Show Notes

• Growing up in Arkansas
• Childhood dream of turning pro
• Youngest plant manager at Tyson Foods
• The big leap
• Life on the Major League Fishing pro circuit
• Income streams for professional anglers
• Tournament strategy
• The role of faith in Greg’s life

Connect With Greg Bohannan

Website – https://gregbohannan.com/  
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/gregbohannanfishing/ 
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/greg.bohannanfishing

Summary

Greg Bohannan’s dream from the age of 10 was to be a full-time professional fisherman. Greg shares how he worked hard to make his dream come true, what life is like on the pro fishing circuit, and why Pringles is his favorite potato chip!

Full Transcript

Brian:

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques, and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

There were three things that Greg Bohannan’s life revolved around growing up on the farm in northwest Arkansas—hard work, athletics, and the great outdoors. Greg’s father taught him at a very young age that the only way you can get what you want out of life is to work hard and to be dedicated to what you’ve committed yourself to doing. Greg has upheld these values throughout his life. Although he excelled in high school, and in both football and baseball, and was an all-conference defensive lineman in college, Greg’s true dream from the age of ten was to be a full-time professional fishermen. Greg joined Tyson foods after graduating from college and became the company’s youngest plant manager at the age of 28, with 500 employees and a multi-million dollar budget. He was with Tyson 13 years until in February 2006 Greg left his job to pursue his true dream and  ultimate goal of becoming a full-time professional fisherman. Today, Greg is a regular on the Fishing League Worldwide (FLW) pro circuit. He has 21 top ten finishes, is an 11 time Toyota Championship qualifier and has been Toyota Angler of the Year twice. Greg’s success on the tour has enabled him to secure sponsorships from well-known products like Pringles. Today’s episode of Life Excellence is sponsored by—you guessed it —Pringles. Whether you’re fishing or podcasting, every crisp is your favorite crisp when they’re Pringles. Welcome Greg, and thanks so much for joining me on Life Excellence.

Greg:

I thank you, Brian. I appreciate you having me on. That’s an awesome entry and I love the Pringles on there. That’s cool.

Brian:

I knew you’d like it and wanted to make sure we got off to a great start. Greg, tell us about growing up in Arkansas. What was it like on the farm and how did that shape the person you are today?

Greg:

Growing up on a farm probably had a lot to do with the values that I have today. My dad always instilled in us we need to work first and then play. And so we started doing that at a young age. I used to have to work in the chicken house, I had to work with the cows. My dad always had time for sports though. So we’d get our work done and we practiced baseball a lot and football a lot. I think farming teaches you a lot of values about life, just hard work—you get out of it what you put into it. And so farming was a really good basis for me growing up.

Brian:

You fished your whole life obviously, but fishing at the end of the work day or on a weekend is very different than fishing professionally. What was it about fishing that caused you to want to turn pro and what steps did you have to take to make that dream a reality?

Greg:

Brian, probably, when I was about ten years old, I remember coming in from church and watching Bassmasters on TV. And if you’ve ever watched the Bassmaster show, the music comes on and the tournament comes on. So probably from the time I was ten years old, I knew I wanted to be a professional fishermen. I just absolutely love the competition. I love being outdoors. I’m a lucky one. Not everybody knows what they want to do in life. I knew from probably ten years old, I want to be a professional fishermen. And so I didn’t know really how I was going to do it. I knew I wanted to do something different in life and nobody in my family had ever really been to college. And so I knew that at some point I needed to get to college, get a degree, get a good career started, save some money up. And I knew at some point in my life, I was going to be a professional fishermen. And I was able to do that—went on to college and got an Ag business degree, went to work for Tyson, like what you had mentioned. And I was always fishing all the time. Every chance I got, I fished—whether it would be a creek or a pond or anything. I think that there’s no substitute for experience in fishing. So I tried to do all I could and fortunately when I met my wife we talked about a game plan for me to go pro. She went through school and finished up and when she got out of out of school, that was our plan for me to try to qualify. And so in 2007, I actually qualified for—back then it was the FLW tour. And so I made a career choice to leave my job with Tyson Foods and pursue a career as a full-time touring pro. Once I made the tour and qualified for the tour we took off and fortunately we’ve been blessed and very fortunate. Those first three or four years really went well and I picked up some sponsors. That was 13 or 14 years ago, so I’ve been doing it for a while now.

