It’s 4 a.m. at the Lakeside Landing campground in Cropwell on the banks of Logan Martin Lake. While the other campers are deep in sleep, Randy Howell is stretching and doing pushups.

The years of being pounded by the long 70 mph boat rides on the Bassmaster Tournament Trail have taken a toll on the 39-year-old pro fisherman. The years of casting as many as 3,000 times a day have taken a similar toll on the Trussville resident’s casting arm.

Angler Randy Howell, with his catch at Logan Martin Lake

“I have to do my stretching and exercises every morning so I can move around,” Howell explains. “I’ve been on the road fishing for five straight weeks. I’m so sore I can’t hardly move.”

There are plenty who imagine the glamorous life of those who fish professionally for a living. Howell laughs and just shakes his head at the notion.

This is the first day of the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Southern Open on Logan Martin Lake. In little more than an hour, Howell will be in his boat and ready to do battle against more than 180 other professionals. The three-day tournament will award $10,000 and a new $50,000 bass boat to the winner.

Howell does not have a “normal” job with a paycheck direct-deposited into his account on Friday mornings. Getting a paycheck all depends on whether his lure will attract bass that he cannot see. Should he falter, the expenses he has racked up playing this crazy game will be for naught.

Howell has been more successful in professional bass fishing than most. In 21 years, he has accumulated more than $1.4 million in career winnings on the Bassmaster and FLW bass fishing tours. In 1998, he collected $100,000 in one day for winning an FLW Tour event on Wheeler Lake. That would be big money if not for the expenses. Last year, Howell spent $22,000 on gasoline alone chasing the circuit, he says with disdain.

At 4:30 a.m., Howell’s wife, Robin, is up making coffee and packing a lunch for her husband. The couple’s two children, Laker, 11, and Oakley, 7, are asleep in the 38-foot travel trailer that is their home away from home. The couple is on the road more often than not and Robin home-schools the boys.

“It takes me about an hour to get going in the mornings now,” Howell says. “I have to get my coffee and then Robin will drive me down to the ramp and back the boat in the water. I couldn’t do this if it were not for her. This is a family business.”

At 5:20 a.m., Howell finally is in his boat. The tournament begins in 10 minutes. He is known for his last-minute appearances.

“I don’t want to be in the boat early and listening to all that dock talk,” he says. “I don’t want to hear the other fishermen talking about where they’re going to fish and how they are going to fish. I don’t want them asking me how and where I’m going to fish.

“That messes with my mind. I have my game plan and I don’t want to change anything at this point.”

Howell already has taken his 16 fishing rods out of storage and has them strapped down to the boat’s deck in anticipation of the upcoming high-speed run. He was up until 11 p.m. the night before putting new lines on his reels and getting his baits ready. The day is just beginning and already he is tired.

The takeoff at any tournament is nerve-wracking. More than 160 boats wanting to get the jump on others churn the water into a tumultuous path. It makes for rough riding that strains already hurting bodies.

Howell’s ride is a quick one. At 5:45, he glides his boat into a pocket where he had caught several nice bass on a swimming jig in practice. He notices immediately the water level has fallen more than 10 inches overnight. He suspects his game plan for this tournament has become useless even before it began.

After an hour of fishing, he hasn’t gotten a single bite. It’s time for Plan B.

“The bass clear out of shallow areas when the water is dropping,” he explains. “They usually move out to the points in deeper water.”

Howell’s hunch is correct. At 7 a.m., he lands his first fish, a nice 3-pound spotted bass. He then prays for it to stay cloudy for the rest of the day. The bass will stay on the points and hit topwater lures all day if the cloud cover remains, he explains. Over the next 90 minutes, he puts a limit of five fish in the boat.

Unfortunately for Howell, none of the last four bass are as large as the first. He knows if he is to have a chance in this tournament, he must catch bigger fish. He goes back to his original game plan of swimming a jig in shallow water. After a couple of hours with no luck, he decides to change his game plan again. Howell takes a fast 15-mile boat run from the Pell City area to Logan Martin Lake Dam.

There, he flips a jig under a boat dock and immediately catches a 4-pound spotted bass. That bumps his five-fish limit up to about 11 pounds, he guesses. He figures if he can add a couple more 4-pound bass it will put him in the running.

Those fish never come. He finally puts a 3-pound spotted bass in the live well and with that is able to cull his smallest fish, a 1½-pounder. The last fish gives him his final Day One tally of five bass weighing 12 pounds, 14 ounces.

It is not where he wants to be, but it’s good enough for 15th place and he’s still in the running with two days to go.

Howell is exhausted at the weigh-in, but he’s reminded why this is a special day.

“Today’s my anniversary,” he says. “We’ve been married 21 years and 18 of those years we’ve been at a tournament for our anniversary. She is a very understanding wife. She understands that this is the profession we’ve both chosen.

“People that think they want to do this have no idea what is involved. It is an emotional roller coaster,” Howell says. “You have a job where there is no guarantee that you will get a paycheck. It takes having a great wife to make it work.”

Howell eventually finds his way back to the campground and showers and changes clothes. It is almost 8 p.m. when the Howell family heads to a Japanese steak house in Pell City to celebrate 21 years of marriage.

Another day in the life of a professional bass fisherman is about to come to an end.

(On Day Two of the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Southern Open, the exhaustion finally caught up with Howell. His game plan fell apart and he caught just 6 pounds, 2 ounces of bass. His two-day weight was not enough to make the cut into the final round. He finished 86th of 164 anglers. He did not finish high enough to earn a paycheck.)

Update: Our feature angler, Randy Howell, has qualified for the 2014 Bassmaster Classic to be held in Alabama. He became the first Alabamian to qualify for this event, winning the recent Bassmaster Bass Pro Shops Northern Open in Virginia by more than 6 pounds. The win was Howell’s first B.A.S.S. victory since April 2004 when he won on Lake Dardanelle in Arkansas.

Mike Bolton is a freelance writer and contributor to Shorelines magazine.

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