew the guy

(01:50:33):
because I was in, I was still in college,
I was still in college setting my money
up to fish those tournaments
without a boat
because it took me forever.
I had to save all my money.
My mom was a schoolteacher
and, you know, my dad was gone.
So I had a
I didn't get my first boat to
I was in my early 20s.
Wow, wow.
Those are.
But is it though, like,

(01:50:54):
Like, and I know you've been busy
with your daughter
and everything
you've been taking care of at home,
but if you look at the tournament
circuit now,
like because of social media,
people think all this stuff is new,
like these arguments,
these disagreements.
It was it's I mean, it happened like,
not I mean, not

(01:51:14):
everybody slapped
another man open handedly.
But I mean,
was there a tournament
that past
that there wasn't
disgruntlement or somebody talking about,
you're not going to believe
what so-and-so did
while we were on the water.
I mean, was it that common?
No, of course it was common.
It was super common.
And there was all kinds of crazy backs.
You could do a whole bunch of shows

(01:51:34):
with a bunch of the pros of all,
especially the pro Pro draw.
You can imagine all
the stuff that went down.
It was two pros in the same boat,
and the stories
they had to tell where the fights
were happening in the boat
with amongst each other,
like in the boat
while they were competing.
Oh yeah, Rick
fought for the guy
to go to the bank right.
And told the legend, take me to the bank.

(01:51:55):
Or I mean, the legend was unbelievable.
And I drew the legend and the legend.
And Rick Clunn came up to me again.
My mentor, a young kid, he goes,
I just want you to know
what's going to happen to you
today does not reflect upon bass
and most of the anglers that fish it.
Rick warned me before
I went fishing with this guy
how bad my day was going to be.

(01:52:17):
Come to find out, Rick Clunn actually
told him to go to the bank
to settle
this thing on the dirt on the bank.
Talk like that was going to be a fight.
I mean, it was like, what?
This is this guy's a legend.
This is a whole nother guy.
This guy, he passed away.
This guy was called the legend.
He was this crazy dude
that was fishing the tour.
And I'm talking to
legend is in Harold Allen, not Harold.

(01:52:39):
Know nobody knows the names.
They guy.
Some weird dude
that had a camouflage boat.
He wrapped his boat.
He had a camouflage painted boat.
Doug, here's what happened.
What? Doug cannon.
No, no, there's no name for this guy.
I mean, he was just a no, he he had this.
He has a rope on his neck.
He has a rope, and it's a gold chain.
And it's got a bass on it.

(01:53:00):
Don't you see this chain?
You know it won't break because.
Because there's a 15 pound
spider wire like the gold chain was like.
He wanted you to know
that the braid that he uses was so good.
It was holding the gold bars on his
furry neck.
And he had the wrong Jeremy furry neck
to go for.
But then he's like,

(01:53:20):
this chain won't break
because of the 15 pound braid.
Wackadoo doodle straight back
nature back to do I draw the guy
Mercer on Lake Powell I fish Lake Powell.
I grew up in the west.
I know Lake Powell Pro pro draw.
He goes
boom story at Lake Powell
man we're at Lake Powell.

(01:53:42):
This is my world I'm a West Coast guy.
Pro pro draw
the bass masters come to Lake Powell
I got my boat.
I'm ready to go for flipping a coin
I dang it against the legend.
And Rick Clunn warns me about the legend.
He goes, first off, he's
going to flip you for the coin
no matter who you are or what you do.
Because he did it to Rick Clunn.
He flips everybody
so he can be in his camouflage boat.

(01:54:03):
So he's going to flip me for the boat.
He wins the flip.
And, I tell him I want
my half the day
and he wants his half of the day.
So he's like, well, I'll take
I think it was the second
half of the day, like, okay, cool.
So I want the first half of the day
and I know where to go.
It's Lake Powell on the West Coast. Guy.
I go to Lake Powell
and I go to the San Juan,
and I'm catching these fish
and he's not catching them.