Brian:

That’s a big leap. I mean, it’s one thing to have that dream when you’re ten years old. And I think a lot of people have aspirations, whether they’re ten or, or maybe when they’re 20 or even 30, but it’s quite another to make that leap and actually do something like that vocationally. And I think especially something—and not to single out fishing, maybe an artist might have that same challenge where it’s something that they love, it’s something that they enjoy doing, it’s something that they want to do vocationally. It’s something that certainly people are doing, but it’s not easy to do. It’s not as easy as going into business or going into manufacturing or accounting or some of these sort of normal professions, if you will, that people pursue after they graduate from college. So how did you bridge that gap? Talk a little bit more about that.

Greg:

Somebody told me one time—and I kind of got offended—I told them I was going to leave my job with what I was doing, and they said, you need to go do that and get that out of your system. And to me, that was kind of offensive because I didn’t have a plan past that. I knew that’s what I was going to do and I was going to figure out how to get it done. But I think anytime you want to do something, one-on-one, you got to have a plan and you got to prepare for it. You got to know that there are going to be some setbacks along the way. But you have to work that plan. And I did it by…my wife helped me. We had to prepare financially for it. We saved some money for it. But I also had to get out there and be on the water a bunch. I started competing locally, in local tournaments, and having a lot of success in local tournaments. And then I moved up to the regional events, so what we call the BFL (Bass Fishing League) events. I fished a couple of seasons on the BFL, had some success in that, and that qualified me for what’s called a Toyota level now. You qualify for the tour out of the Toyota level. And so I went into that Toyota level in 2007, actually won the points in that in 2007. So right then that gave me confidence. I’m fishing at the AAA level. [It was] one of the points that gave me a lot of self-confidence, hey, I can do this. I know there’s going to be a lot of work here, but I can do this. I can compete against the best in the world. And so we took that leap of faith. I just think you have to continually work at the craft. I’m not where I want to be yet in this sport. And so every day you have to be working toward making that craft better, the whole ball game from the fishing side of it, to the sponsorship side of it.

Brian:

You obviously had strong support from your wife, probably support from others around you. You didn’t have children yet, so that wasn’t an issue, but still…you had a pretty good gig at Tyson, you were plant manager, you were the youngest plant manager of the company. So you had enjoyed economic success on some level. You had the success of being a manager and everything that you pursued with your agribusiness degree, and you decided to trade that all in for fishing. And sometimes when spouses share dreams like that, they don’t get the level of support that you did from your wife. Talk about, and share how essential that is, how it helped you, not just when you left Tyson, but how it’s helped you all along.

Greg:

She said something to me early on when we were talking about it and preparing for it. She said, no matter what you do, be sure you give it three years. She was scared I might get out there and get frustrated. She said, no matter what you do, give it three years. She knew how passionate I was about it. She knew the success I was having locally on it. She really encouraged me that you’ve got some really good outdoor skills and you’re highly competitive—you can do this. She really pushed me to do it. If you don’t have that backing going into something like that…I don’t know how some guys do it. So I was very fortunate, and like I said, the first three years were really good. I think we won over six figures the first three years, each year. And so that really bridged the gap to really get us going. But without family support…my son was born in 2009, my second or third year on tour, so he’s grown up with it the whole time. And they’re just both super supportive. They come to a lot of the tournaments and they understand the sacrifice of having to be gone. But then when I’m home though, I really want to be home with them. I spend really good quality time with them when I’m off the road. And so family backing is huge in the sport of fishing and especially professional fishing. I couldn’t have made that jump or made that leap without Holly’s support.

