The Godfather of Walleye Fishing Gary Parsons

Hall of Fame Angler and the Godfather of Walleye Fishing Gary Parsons shares what's up and coming with The Next Bite television show and shares his path to a professional angling career.  

What is Reel Talk Fishing | With No Limits?

I'm Brian Bashore, Professional walleye angler and owner of The Walleye Guys Guide service. I am here to reel you in with captivating stories, expert tips, and interviews with some of the biggest names in the fishing community. So, sit back, relax, and let the drag scream!

Brian Bashore (00:01.504)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Real Talk Fishin' with No Limits. Today we're heading back to Wisconsin again and we are just getting super fortunate right now. We are blessed with the Godfather of Fishin', another Hall of Fame legend, the living legend himself, Mr. Gary Parsons is coming on here. Gonna talk about his career, the industry, walleye turmoil, where it's going, where it's been, and just a ton of awesome stuff. Because Gary is a hero to so many walleye anglers out there, an inspiration, just a great guy.

mentored so many I've seen the evolution of anglers that Gary has worked with over the years. Just development into some of the best professionals anglers out there, such as Corey Springel for one, and Chase, his son, of course. So Gary is just a hell of a great guy. A lot to learn from him. He's been around for a long time. So this is one I highly suggest. Grab a cold one, sit back, tune in, and learn a little bit from the living legend, the Godfather himself, Gary Parsons.

Hey folks, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Real Talk Fishin' with No Limits. Today we are joined, we are just blessed. We got the Godfather of walleye fish in the Hall of Fame, Angler himself. He's a living legend. Mr. Gary Parsons. Gary, how are we doing over there today?

Gary Parsons (00:34.626)
Very good. It's a beautiful day in Wisconsin, Northern Wisconsin here today. it's, in fact, we've had three, four days in a row that were really perfect summer days. And so it's nice over here today. Yeah.

Brian Bashore (00:49.16)
That is, we've had the opposite over here in South Dakota. It's been rainy, windy and gloom, but I think we got a nice, a nice stretch coming back up. And that's great. Cause it's this weather, this whole season has been kind of topsy turvy and early spring, but, it never. The temps didn't stay. the, the summer bite for a lot of these fisheries that you've seen it, you guys have been going to just, it's been inconsistent and not very stable, but I think we're finally kind of getting there, moving into the fall fishing season, which is.

Gary Parsons (01:13.251)
yeah, yeah, for sure.

Brian Bashore (01:18.14)
My favorite and probably one of your favorites, I assume, as well.

Gary Parsons (01:20.91)
It absolutely is. And plus, you know, normally we end up shooting a lot of our shows in the fall. It seems like the TV part of things, at least it's hard to get sponsors anchored down. So, you know, you're kind of shooting, hoping that they stay with you for the next year. And, and, we, normally try to do all of our tips and a couple, you know, probably half our shows in the fall. So Paul's a really busy time.

but it's also one of the best times to fish. it's really a pleasant, pleasant time of the year.

Brian Bashore (01:55.59)
It is you got good weather and big fish start biting. Yeah, and it's hunting season. It's football season. It's a guide service slows down a little bit, but I'm like, I get it. But I also, you know, I just returned some emails, guys that are coming to South Dakota to hunt and they want to fish for a day, you know, on the front and their back end of it. So, you know, it kind of works both ways and we'll get into the the next bike and kind of what's coming here shortly. But let's let's start at the beginning. You've had a illustrious long career.

Gary Parsons (02:11.32)
yeah.

Brian Bashore (02:23.676)
I mean, long might even be an understatement, but that's why I said to live a legend because it ain't over. You're still here. We're still, we're still putting out shows, still doing the, the, what you can. didn't, you know, we didn't get a fish tour on tournaments this year. I don't know if you're going to be able to get back in that or not. but what, let's kind of, there's a lot of new people in this fishing realm in this world. Most everybody kind of knows who Gary Parsons is and the next bite and what you did, but there's a, there's a new, a new guard.

Basically new generation coming up that, you know, we, had the Owl Linder phase and then you and Keith. And nowadays it's the, know, there's a lot of new ones that may not know as much about, you know, Gary and, and the next bite and what your stuff. let's just go back a little bit and kinda how'd you get to, I know the story, but share it with them kind of where you, how you got into the TV and the fishing and, and the transition from being the dentist.