(01:54:24):
And he kind of goes, oh,
I can't fish like this.
This isn't my style of fishing.
I'm like, dude,
I, you know,
we can both catch a limit here
and limits can be good today.
So we're flipping.
He goes,
I mean, we're casting our worms out there
and it's the sandstone, all that stuff.
He was at 10:00.
My turn.
I'm like, dude,
I got four
and you got two,
and we're going to have a limit
by the end of the day

(01:54:44):
if you just stick with me on this.
Nope. My turn.
He goes, we're going to go.
We're going to go do what I want to do.
Like, all right.
He goes,
you know how I'm going to show you
how to really catch him? Mercer.
This dude
leaves his my my area.
They had fish.
He runs out in the middle of Lake Powell,
and he looks for tumbleweeds
that have blown down

(01:55:05):
from the giant plateaus.
And and he thinks he's fishing for dorado
and mahi mahi in the ocean.
And they're suspended
under the tumbleweeds.
And he pulls up.
I see him shut down.
I look at the graph.
It's 120ft of water, Dave.
It's 120ft of water.
And I look at the graph
and what are we doing?
He goes,
we're flipping those tumbleweeds.

(01:55:27):
And I'm like, what? And he.
And he goes up on the front of the boat
and he starts throwing at the tumbleweed
Mercer.
I walk up to the front of the boat.
It's crystal clear water.
David Fritz called it spigot water.
That's what they call you.
Make an extra bass here.
This here, make it water.
Because that's my home.
That's where Dave is.
Now let's make it water.
It's so clear.

(01:55:47):
You can see 30ft below the tumbleweed.
The tumbleweed is floating
in 120ft of water
in the middle of Lake Powell.
Blew down from a plateau.
And this dude takes his fluorocarbon.
Carbon braid is his high
visibility braid.
And he flips into that tumbleweed.
And I watch the way
go into the tumbleweed and go down.
And I look at him and I'm like,
this is a joke, right? This is so.

(01:56:11):
And there's,
there's, there's
ability to go to assembly.
And I see the beak going up and down.
And then I see 20ft below the tumbleweed,
and I'm looking at this whole thing
and I'm just doing this.
I'm like,
I'm trying to make sense
of this whole thing. I'm like, what?
What what
this, this, this,
this is not what we're doing, is it?
Oh, yeah.
This is what we're doing.
Hang on to your hat, buddy.

(01:56:33):
For hours, bro,
we ran up and down Lake Powell,
and I'd go to the time.
We'd look at it,
make sure there was nothing
underneath it,
and I go sit back down,
and I would just watch him.
And that was my whole day
with the legend.
His little half
the day he flipped tumbleweeds
with high visibility braid
and and and and literally my,
my beautiful
start to the day
disintegrated into nothing
because I had the legend.

(01:56:55):
And his half of the day
was his after day.
And we were going to flip 12
tumbleweeds in 120ft of water.
Like how and
two pro pro draw stopped.
I can only imagine
that should be the name of your podcast.
If you come out with one pro.
Pro draws sucked.

(01:57:19):
Oh.
Thanks to you, I'm going to do one.
It's your fault
I'm getting into this world.
No, you need to do it
because you have so many stories.
I don't want to tell stories.
I want to hear other people's stories.
I want to hear your stories.
I just want to be the host like you.
Well, mine's nowhere near as exciting
as yours.

(01:57:39):
Dude.
Thank you, thank you.
This is.
But I think not only is this
show entertains people, I would hope,
namely me.
But number two,
it's proved that don't get all wound up
just because people
are posting on the internet that.
Oh, gosh,
this gentleman sport
needs to be reclaimed.
It was never like it's always been.

(01:58:01):
Every single and and every.
If you spent time
talking to professional golfers,
I'm sure they got stories.
I have friends who played
professional football.
Good lord,
you should see the things that happened
in the bottom of those piles.
Like it is horrible.
But I mean, there is
people will do things
that are a lot worse
than slapping a man down there.

(01:58:22):
But it's competition and,
I agree with you.
It's always been there.
And the internet
and now now the woke thing
and the internet thing
and the social media thing.
And now it's like everything.
Everybody's got a phone
so they can record it.
You know, that's the thing
we never had a phone.
Nobody picked up a phone
and start recording.
Now, if there's a tragedy,
nobody goes to help the people,
a tragedy.
They just pick up the phone to record it.