Brian:

That’s great that you have that support. It’s also great that you had that success in the first couple of years, that makes it a lot easier. But for her to have told you to give it three years, I think that’s, again, maybe that happens but I’m guessing there are certain cases where the pressure is on to really make that work a lot faster than three years. So it sounds like things worked out the way they were meant to. Greg, when I have guests on the show, I’m always curious about their schedule and the practical aspects of what they do. What does that look like for you generally speaking, and then tell us about your routine leading up to and competing in tournaments?

Greg:

Well first of all, I fish the Major League Fishing (MLF) pro circuit. Each one of our events—we have 165 pros, and we travel all over the country. We normally start in January. We normally have either six or seven regular season events and then a championship at the end of the season. I also fish the Toyota series, there are usually three events on the Toyota series and a championship at the end of that season. So you have 12 to 14 events a year. And so what my schedule is, I’ll leave for a tournament. We have a 30 day off-limits period where we can’t talk to anybody, we can’t get any information from anyone. Then we show up at the lake. We have two official practice days. We’ll be on the water, daylight to dark. We have an off day and we work on our equipment. Sometimes we do stuff with sponsors. And then we fish two days, all 165 guys fish two days, they make a cut to the top 50. After the top 50, then they cut to the top ten. And so they are a four day event, you hope to be there all four days. And so when I leave home, I usually leave on a Thursday or a Friday. And what I do, I have two Walmart appearances, retail appearances that I do with the Pringles boat and truck. And so I set up on the front steps of Walmart, set a little tent up, and I give away Pringles product to people walking into Walmart on a Friday and a Saturday. I do two per event. And so that’s really fun. I get to interact with the fans, I get to interact with people at Walmart. So I do those two appearances. I normally have a speaking engagement on Sunday night at a church. We have a group of us. There’s like seven of us. Blake Smith is our pastor on tour and he puts together what we call Meet the Pros, which is really cool. So we have Walmart appearances on Friday and Saturday, speaking to church on Sunday evening—it’s really fun. Sometimes we’ll have 500 people, sometimes we’ll have ten people. Sometimes we have 2,000 people at Meet the Pros. So it’s just really cool to interact with people all over the country and share our testimony and share some fishing tips. And then if we go to work, the next day, Monday and Tuesday are work days, practice days. Then like I said, the off day and then the tournament day. So you’re looking at about a 12 day event from the time I leave home, to by the time I get back. All of our events pay $125,000 1st place, and we get $10,000 through 60th place and then $5,000 through 75th place. You hope to always be in that top 50 to get that $10,000 check, at least that makes for a good event. So that’s my schedule and kind of what we do in a nutshell.

Brian:

So you’ve been very fortunate to not only do what you love, but also make that work economically. Now from our conversations, I know you have at least a couple of income streams and what you talked about right before this question was a nice segue into it because prize money from tournaments is obviously part of the way you earn income, and also sponsorships. But let’s stay on the tournaments for a minute. And I should probably know this, but please excuse my naivety. How do you win a fishing tournament? So I was talking with my producer before the show and he wasn’t sure either. Is it the biggest fish or the most fish, or what does that look like? And you talked about the $125,000 and all the places down to 60th place, but how do you end up in first or how do you end up in the top ten?

Greg:

That’s a good question. First of all, we’re all bass tournaments. And so we can weigh in a large mouth bass, a small mouth bass, or a spotted bass—three series of bass that we can weigh in. We weigh in with a five fish limit. So each day when we go out, our goal is to catch our five biggest. Once we get to our limit, then we can throw out the smallest one, what we call culling—throw out the smallest one, replace it with a bigger one. And so our tournaments are cumulative weight tournaments:  five fish each day on the heaviest weight. And so whoever wins that event is probably going to catch a limit each day, and their limit’s going to outweigh everybody else for that week. So five bass limit, that’s a big deal.

Brian:

So the biggest fish doesn’t really matter other than bragging rights that evening?

Greg:

We do pay a big bass every day. So the biggest bass of each day, I think, wins 500 bucks or something. So there is a big bass prize, but what you’re really after is catching numerous big bass each event. So you’ll want to five heavy ones each day.

