Catch that runaway bass boat!

From serious illness to flea-bitten beds, the Howells struggle to remember early challenges.

So Randy asked this question on his Facebook page: “What would you like us to write about in our Bassmaster blogs?” The following suggestion came from Bruce Callis, and I thought that I would try to answer this from a wife’s perspective. “Randy and Robin…idea. Blog about the struggles of fishing the series in the early days.”

I am going to do my best to remember some of the key struggles; however I will say that it is actually a struggle to try and remember the struggles! Why? Well, I have actually trained my mind to not dwell on the struggles and the negative, but to learn from them and move on…all the while forgetting whatever that struggle may have been. I think I can pass on a few fun stories that were struggles at the time but now seem so miniscule in the grand scheme of life.

Credit cards, health struggles, sponsor struggles, cheap lodging places and our boat coming off of the trailer on I-40 are just a few of the struggle stories that come to mind when thinking back. I think instead of writing about how bad or hard the struggle was, I will write a real life story that goes with each. It seems to feel better when a fun twist or story is used to describe each event. 

Credit cards and finances

Let’s start with a credit card story. When we started fishing, it was 1993. I don’t believe debit cards were available then, and if they were available, there probably wasn’t a large enough balance at any one time in our bank account, so we didn’t have one. We basically operated on credit cards. When Randy speaks at churches, he often refers to two of his major sponsors, MasterCard and Visa, and they were high interest sponsors. LOL!

We had some sponsorship back in the early days, but definitely not enough to cover the expenses we had. Therefore, I learned the art of equal distribution, which is equally distributing our expenses on each card and figuring out which one to pay on each month based on the amount of interest that was charged. It was quite stressful, but Randy never knew it. I took care of the finances, and with a lot of prayer, it always worked out.

Staying healthy

Next, there were a few health struggles. For those of you who don’t know, Randy had Ulcerative Colitis, a disease which started in his teen years. It progressed somewhat rapidly, and six months after we were married in May of 1992, he was fishing a regional tournament out of state and his colon ruptured leading to an emergency surgery. That led to two more surgeries in which they removed all of his large intestine and fixed him up to be somewhat normal.

This was truly a struggle for both of us. For him, it was mental and physical and for me it was emotional. It was really hard for me to see him sick, but I trusted that God would bring him through and things would work out for him to fish the following year. And it did and he did. However, for many years, I still had the fear that a health complication would prevent him from competing.

I am happy to report that in all the years of him competing, he has only had to miss one day of fishing because of a health problem. And guess what? It was not a points tournament, instead it was a promotional event at Disney World that he missed. He got food poisoning which sent him to an Orlando hospital quickly.

The only other time there was a close call was also in Orlando at a Bassmaster tournament. He got a stomach virus during the last tournament day, fished while lying down on the front deck, weighed his fish in, and we drove straight to the emergency room where we spent the next couple of days getting fluids. It was on my birthday and definitely a birthday that was memorable.

With his system now minus a large intestine, he can dehydrate much quicker than a normal person, so therefore we have turned into stomach virus and food poisoning freaks! We have been truly blessed that he has always been healthy enough to fish each day of his regular season tournaments!

Sponsor issues

I am not going to talk much about sponsor struggles except to say there are ups and downs in this business as there are in any business. However, I will say that if you don’t stay on top of your game, sponsors notice and word spreads quickly. Randy and I have done our best through the years to work hard and represent our partners with excellence. We are blessed to have the best in the business to work with and promote which makes Randy’s job that much easier.

I think the most popular questions Randy is asked are: How did he get started? How did he first secure sponsorships? Well, if you know Randy, you know that he has the gift of communicating, and in those early years, he used that gift in his local area to secure sponsorships. He went to local businesses and showed them what he could do for them in return for their partnership. He had restaurants, furniture stores and local car dealers to partner with him and it turned out to be a win-win for all.

So for those starting out, don’t go straight to the big name fishing companies, go to your local area businesses and market your ability to fish and entertain their customers. Take it from us and learn from our experiences, it works!

Lodging challenges

Now let’s talk about lodging in the early years. Of course, finances were tight so we were very careful about spending money, and therefore our lodging conditions were sometimes less than desirable. For 11 years, we rented places to stay or were blessed to have people offer us free places here and there. Looking back, we would have been way better off had we bought a used over-the-cab camper and camped everywhere, but hindsight is 20/20 they say.

There are stories of filthy places that couldn’t even be cleaned enough to tough out the stay, so we had to leave a few. There are a few stories of arriving late at night and finding spiders and roaches inhabiting our would-be bed – we left and I was in tears from exhaustion. There was also the time we had to move condos three times because they were housing fleas and we didn’t prefer rooming with them.

And then there was the story of the disappearance of our Shipley Donuts at a Tennessee hotel. Whenever we are in the area where a Shipley’s Donuts is located, Randy is super happy! I usually go every other day to replenish the supply. On one occasion, we were staying at a hotel and I had packed my leftover donut holes in a Tupperware container. I came in the room to tell the room attendant something and found her with her hand in the Tupperware bowl and her mouth completely packed full of our Shipley doughnut holes. The word awkward doesn’t even start to explain…I have been asked did we tell the manager. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I understand the need for a doughnut fix, and I hated to see her lose her job over an uncontrollable weakness that was harmless!

Runaway bass boat

And finally, my last story I will leave you with was the time in 1998 that we had an accident on I-40 in Arkansas where the boat came off the trailer. We were on our way to Beaver Lake and made a stop at a large truck-stop to get gas off of I-40. From what we could figure out later, it appeared that someone had removed our hitch pin in the receiver.

If you have ever been on I-40, you can relate to the “bumpety-bumpety” road conditions. After we came down the exit ramp and got up to speed, the hitch worked its way out of the receiver causing the boat to come away from the conversion van we were driving. The trailer jerked back breaking the safety chains, which in turn sent the boat across the lane beside us. Next, it went through the median where the tongue of the trailer stabbed into the embankment, and the force broke the safety straps on the front and back of the boat launching it in the air to skid across east bound lanes missing cars and landing on the side of the road. It was truly the scariest deal we have ever been through.

The boat suffered very little damage because of how tough the hull construction of a Triton is and because of the Keelshield that helped it slide into the grass. Angels were definitely with us as well because the trooper that helped us said he had never seen the tow vehicle in an accident like this not get flipped. 

The quote, “Today’s trial is tomorrow’s testimony” has become very real over the years. I can truly look back at so many instances that while it was going on seemed really bad and what good could come from it, but now we can see exactly the good that came from each.

Our adventures so far in this business have been wonderful and memorable, and I know that even if all of it happened because it could be used one day in a story that I wrote to share with others, it was all for a reason. Romans 8:28 says “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes.” This verse is very appropriate here, I would say. Hope you enjoyed a few stories from the past, and remember to SMILE, it can change the world around you!