(01:58:44):
So and so.
It's sad that
if there's a problem on a boat,
everybody's before they
go to the aid of the person
or get involved with it, or
they're just everybody wants to pull back
and you know, and push the cord and start
start catching it
so they can sell it on YouTube
or get more likes or whatever. It's.
But no, that was there.
Yeah.
To your point,
it was just
his word
against my word
and talk among each other

(01:59:05):
at the dinner table.
At the end of the day,
you know,
and this is before cell
phones are during
the infancy of cell phones.
But to your point, man, it's been there.
And you're exactly right, Mercer.
It's been there all along,
and probably worse back then
because there was no accountability.
Nobody could pick up the phone
or record you. Yeah. You know,
and nobody benefited from it.
Now you got accounts

(01:59:25):
that literally just searched for,
oh, this is being said,
that's being said.
And I gotta run to the
I mean, it's just the way the,
the world is.
But it's sad, the clickbait thing.
People are creating drama
because they don't think I'm mad at me.
Now, you got clickbait
where you're trying to make drama happen,
you know,
and you're just looking to create drama,
whereas back then you tried to avoid it.
At least it was coming out.

(01:59:46):
It was coming at you.
Fishing was high intensity back then.
It was, you know, sponsors.
We battled for sponsors.
We battled for the money,
the money, you know, and everything else.
And yeah,
there was a lot of personality conflict,
but you weren't creating drama.
You weren't
trying to get likes and stinks.
And hence
your social media presence with drama.
So it has changed a lot, unfortunately.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's

(02:00:10):
not enough.
I mean, this this shows a prime example.
Like if I call it like Byron Velvet
slapped a man,
we will get more plays, but I don't care.
We're calling it
it takes balls to be a pro angler
because it's oh I think that. Yeah.
You don't have to go.
Yeah, yeah I yeah.
That's it's
now that it would take that

(02:00:30):
to get people to click on it.
Whereas all
the other stories of the grain to the,
you know, it's just just fun man.
And I appreciate your audience,
I appreciate you
I love doing your podcast and
and you've inspired me
to possibly do one.
I think it'd be a lot of fun.
I'm just kind of working that out
with Livingston right now
and how we're going to make that,
how we're gonna make that look.
And I'm gonna
I if you're willing to help me out,
I'm going to call you for 100%. 100%.

(02:00:52):
I'm all in all.
And,
you got too many great stories
and great content.
Like so many
have taught on the first show.
Hey, Todd, start a podcast.
You remember me?
I swipe you at Rayburn.

(02:01:12):
You quit fishing shortly thereafter.
It wasn't wrong very long after that.
I mean, it wasn't like he was a he's
not a name that anybody would know.
He quit fishing, like, two years later.
I think he got ran out on the sport
because everybody else was the same way.
And it was just
he was so disliked among the pros
that, you know, he didn't last long.
He was one of those rich kids
from the East Coast,
rich kid from the East Coast
that came and went in a flash.

(02:01:33):
Well, I could imagine it's like jail.
I mean,
you let one guy
take your Jell-O at lunch,
they're all going to take your Jell-O.
I bet you he was.
Get out of my way to make me go
right and fell back on.
You won't make me go.
Byron's all back on you
because I'm not from California,
I don't slap.
Oh, that's
Texas,
and I will punch you in the nose, buddy.

(02:01:53):
I need you like.
Oh, I got lucky
that he had a California long haired,
granola eating freak like you.
The only slap you're
going to get after that
is the slap of your face
hitting the pavement.
Check out Byron's bunker.
Plays Byron's bunker.
See all those rods over there?

(02:02:14):
They're all going to get sold.
There's, like, 30 rods over there.
There's all the reels on the ground.
Please check out Byron's bunker.
Everything.
I gotta get rid of all this stuff I want.
I want someone to use it on these
$30 baits.
You know, somebody
really fishes with these things.
Get your live target stuff out, dude.
Get your live target stuff out
and just sell it
because it's a lot of it's
the discontinued in all this stuff.
It's discontinued. Somebody wants it.

(02:02:34):
Somebody wants your baits.
You know, that's the thing.
It's bait that you'll never throw.
But somebody out there
really wants those $30 limited,
you know, discontinued live targets
and everything else
that I have behind me.
Yeah, yeah. Check his
eBay store.
I'll put links everywhere, dude.
Thank you, thank you.
Like, honestly,
I think
you really should start a podcast.

(02:02:55):
But if you don't,
you need to keep coming back here.
I mean,
even if you do start a podcast,
I want at least once a quarter.
We need story
time with Byron Velvet, dude,
because it's story rolls into a story
like it's layers of the onion.
Yeah, like we could go into Falcon.
I mean, I'm gonna tease it,
but we could talk about
Aaron and I have Falcon and.
And there you go. For the next time.