Brian:

That makes sense. And then I know too that you’ve had a long standing relationship with Kellogg’s, first with the Pop Tarts brand and now obviously with—I’ll just hold it up again—with Pringles. I’m not as familiar with some of your other sponsors, Greg, maybe lures or bass boats. And you can talk about that, but you seem to have garnered some pretty good attention from sponsors. Tell us more about that side of the business.

Greg:

Well that side is the business side. I’ve seen a lot of guys have a lot of fishing success and not have success on the sponsorship side. And it really takes both. This is my fourth year representing Pringles, and they’ve been an absolute awesome group to represent and really involved with what I’m doing. And so from the business side of it, you got to have the sponsors to make it work. You’re not going to win…you’re going to have some years that you don’t win much. I mean, that’s just the nature of the game. You hope to go out there and win over six figures every year, but reality doesn’t happen that way. We’ve got to have those sponsors and you’ve really got to work for those sponsors because you have to represent and sell their product. That’s the name of the game. I’m sponsored by Strike King and Lew’s from the equipment side of things—rods and reels and baits. My main thing is I want to sell them a bunch of baits. And so we all have a pretty good social media following. We do a lot on social media every day, almost. And so we try to represent those sponsors and encourage people to buy that product. And so I do that, and like I said, Pringles is my title sponsor and we’ve done some fun things this year. So if you go to my Instagram, which I started a couple of years ago, it’s growing a little bit. I’ve got a pretty good Facebook following, we’ve got close 25,000 people on there. So we’re giving something away every month. If you take a picture of your Pringles while you’re fishing and hashtag #neverfishhungry, then I’m giving something away every month. This month I’m giving away a $300 Lew’s reel and some of these cool Pringles fishing t-shirts. And so we started that a few months ago and it’s been very well received and we’re learning how many people are actually taking Pringles fishing with them. So that’s the fun part for me.

Brian:

I was wondering how you got so many people to post pictures on your Instagram account fishing with Pringles and that explains it. So thanks for solving that mystery. I thought that was really cool. At first, I thought that they were relatives of yours or maybe it was your son, and I’m like, wait a minute, there are different people every single day. So that explains it. You also have a guide business. I don’t know how that fits into the overall picture, but I guess that makes at least three income streams. Tell me, in addition to hopefully catching a few fish if we go down to Beaver Lake, what would someone learn fishing with Greg Bohannan?

Greg:

I hope they learn just a little bit about the sport in general. I love to be an ambassador of the sport and I love the sport. My life has revolved around it for a long time. And so I want people to enjoy fishing. I have never had one person in my boat that caught a fish that didn’t like it, ever. I’ve never had someone reel in a fish and say, man, I hated that—never happened. So it’s fun because everybody’s got a fishing story. Brian, you told me you haven’t fished much, but you have been fishing. So everybody’s got a fishing story and they like to share it with you. When someone gets on my boat, I want them to have a good time. I want them to enjoy the outdoors. I want them to know that we fishermen are very good stewards of the environment. I want to be sure we’re taking care of the environment, taking care of the fish. All of our fish in tournaments, we weigh them in alive. We get penalized if they’re not alive. And so we work really hard on taking care of that resource. So if someone says to me I want to have a good time, I want to catch some fish, I want them to really respect the resource and enjoy the outdoors.

Brian:

If somebody fishes with you, do they get to take a picture of the fish they catch before they throw it back?

Greg:

They do.

Brian:

I was going to say, I’ll share with you a bad guide story. And I told you, and it’s a little embarrassing that I don’t fish. Let’s just say I don’t fish nearly as much as you do. We have four children. And each of our children has caught at least one fish. I wanted to make sure they had that experience. But my youngest son, we went out—and this is actually a friend of mine…this isn’t recorded, is it—hopefully not…but went out with a friend of mine who is a guide. And we were fly fishing for salmon, saw a lot of fish, didn’t catch any. And then my son caught one fish. And you can imagine how exciting, well you know how excited you get when you catch a fish, whether you’re ten years old or 80 years old, you get excited when you have a fish on the line and reel it in. And so he pulls this fish in, and my friend, the guide, took the fish off the hook and released it before we could even get a picture. I’m sure you never do that. Please don’t ever do that.