Gary Parsons (03:17.102)
Yeah, was kind of a weird story, but, probably could only happen in the United States, right? I was hunted and fished, you know, since I was a little person. When I was 12 years old, my dad would let me go out in the boat all day long and I'd show up at dark. You know, my mom would be frantic. And because we lived on, we had a cottage on Lake Winnibago. And so that's the way I grew up.

Brian Bashore (03:23.314)
Right.

Gary Parsons (03:46.926)
A lot of stuff was self -taught. And I fished a lot. So when I went away to school, I actually went to become a fisheries biologist. That was the main goal. And so I went to a school up here in northern Wisconsin called Northland College for two years. And it didn't take long to find out that fisheries biology was awful political and

Brian Bashore (03:58.844)
to.

Brian Bashore (04:15.166)
and there's not a lot of money in it.

Gary Parsons (04:16.704)
It was very little money and I wanted to hunt too bad and you know, I had dreams of hunting in Alaska and all that kind of stuff and there's no way I could have ever afforded even one trip for that. I quickly changed my major to biology and chemistry and I literally took all the science courses up there. I didn't take any of the liberal arts stuff and so I'm going into my junior year and I decided to seize the next two years. It could be nothing.

Brian Bashore (04:39.443)
you

Gary Parsons (04:46.732)
BS classes for me. So I transferred to Montana State, to Bozeman, which had a lot more science classes. I added a physics major. I figured I could go into any realm of science and get a really good job, or even start my own business. And so I went there for a year, but my grandmother got sick and my grandmother was a lady that was very instrumental in my

Brian Bashore (04:49.8)
Right.

Gary Parsons (05:16.534)
youth, I went fishing with grandma and grandpa all the time. And grandpa had just died. And my grandmother got sick with a heart problem. dad called me up and said, Hey, you gotta go, you gotta come home. And I said, and this was for right around Christmas. I said, God, it's a long drive. I don't have any money. And he said, I'll play the, I'll pay for the plane ticket. You need to come home. So I could.

tell it was pretty serious. When I got there, she was in the hospital room and she made dad close the door and stay outside. So I'm going, what is going on? You know, and she basically was a school teacher. She was the only one in my whole family that had ever gone to college, but she, she quit teaching and basically ran the farm homestead that my

Dad and all of his brothers and sister grew up on it. And so she was a farmer's wife, but she was very smart. she basically sat down, made me promise I was going to go into some field of medicine so people like her wouldn't have to suffer. I said, Grandma, you know me, I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm not going be on call. I want to go hunting. I want go fishing.

Brian Bashore (06:38.352)
I'm cry.

Gary Parsons (06:43.276)
I said, you can't put, can't hold me to this. And she, she said, well, you need to go into some field of medicine. said, how about optometry or dentistry or something like that? And she said, either any of those would be good, just as long as you were helping people. Honestly, had, I couldn't leave the room until I promised her this, you know, gave her a kiss on the forehead and walked out and two days later she died. And I was like,

That's quite the promise to make your grandma. But I did a little research, found out I could get into dental school and even some medical schools after your junior year if you had really high grades. Unfortunately, I did.

Brian Bashore (07:16.424)
Yes it is.

Brian Bashore (07:31.866)
And he had the biology background, which is a ton of that, so.

Gary Parsons (07:34.346)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I had stellar grades and so I applied. I didn't know anything about any of schools. I applied to University of Minnesota and Marquette in Wisconsin here for dental school. And then both on the University of Minnesota, I even checked into the medical part, although I had no desire to become a regular doctor or anything like that.

Ended up getting interviews with both places. Went back, you know, did the interviews, came back, and I literally got the acceptance letters for dental school from both places on the same day. So I walked into our, you know, sharing a room with two of my friends and walked in through the envelopes on the table and says, looks like I'm going to be a damn dentist. so that's how it

Brian Bashore (08:18.632)
Wait.

Brian Bashore (08:29.991)
You

Gary Parsons (08:30.636)
That's how dental school thing came. It was kind of a side thing because of a promise to my grandmother. In retrospect, it was a blessing because I got through dental school pretty easily.

and basically started my own business. I actually finished school like six months early with all of my requirements. And so I spent the last six months remodeling a building and getting my practice all ready to go. That was when the interest rates were all like 22%. I've through these rough times before and got it all set up and just basically had to wait for graduation and

Brian Bashore (09:04.12)
Right, back where they are again almost.

