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Norman,
OK - In the course of 11 Elite Series tournaments, simple math dictates that there are 132 top twelve spots for the taking. With just over a hundred pros fishing the circuit, an angler might expect to make at least one Sunday cut each year, but it usually doesn’t work out that way.
Because of the Faircloths, VanDams and Edwin Evers on tour, who locked up six, five and five Sunday appearances, respectively, that leaves slim pickings for the rest of the field. Indeed, of the 132 top twelves available, 17 anglers accounted for 63 of those final day slots.
Forty one of the 109 pros who started the year never fished for cash on the Sunday of an Elite Series tournament in 2008. While it’s possible to make the Classic through the Elites without fishing on Sunday, of all the anglers who have already qualified through the Elites for the ’09 event on the Red River, Boyd Duckett is the only one who did not make a top twelve cut. Simply put, a Sunday showing is a critical milestone in an angler’s career, and not one to be taken lightly or for granted.
In 2008, third year anglers Kevin Langill and Kurt Dove both made their first top twelve Elite Series cut, and each of them was anxious to talk about the positive effect that it had on their career.
Langill Was Ready to Leave it Behind
For North Carolina pro Kevin Langill, it looked like the season-ending tournament on Oneida might be his last as a full-time pro for a while.
“Going into it, I was thinking ‘This is it,” he said. “I had great expectations for Erie and it didn’t work out, so I told my wife that if I didn’t make a top ten at Oneida I was going to put this career on hold.”
It’s not like he hadn’t had his chances before. He’d led an event for a day, and had twin 17th place finishes, albeit two years apart.
“It’s just really tough when it comes down to ounces,” he said. “It’s especially tough to deal with at the time. You’ve caught all this weight and it’s not enough. It’s really just incredible the level of competition that’s out there. Everything has to work out just perfect to do well.”
His 17th place finish at the 2008 event at Old Hickory was particularly disappointing – he felt he was done in by an odd set of circumstances and tough regulatory restrictions. “I found some offshore structure and the first day I caught 15 pounds of largemouths there. But the second day, the smallmouths ran the largemouths off. There’s an 18-inch size limit there. I caught a three pounder on my first cast and had to let it go. I stayed on that spot another hour but couldn’t catch one (big enough to keep).”
At Oneida, while many speculated it would take largemouths to do well (indeed, Dean Rojas won the tournament on green fish), Langill used some Lake Norman lipless crankbait experience to bring in three consecutive limits of smallmouth and finish second overall, good for a shot in the arm to his career and his bankbook, to the tune of $30,000.
“I wasn’t living check to check,” he said. “I had saved my money for eight years. But it’s nice to get that money, too. I haven’t had much financial support. When you start out, the companies only want to give you product and I can’t feed my son with crankbaits.”
The exposure has helped in his efforts to land new sponsors, like Power Pole, and a variety of deals that he’s still working on. Additionally, it has cemented his status with existing sponsors. “Hunter Cole from Mann’s keeps calling me every time it’s on (TV),” Langill said. “They’ve been replaying it a lot and he’ll call at 1 o’clock in the morning and leave a message on my answering machine. I can’t figure out what he’s doing up at 1 am watching.”
While he was close to going back to his “previous life,” Langill is happy that he made a major leap at year’s end. “It all just takes time. You can just jump in and expect to be Derek Remitz. There’s a lot you have to overcome. I feel like I’m going to win a tournament this year.”
Dove Takes on Del Rio
While Langill’s highest Elite Series finish to date came as he clung to his professional lifeline, Kurt Dove’s TV moment happened in the fourth event of the year at Amistad, where he led for a day and finished out the tournament in 11th place overall.
Whereas Langill had previously finished inside the top twenty twice in Elite Series competition prior to Oneida, Dove’s best Elite finish prior to Amistad was a 23rd at Clarks Hill in 2006.
“There were two or three different ones where I felt I should have made it (into the top twelve),” he said. “In each case, something didn’t quite click.”
Perhaps his biggest disappointment was the 2007 event on Smith Mountain Lake in his home state of Virginia, where he had located the fish to make the cut, but didn’t execute.
“I was bed fishing in that tournament,” he remembered. “I found a male and a female together on a bed. I caught the male the first day and left the female, which was a four or five pounder. I went back the second day and it was there. I was using fluorocarbon line in six or seven feet of water and I was just leaving the lizard there (and backing away). When she finally ate it after about four minutes, the first three feet of the hook set I was just hauling line. I got complacent and never wound down on it, but it’s not like she nosed down. And it cost me another good fish because I had to use up another bed fish that day when I couldn’t catch it.”
At Del Rio, he felt he was on the fish to win, and rather than pursuing a finite number of bed fish, he was running a pattern that he could expand each day.
“The last day of practice I found the pattern. I shook off three giants and there were three that just wouldn’t let it go. The first day of the tournament, the third point I hit I caught an eight pounder and I worked up to my best five ever, 30 ½ pounds. At the end of the day I saw Bernie Schultz and I asked what he had. He said 18 or 20 pounds. Then he asked what I had and I said I thought around 25. But the difference between all fives and all sixes is 25 versus 30 pounds. I had 28 and change at Clear Lake, so when they I got to the bump board I had a pretty good idea of what I had.”
Then he got up on stage and learned that he was leading the tournament. It was an emotional moment. “Even talking about it now, it comes back, that tingly feeling, realizing that I can catch them with the best of them.”
While he enjoyed the substantial TV time that his good tournament afforded him, Dove felt that some of his comments on the air may have been taken out of context. He feels he might have unfairly been categorized as a “check chaser.”
“My intent there was not chasing a check, but they played a portion of a conversation with my co-angler on the second day of the tournament,” he said. “I was saying that I needed to get some quality bites to keep me out deep. Maybe other guys who are more financially stable, they can fish out deep all day and see what happens, but I needed to complete my five fish limit. The bottom line is that I was trying to win the tournament, but if that’s not working, at a certain point I needed to shift gears. At 12 o’clock, with two fish in the livewell and a 3pm weigh-in, I scrambled to catch my 14 ½ pounds. It worked out for me – I stayed in the top twelve cut which meant on the third day I could go out deep for a big bag again.”
Short term, the high finish earned Dove some sponsor bonuses, but he doesn’t know if the exposure and success translated into anything meaningful over a longer horizon. But it did help him to realize how much he has progressed as an angler.
“it takes a lot of us three, four, five or six years to get to the point where we can make top twelves on a consistent basis. Look at a guy like Jeff Kriet who took a few years for it to all click. There are probably four to five levels of anglers. At the top, there’s VanDam, Mike McClelland, Ike, the guys who pound them every time. And then there are guys who are still working to get up to the next level. Not everyone can be the New England Patriots, but there are a lot of good teams out there.”
“I know I belong there, I know I can catch them,” Dove concluded. “It makes you thirstier to make another cut. You feel that gratification, but you need to keep striving to make it more consistent.”
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