Greg:

I would never do that. I love to get the picture of the kids, the boat. The one that we like to hold up is the bass and the Pringles at the same time. So I don’t [cross talk]

Brian:

Oh, perfect. Well then you can get entered in the drawing.

Greg:

That’s right, then you get entered into the drawing.

Brian:

Greg, you grew up on Beaver Lake. We’ve mentioned that lake a couple times, and I know there are pro events on your home lake. Is there such a thing as home lake advantage? And how does that work if there is—do you know where all the fish are in Beaver Lake?

Greg:

When it comes to big tournaments, we haven’t been back here in a while. The MLF hasn’t been back here in a few years, but we did fish several events on Beaver. And I almost…I don’t like to fish a tournament on my home waters. When you put 165 guys on a lake that you’re used to fishing a bunch, it really crowds it up. And what you get into is trying to fish off of memory, where you’ve caught fish in the past. And it distracts you from trying to figure out what the fish are doing today. And so my track record on my home waters of Beaver’s not near as good as it is like at Okeechobee in south Florida. I have a very good track record there. And so sometimes you tend to fall back into habits instead of…really the main thing about really being successful fishing is trying to figure out each day what those fish are doing. Because they change a lot each day and sometimes fishing your home waters you’re not quite as in tune as you should be.

Brian:

That’s interesting. So maybe it’s a home lake disadvantage.

Greg:

I think it is.

Brian:

Share a little bit about that last point though, share more about this notion, maybe get into strategy. So what is it? How do you approach it? You have a tournament coming up in the next couple of weeks, how do you approach that leading up to it from a strategy standpoint, and then as you go through, you mentioned a couple practice days, and then you get into the actual tournament. What does that look like? What are the things that you’re doing? What are you paying attention to? How are you trying to position yourself to have success in the tournament?

Greg:

A great question. We get asked that a lot. We fish so many different bodies of water. We get asked, man, how do you figure out the fish from south Florida to New York? I just came from New York a couple of weeks ago. My routine is, when I’ve got an event coming up on a lake, I’ll be able to research the internet for anything that’s public knowledge. And so what I try to do is research the internet, find out the target weights that I need to be targeting. Each lake’s a little bit different on what a good stringer is. On one lake, 12 pounds may be good, but if you go to south Florida, you’re going to be in the hundreds of pounds. So I want to establish what is my target weight for the tournament in order to make the cut and to get a check. And then I want to see what type of lake is it? Is it a Beaver Lake that’s a deep, clear impoundment, approximately 20 feet deep, or is it the Mississippi River where I can see two feet deep? You want to establish does it have vegetation, is it more rock predominant? Then as you go to pack that boat, those baits are going to be different for that type of water. And  once I get there, prior to leading to an event, I really study the weather. Is it going to be raining? Is it going to be hot? Is the water rising or is the water falling, because the fish act different in both of those. What time of season is it? Is it in the spring when the fish are starting to spawn and starting to reproduce? Or is it in the summertime when they’re out a little bit deeper, out around the thermocline? Or is it the fall when they’re more focused on chasing bait? And so the time of the year really determines how you’re going to attack that lake. And so you take all those factors—and we’re kind of quasi-meteorologists, I guess—we take all those factors and try to put them in the database and try to come up with a game plan when you go to attack that lake. And so it’s really like…I describe it as putting the puzzle together. There’s a whole bunch of pieces out here and whoever puts that puzzle together first is going to figure it out the fish and is going to win the event. A lot of times that changes. I might have practice days…like today in Arkansas, it’s 110 degrees, no wind. So you might practice a day like that and you might show up at the tournament the next day and it may be thunderstorming and raining and cool. Well, those fish are going to act totally different in those two days. So sometimes your practice days, you have to be real careful, don’t let your practice days lead you astray and get so locked in to what the fish are doing on practice day, that you miss them on tournament day. And so there’s a lot of decisions and a lot of game playing goes into it.