(02:03:16):
Well, you know,
all that stuff that was on the internet.
I'd love to tell the story of Falcon
from start to finish, you know?
You know, and I love Aaron.
And in memory of Aaron,
it would be a great story of
what we share.
But it goes to your point of a
battle on the water.
You know, huge battle on the water.
That actually got a lot of notoriety
because Bassmaster Television aired it.
So it was all over on Bassmaster
TV with Zona on everything.

(02:03:37):
But,
there's a great story
about kind of
before the internet social media, woke,
you know, clickbait thing.
There was a good story about,
you know, two friends battling on Falcon.
Yeah.
Well, keep in mind,
I know, I know,
I gotta head to the school to get my kid.
Okay, go get your kid.
Have a great daughter.

(02:03:58):
Watch this.
Thank you.
My daughter's going to watch it
knowing that I have to go get her, I.
This is what daddy does
when she's at school.
Yeah. You show up there.
I've been working hard.
You have no idea.
They miss Dave Mercer's podcast.
They,
not famous about me, but,
Merry Christmas, dude.
And thanks for doing this.
And, we'll chat soon.
Merry Christmas to you

(02:04:19):
and to everybody out there watching.
Like I said, if you get some stuff,
I'm gonna throw extra stuff in.
It's Christmas time.
Anything on the auctions?
All you gotta do is let me know. There.
Mercer and a pumper,
they say,
hey, man, I'm one of the jumpers, dude.
I'm throwing stuff in.
All right?
I gotta pack a bag.
I'm also just throw
some extra baits in here.
I have laying around and say, hey,
thanks for being a hopper.
I'm gonna throw some goody bag in there
for Christmas.
But Merry Christmas to everybody.

(02:04:40):
And I appreciate all your
I appreciate your, your community
because they're they're the best dude.
You have a great community.
Well you're the best.
Thank you very much.
The one and only
great and mighty Byron velvet by Mercer.
See it.
Wow.
There is wow.
There's nobody like Byron Velvet.

(02:05:00):
Wow.
It's all I have to say.
I mean, I feel like I have been
trying to hold the wheels on a bus
that is out of control.
One story leads the other,
but I thank Byron Velvet for
being so open, so on, and so awesome.
Make sure you support Byron's bunker.

(02:05:21):
Tell him you're a hunter
and he will give you a little
something extra.
So check that out.
I'll put the links down
below in the comments
and in the description.
How about that friggin magic card pole?
I mean, I swear to you.
They were right beside each other.

(02:05:41):
I mean, that was
David Blaine.
Ain't got nothing on that.
Man.
I got to start using those cards more.
I'm gonna put them on the desk
or put them on the shelf behind me,
and it's going to become
part of the show.
Oh. Here's more.
Look at that.
There's your blanket card,

(02:06:02):
a young Randy black.
And how old was he then?
31.
Young
superstar Kevin Van Damme.
I read the back of it, and it said
he won rookie of the year.
And then his sophomore season,
he is your angler of the year.
And that is the start of a very,

(02:06:23):
very menacing, menacing career.
Not for him, but for a lot of pros.
I mean, the greatest
to ever play the game.
And that's your KVD superstar card.
And hey,
I got to give my Canadians a little love.
Bob and Wayne Izumi,
the only ones in there from Canada.
And as you notice,

(02:06:43):
those are signed by Wayne
and Bob is to me.
And yes,
a young Dave Mercer lined up to get
said signature. Very cool.
I got to have clown on the show one day
and just
pull cards and see where it goes.
Byron Velvet, thank you.
Thank you guys.

(02:07:04):
As I said just a few minutes ago,
this podcast proves one thing
that what we're seeing,
the disputes, the downfall of the sport,
is vastly overexaggerated.
It's been going on forever.
It's competition.
And I thank Byron once again

(02:07:25):
for such great stories.
I thank you guys for hanging with us.
Believe it or not,
I thought I was going
to have Byron on for 45 minutes
and then I was going to do a double show,
bring another guest on.
The one thing Byron Velvet cannot do.
Me and Him Together is a short podcast,
but they are always wonderful.
I hope you enjoyed it
half as much as I did.

(02:07:46):
Enjoy being.
Have a great week and as always, Bob
Cobb, take it away!
So crazy!
Thanks for watching.
Please like, comment and subscribe
because Bob Cobb of the Bass Masters told

(02:08:06):
you to, you hear?

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Byron Velvick - It Takes Balls To Be A Pro Angler on MERCER-191

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