When your wife goes into labor, it’s time to leave the water.
Paul Mueller’s thoughts started swirling about 10:30 Thursday morning. He had two small bass in his livewell, and he’d just missed a big bass that blew up on his topwater frog. Then he got a cell phone call from his wife, Kimber, as she was going into labor with their first child.
“Your mindset changes pretty quickly,” said Mueller in a phone conversation just before noon as he was on his way to the Jacksonville airport. “I’m very excited. I’m going to get to see my first-born son. Words can’t describe what I’m feeling right now.”
Suddenly, a missed fish in the Bassmaster Elite at the St. Johns River presented by Dick Cepek Tires & Wheels became unimportant.
Kimber and Paul Mueller live in Naugatuck, Conn. Kimber is in a hospital at Danbury, Conn., about a 40-minute drive from the Westchester County (N.Y.) Airport, where Paul’s airline flight will land this afternoon. The Muellers have known their first child would be a boy and his name will be Waylon Paul. He’ll probably be born before his father arrives at the hospital, but that’s not certain as of now.
“I’m changing my morning rotation,” laughed Mueller about his sudden departure from the St. Johns River. It wasn’t entirely unexpected.
“I knew it was a risk coming down here,” he said. “Kimber’s original due date was in early March.”
The two bass Mueller caught will be weighed-in this afternoon. He doesn’t know if he’ll attempt to get back to Palatka to fish again tomorrow, but that would appear to be unlikely.
“I haven’t even processed that,” he said. “All I’m thinking about is getting there to see my son.”
Mueller expressed thanks to Dave Itner of Yamaha, who arranged Mueller’s flight out of Jacksonville on short notice.
“First I called (B.A.S.S. tournament director) Trip (Weldon),” he said. “Then I called Dave, and he was very helpful. He’d told me to let him know if I needed anything. He earned his money this week.”
If, as it appears likely, Mueller doesn’t make another cast at the St. Johns River this week, he could finish last in this tournament. And the new father would become perhaps the happiest last-place-finisher in bass tournament fishing history.