Brian:

And so how are you altering your strategy based on all those dynamics that you talked about:  the weather, whether it’s spawning season, whether the lake’s rising or falling. Why does that matter? And how does your approach change because of the weather?

Greg:

Say, it’s the springtime tournament. I know those fish are going to be in that one to five foot range, those fish are going to be shallow. They’re going to be fairly aggressive. Whereas if I go today on top of lake, those fish are probably going to be a little bit lethargic. I need to throw a reaction bait. In the spring, if I get a cloudy day, I can reel really fast, cover a lot of water versus when the fish is a little more lethargic and not wanting to eat, and I’ve got to slow down, what we call force-feeding it. I’ve got to slow down and throw a real slow bait. So each day your bait choice is going to be different. And then when you get into bait choices, then you have line size that affects how that bait works in the water. There’s a scientific way on how you learn all that—basically through experience. My college football coach said, there’s no substitute for speed in football. Well, there’s no substitute for experience in fishing. The more times you go, the more you learn how that fish reacts to this weather, the more accurate you’re able to change—change baits, change tactics, and keep up with the fish. Experience is key.

Brian:

And so experience obviously separates the guys who go out on the weekend and fish, or maybe in the morning before work, and guys who are doing that professionally. What else separates those two groups?

Greg:

About everybody on tour can probably cast about the same, everybody has a lot of the same mechanics. I want to take a bait and pitch it in a little bitty tight area. Most of us have that. A lot of the best in the world have a mental capacity to change on the fly and read the water really quick and put that puzzle together really quick. Some guys are quicker at putting that puzzle together than others. And I say that mental aspect of it is what really separates the cream of the crop in our sport.

Brian:

And so the reason that matters is because of the overall weight, because it’s a little bit of a speed game, right? In terms of catching fish, you want to catch as many as you can and get that weighed up. And hopefully you get the heavy ones, but if not, you want to throw the line back in the water and catch another one so that it can be heavier than the fifth heaviest fish, I guess, that you have in the boat.

Greg:

That’s correct. It comes down to efficiency. We have an eight hour day or nine hour day, normally, depending on the tournament schedule. So it comes down to being really efficient. I don’t want to waste any time on my boat having to change baits. And so the night before the tournament I’m going to lay all my rods out. I’m going to put new line on, new hooks on, I’m going to try to lay every bait out for every scenario that I think I might have the next day. I want to have a rod, a reel, and a bait for that situation. Therefore I’m not changing, having to cut baits off, re-tie. I want to be super efficient and not waste any casting time during the day. I think efficiency is really big in our sport.

Brian:

And are you fishing with just one rod or do you have multiple rods that are in the water, multiple lines in the water?

Greg:

We can only fish with one rod at a time. We can have multiple rods. There’s no limit to the amount of rods you can have on your deck or in your rod box. A lot of times I may have 20 rigged up, ready to go.

Brian:

I was thinking the other day, I was watching a baseball game and I was thinking about major league baseball players, and the length of the season. I think they play something like 162 games that start in March or April, I guess, and goes through October if they end up going all the way. And the thought that I was having, Greg, I was wondering how they feel about baseball, standing at Yankee stadium or wherever they are, compared to how they felt when they were 9, 10, 11 years old, playing little league, aspiring to make it to the big league. And in preparing for this show, I had the same thought. How is fishing different for you now that you’ve been fishing professionally for years compared to how you felt about fishing when you were ten years old and wanted to do that for the rest of your life?

