Can He Get There From Here? Spokane Angler Casting For Professional Bass Fishing Career

Most anglers risk little more than a tank of gas and a dozen worms for the chance to catch a fish. Bobby Forster is going for broke.

At age 32, the Spokane angler said he’s willing to tap his savings, sell part of his business and move into a smaller house to finance his dream to become a professional bass fisherman.

The commitment is staggering. Forster was fishing 43 of 109 days this spring and early summer. He immerses himself in bass fishing magazines, studies videos and tests the action of new jigs in his family hot tub.

Last weekend, Forster finished his 14th regional bass tournament of the year. He’s had three wins, pocketing enough money to offset only a few of the staggering expenses involved in tournament fishing.

But the most recent event at Potholes Reservoir was sobering.

“It was ugly,” he said, noting that his six-fish limit totaled only seven pounds compared with the winning catch of 23 pounds.

“You can’t get discouraged,” he said. “There are slumps in every sport.”

That’s the attitude Forster plans to take to Arkansas in September for the first of the season’s Bass Anglers Sportsmen’s Society tournament series.

The step is huge from Spokane to the big leagues of national bass fishing competition, where anglers cast for cash with poker-face seriousness.

The Pacific Northwest is nowhere near the southern bass fishing madness that attracts major sponsorships.

“Several people have said, ‘You can’t get there from here,’ and maybe I can’t,” Forster said. “Maybe I’ll have to move. But this is a start. I need to remain convinced that if I can succeed in these waters, I can succeed in those waters.

“That’s the dream.”

The fantasy of fishing for a living could easily vaporize in the labor of competitition.

When Forster goes to his job at Benefit Managers, Inc., he wakes at 6 a.m. His fishing days start at 3:30 a.m.

While scouting before a recent tournament at Lake Coeur d’Alene, he made cast after cast for nearly eight hours like a well-oiled machine. He stood at the front of his boat, the seat removed because it gets in the way. Glancing frequently at the depth finder, checking water temperatures regularly, he maneuvered the boat along the shoreline by working the electric trolling motor with his foot.

“I pre-fish much like I fish a tournament,” he said. “There’s no time to eat more than a candy bar and drink some juice.”

The only breaks came when Forster plopped behind the boat’s controls. Soon his hair would be streaking back, his cheeks pasted toward his ears. His neck muscles bulged as he braced into the wind created by 225-horsepower revved into a fuel-sucking storm of speed.

Tournament bass anglers don’t talk when rocketing from one spot to another for fear of choking on their words.

“The boat goes about 65 mph,” Forster said in the thick quiet after killing the engine. “I’ve burned 40 gallons of gas in a day searching for fish.”

The chatter dried up again as he explored the water with a 6-inch plastic worm.

“I try to concentrate and constantly evaluate,” he said.

He worked the shoreline and the points off the lily pads. He flipped into brush piles and under logs.

Six rods, rigged with various lures, where laying on the deck. He switched tackle combinations with the regularity of an artist dabbing different colors on canvas.

Nearly two hours passed before he jerked his rod back with enough force to uproot an oak. A two-pound bass was yanked to the surface and dragged on plane to the edge of the boat.

Two blinks of the eye and you’d have missed the entire fight.

“They say fish will hold onto a worm longer if it’s scented,” he said. “I don’t usually give them the opportunity.”

The bass was released with little fanfare.

“I love to see the strike,” he said. “But I’ve only kept a few bass in my life. I don’t even like to eat fish.”

Few anglers are attracted to professional fishing by a taste for fillets.

“You have to have an appetite for the business side of fishing,” Forster said, noting that success as a pro angler hinges on two factors.

“First, you need confidence that you can compete on any given body of water.

“Then you need sponsorship. If you want to take the next step from the local club tournaments, you have to get into the business.”

Winning isn’t the only criteria sponsors seek. Forster won’t have any major wins when stalks sponsors this fall at fishing shows and at BASS invitational tournaments in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas. But he has a TV face and a radio-quality voice.

“Sponsors like a people-person with good presentation skills,” he said. “They want someone who can promote their products.”

Once an angler bags some sponsors, he still has to hustle speaking dates and seminars.

“To think you can cover your expenses with winnings wouldn’t be realistic,” he said.

Forster was hooked on fishing as a kid growing up on Silver Lake. “I fished all the time,” he said. “Dad bought me a cheap aluminum boat when I was 12. I put carpet in it and joined a bass club.”

Before he was out of high school, Forster had defeated veteran anglers at local bass tournaments.

“Dad helped me buy a bigger boat,” he said. “I fished four or five days a week. He’d drive me out to Newman Lake and help me launch my boat. Then he’d come back later and pick me up.”

Forster has an album with photos and clippings that document his early fishing prowess. There’s a photo of the 9-pound, 9-ounce largemouth he caught on a six-inch plastic worm at Long Lake when he was 16. “I’ve never topped that fish,” he said.

Now that he’s into the business, he talks of mental preparation and focus as though he were staging for the Olympic decathlon.

He speaks of strategy, percentages and possibilities like a major league baseball commentator analyzing a manager’s next move.

In a few hours, he produced a stringer of pro fishing ideology:

“Execute well, you get paid. Mess up, you don’t get paid.”

“Cocky fishermen always get humbled.”

“There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance.”

“One fish doesn’t make a pattern. You have to keep experimenting.”

Forster says he thinks he has what it takes to succeed in a career that pits anglers and high-tech gear against a bucket-mouthed fish with a reputation for fickleness.

“Some guys have been on the BASS tournament trail for years without winning a tournament,” he said. “But they have paying sponsors because they’re good communicators.

“I love talking fishing almost as much as fishing itself, especially when the bass aren’t biting.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PRO-BASSER EXPENSES Here’s a sampling of the expenses a professional bass fisherman incurs: Boat, motor, trailer: $20,000. Electronics, including Global Positioning System and sonar units for front and rear of boat: $1,800. Electric trolling motor: $550. 10 top-grade reels: $1,700. 10 rods: $900. Tackle: $1,500 Entry fees: $600 for each of four BASS Trail tournaments, plus dozens of preliminary events. Total: more than $3,000. Travel and lodging: up to $20,000, which doesn’t include about $25,000 for a vehicle to tow the boat.