Dollar Bill for Your Thoughts
Posted by Pete Robbins on Mar 24th 2021
For me, the best part of Bill Lowen’s win at Pickwick wasn’t that he “does things the right way” or that he “paid his dues.” Both of those things are probably true, but the fish gods don’t care. Deserve has nothing to do with it.
No, what I really liked is that after catching the 8 pound 5 ounce Day Four beast that filled out his limit and more than provided his margin of victory, but before he dropped it into the livewell, he turned to the camera and said: “Denny Brauer sent me a message last night. He told me to catch him a 7-pounder on a black and blue jig.”
I had forgotten that the Brauers and the Lowens had traveled together and shared information during the former’s last years on tour. It makes sense insofar as they shared a similar fishing style, but I remember thinking when I first learned of that fact that nothing else about it made much sense. They’re not from the same town. Lowen is younger than Brauer’s son, but older than his grandchildren. I don’t know how they became friends or why they stayed friends, but on a tour where survival is everything it happened. Did Lowen get more from his elder than vice versa? Possibly. I’d like to think it was a mentoring situation. If so, it’s a prime example of what I rarely see among most anglers at all levels. When I got into the sport 25 years ago, I found people better than me. When I started writing over 15 years ago, I glued myself to those who had things to offer. I’d like to think that I paid their generosity forward multiple times over. Increasingly, at least on tour, there seem to be fewer of these cross-generational partnerships. Sure, occasionally a Rick Clunn seeks out a youngster like Cody Huff for an electronics tutorial, but beyond that, we all seem to stay in our lanes, agewise and experience-wise. Was that the case decades ago? If you’ve read the great “Bass Wars” book, you know that a young Gary Klein worked closely with Clunn, but you also know that there were cliques of younger and older anglers who kept to themselves. Klein is still around (as is Clunn) – some of the others are not.
Maybe the best mentors are the ones who see something in you that you don’t see in yourself. I know that my best experience on the more experience side of the equation is when my counterparts develop the tools to help themselves. Indeed, as a mentor, you always want those under your tutelage to exceed your goals. Brauer told him to catch a 7. Lowen produced an 8. I bet everyone’s happy.