Greg:

It’s funny, even when I go fishing for fun now, I’m still, absolutely, I’m a fishermen at heart, and I love to feel that little tap on the line. I still get that little flutter in my heart when I feel that bite. Even today, and I’ve caught thousands and thousands of fish, and I still get little butterflies in my stomach before the tournament. I’m usually keyed up and ready to go. I don’t—when I was playing college football, I threw up before every game. [Laughter]. Fortunately, I did not start that with fishing. I get the butterflies, I still do a little bit…but it’s more of excitement and just ready to go. But I’m a fisherman at heart. I love to catch fish. I love to take my son, or take kids, and get them involved in the sport. So I still have that…I guess, fishermen, you never really lose that little kid in you. You’re always wanting to go and you’re always wanting to get that next bite. My wife, when she goes with me, she says, you say “last cast” 50 times before we leave. And I’m still that way.

Brian:

Til it’s pitch black and you need to get the light out to get back to the shore, right?

Greg:

That’s right.

Brian:

That’s awesome.

Greg:

I was going to say, I think sports has been a big background for me. My dad was a baseball player, he played in high school and had some college scholarships and he instilled in me a really competitive nature. I think you’ve got to be a competitor in this sport. And I took—from playing high school baseball and football, and then college football, baseball—that whole competitive side to the fishing world. I was fortunate that my dad really instilled in me at a young age to be a competitor, never give up. And my mom, on the other hand, is just always level-headed and always positive. You got to be pretty positive sometimes, when you lose a big old fish, they cost you $10,000. You got to stay positive. So a good combination between my mom and dad, but my mom was the positive person and always finds good. My dad is a competitor, so I had some good parents growing up.

Brian:

I’m guessing that competitive nature goes through the professional fishing world, that the top fishermen are all very competitive. Do you find that that background in athletics contributes to that? Or what commonalities do you see in professional fishermen?

Greg:

I see a lot of people that played high school sports, college sports, motor-cross. You just see a lot of guys out there that have some type of competitive background. You don’t see too many of them that didn’t play some kind of sports growing up, that didn’t compete. I know sometimes we get together, some guys are hanging out, they’ll play some [inaudible] or they’ll play some ping pong. It’s…you’d think this is the world series of it going on—that competitive out there—nobody wants to lose.

Brian:

You see that in other sports too, when you read about Michael Jordan or Phil Mickelson, guys like that, they’re very competitive, not just in their chosen sport or chosen vocation, but they tend to be competitive in pretty much everything they do. Greg, you have a section—and we’ll wrap up with this—you have a section on your website where you share your faith journey. Our listeners and viewers can go in and read your testimony on your website, but you obviously believe that God put you on this path of fishing professionally. I think it’s kind of ironic that the 12 disciples were fishermen and that you have such a strong faith. Tell us about the role that God plays in your personal and professional life, because it seems like you’ve responded not only to His call for you to fish professionally, but also based on some of the things that you talked about earlier in the show, to the call to become fishers of men or a fisher of men.

Greg:

I really do. I think God gave me some outdoor skills so I could be right here, in this sport and share His word or share my testimony out there to people. I’m definitely not a preacher, but I can share with people that what God’s done in my life. I just think He gives us…the Bible’s kind of—I’ve always been a sports guy as we’re talking about—you always got to have a game plan. And I can’t imagine not knowing Jesus—you don’t have a game plan. And so me being a Christian has really given me a game plan in life. I try to base my decisions on Him. And I think it’s important to have God in your marriage and how we treat our kids and everything else. And it just gives you a good basis of a game plan for life. And He’s really blessed me. When I turned professional, probably in 2008, I got saved a few years before that. And if you’d have told me that I’d be out on the road, sharing my testimony and standing up in front of a couple thousand people sometimes and speaking about that, I’d have told you you were crazy. But He sure has kept me out here and He lets me catch a few bass where I can, or I can share His word. And He just really, really blessed my whole life all the way around.

Brian:

That’s awesome. Greg, I applaud you on your success and I appreciate your being on the show. I hope I can get down there to Beaver Lake sometime, or we can catch some bass and eat some Pringles and get to know each other a little better.

Greg:

Well, I appreciate you having me on it. It’s been fun. And I promise if you come down and catch one, we’ll take a picture of it—I promise.

Brian:

I’ll hold you to that. I can’t wait.

Greg:

Thank you, Brian.

Brian:

Thank you. Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.