My Hometown: J Todd

A few weeks ago, when I took a side trip to JTodd Tucker’s hometown I knew it would be special.

Dateline: Moultrie, Georgia

“On stage I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.”
Janis Joplin

This, is a lonely game.

For many it is always an “away” game.

Played, in front of strangers, one or two familiar faces in the crowds.

Yeah, they get to fish for a living, yeah I get to travel the US of A, pretty places, pretty faces, same steak different plate.

Thank you America for your hospitality, for your caring, for baking us cookies and opening your homes, but it is always, your home, not ours.

Not ours.

I was lucky though, am lucky, I had family here before I ever got here full-time.

I had Kevin & Kerry Short, strangers now friends for life. Don’t for a moment think I’m bias when it comes to these two. They, are family. Knew them way before I knew this game.

Then came Butch. Family I found through Google “Alerts.”

Before I joined B.A.S.S full-time I would write an occasional story about this sport and the people in it and suddenly I would start getting all these Google “Alerts” with my name attached and when I clicked on the link, it was always my name mentioned in comments.

Nice comments.

Nice comments made by a man named, Butch Tucker.

Butch Tucker may have been my first fan, he cut and pasted me to the planet and to all his fishing friends on all those fishing boards, and while others wondered just who, or what I was, Butch got it.

Back in the pre-new B.A.S.S. owners days, back when the future looked bleak Butch stepped up, talked to some important folks and I may in fact owe my career to his support.

Do not think I am bias when it comes to Butch Tucker and his family, I am not, when I lay my pen down for good, Butch will be sitting at that party head table with me.

It is because I have become family to Butch and his wife Tracy, family to their daughters Lory and Teryn, family to Uncle Buff, almost an Uncle to “Big” Landon, that I have become certainly a “road dad” to their son, Elite angler…JTodd.

Ask JTodd.

I tell the boy I love him, and I tell him I’m going to kick his arse as well. I have whispered in his ear, I have yelled in his face. JTodd is one of my “stay awake” calls during the long drives between events.

I have many “almost” sons out here: James Niggemeyer, Brandon Palaniuk, and in some weird strange way, Steve Kennedy…but JTodd was the first.

“Look out for my boy, db”

“I will Butch,” goes way back.

So a few weeks ago when I took the side trip to JTodd’s hometown I knew it would be special, and it was because as a family member we all sat down and started to go through the old family photo album…and it was pretty darn cool.

Meet…JTodd as…ET.

“My mom made that costume for me, it was made out of wire and paper mache, I remember standing still as she basically wrapped it around me, I was in 5th grade, think I was about 11, that was like 30 years ago and we had just moved here…”

“Here,” for JTodd and the family Tucker was, and still is for JTodd, home…Moultrie, Georgia…population in 2013, 14,622, down some from the 14,985 that lived here when the Tuckers came to town around 1985.

“db I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, but I went all the way from Elementary to High School here, this is home. I remember we moved to a house here and it was…”

“…on a lake…” In fact it was on the lake behind JTodd there that he first fished in Moultrie, and believe it or not that boat he is standing next to is the same boat he fished out of as an 11-year-old child. But, “…Butch and I had been fishing for awhile before this…”

Yep…that’s 9-year-old JTodd standing next to the big trophy, Butch is standing next to him on the other side of the trophy, “That’s my father’s old fishing club, the photo is of the top 6 fishermen of the year, 1982, Dad came in 1st, I came in 4th.”  You are seeing Elite roots right there and here…

…as an 11 year old out on dad’s boat on Lake Eufaula and here…

…as father and son, now a 15-year-old JTodd fish a tournament together on Lake Seminole. “Butch fished in tournaments for as long as I can remember, you think that’s where I got the bug, db?”

Yep. Yeah I do.

In 1991 JTodd graduated from…

…Colquitt County High School in Moultrie, “I played baseball there, also was really involved in the F.F.A. (Future Farmers of America).  I have raised livestock all my life in fact…

…my family moved from the house on the pond to a farm in rural Moultrie, I still live there but this field and this barn was filled with all sorts of livestock…

…in fact my family traveled all over the country showing animals. That’s me bracing a lamb in a show at the Albany County Fair, we won the Showmanship prize that year.” After graduation JTodd went on to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia, where he studied, “…Animal Science for three years.”

But.

BUT, “…fishing, tournament fishing was always in my blood and…”

And, Larry’s Bait and Tackle Shop was just down the road. “I went in there all the time…

…still do, Larry works on my boat, is a great friend and…”

And a fan. Larry has a JTodd’s Elite Jersey signed and hanging in a prominent spot in the store.

Four years ago a young lady, Emily, became a part of the Tucker family, part of my extended family, when she married, JTodd, I was there when they met…

…at this very spot, at the bar at Southern Woods Plantation where JTodd trains dogs for quail hunts in the off season. And this…

…is the photo today of their new, blended family, Emily & JTodd in back, seated left to right, “Big” Landon, his stepbrother, “Little” Landon, and 6-year-old Chase. 

And this year, my friends/family Butch & Tracy celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary, Tracy: “It all started with, ‘Guess who likes you.”

Every year, every tournament it gets harder and harder for me to leave home, especially for extended periods of time, to be honest the one fear I have in life is, with my up and down health issues, I fear dying alone in some hotel room somewhere with only a screaming maid running down the hall.

I leave the house though because of my extended family: The Shorts, Brandon & Tif, James Niggemeyer, The Kennedys, Defoes, Becky & Ike, Robin & Randy, Gerald & LeAnn, KVD, Skeet, John Crews, Rick Clunn, Paul Elias, Shaw Grigsby and scores of other Elite anglers, Tripp and Hank Weldon, Max, Linda, Chuck, Gretchen, Eric, Ben and dozens of other B.A.S.S employees and sponsor workers out here on the road.

I leave the house, because of the notes I get left for me out here like this:

“db, I know I drive you nuts but I Love You like a DAD!” — Emily Tucker

Way down deep, it’s why all of us out here on the road, can leave the house.

We’re family.

“My other family is Fleetwood Mac. I don’t need the money, but there’s an emotional need for me to go on the road again. There’s a love there, we’re a band of brothers.”
Stevie Nicks

Miss ya Barb,

db