Gary Parsons (09:15.768)
take my boards, got through the boards okay. There was a notice on the school bulletin board about a dentist who had leukemia from Oshkosh. And he was wondering if one of the young graduates would run his practice while he got bone marrow transplants and he had to go out west, Oregon or someplace to get one. And so I called him up and

and made arrangements to run his practice. At the same time I was starting mine. I literally at first really, I mean, I got into it the day after the boards and I had my license and stuff. I was running his practice and then coming back in the evenings and running my practice till about 10 or 11 at night. So I offered night hours. grew, the business grew so fast. It was incredible. So I made a fair amount of money, ran out of the chute and.

Brian Bashore (09:56.989)
Yeah, you're right.

Gary Parsons (10:14.958)
bought a boat and started fishing a lot again. And I just kind of got into the tournaments just because I live in the Winnebago area. And did well. Fished the very first organized circuit in 84, the Manion Tour, which turned into the MWC. I won one of the four qualifiers. In fact, my very first tournament I won was in Sturgeon Bay.

This is where I met the president of Yarcraft. I talked to him about it, boat design I had in mind. And I don't know, for some reason he liked me. And so we started working on boats and I built a boat with him. I'd go up every weekend to Menominee, where his business was located in Yarcraft boats. And we would work on this one single boat. It was a special boat, unlike anything he'd ever built. And then that's what I fished in the tournaments the following year.

Well, Popular Mechanics did a thing through Mercury about walleye boats, you know, of the year. And Jack Dalman was the guy's name and Jack basically said, hey, can I enter your boat into this contest? Mercury asked if I'd become part of it. said, sure. Wow. That's fine. He said, would you run it so you can explain to the writers all the things we did? I said, sure. I'll take the guys out. And so we did that and actually won.

Popular mechanics while I boated the year over London, you know, all the popular names back in those days. And so then, you know, in my resume, had a boat builder, a boat designer that I could lean on. And it was shortly thereafter, I started fishing with Keith in 1988. And, and, and Jack wouldn't give Keith a discount.

on his, on a boat. wanted to run two boats so that we could split practice and cover more water and things like that. And, Jack wouldn't give them a break on the boat. And so, I didn't, you know, I looked at this as a future thing. Keith was serious about doing this full time at some point in time. He was working with IBM and, and, and so was I actually, you know, although it didn't seem feasible as a dentist to do that, but

Gary Parsons (12:41.886)
I went back to Mercury and I said, hey, if you guys ever run across a Southern boat company that would like to build a deep V boat and enter this market, so I'd really be happy to work with them. But the deal is, it's Keith and I, it's not just me doing it. Two weeks later, Jim Calcophon was actually one of the guys working Mercury marketing at that time.

Brian Bashore (13:06.333)
good.

Gary Parsons (13:09.634)
Got a call from Jim and he says, yeah, we do have a company that's interested in a Skeeter bullets. And so we talked to the people from Skeeter. were all about it. Problem is they didn't want to change from a basic basketball design on the hall. And they hired a new head of R and D by the name of Ken Burrows. Ken was a genius. mean, we could talk about bullets and stuff like that. He had photographic memory. We drew the first deep V boats on a beach in the sand.

down attacks, honestly. And honestly, when he, when he sent up that first plan, it was like, wow, he didn't miss anything, you know? And the guy was a genius boat builder, built that first 17 foot skeeter. And the rest there is kind of history. You know, most of the boat companies followed with that type of design, those types of haul off shoots, things like that.

Brian Bashore (13:40.83)
I believe in 100%.

Gary Parsons (14:07.138)
Well, Johnny Morris actually, Ken got the attention of Johnny Morris. Johnny wanted to hire Ken for about three, three and a half years before Ken actually went over to Tracker Marine. Ken became the CEO of Skeeter and he didn't really have anyone down there he could talk to about a competitor trying to hire him. So he would roll that off Keith and I.

Brian Bashore (14:28.85)
Alright.

Gary Parsons (14:36.686)
And so we became not only good business associates, but good friends. And the Deep V line was taking off. had two or three models. built an 18 and a half footer. know, Ken wanted the, the walleye world to get into performance engines, which was his world. And so we always pushed the envelope for horsepower. know, no, that was mainly a mercury deal. And so, you know, because.

Brian Bashore (14:57.542)
Did Yamaha

Gary Parsons (15:06.134)
The three of us basically designed the next high horsepower engine.

Inadvertently, we made Mercury a hell of a lot of money. And I don't know if anyone there even could look back at that history and realize just how many millions of dollars, you know, we made the engine company because of that. And we did that every single time. Well, then Ken became president of Tracker. Johnny finally did convince him to come over.

The day that he signed his contract, he called me up and told me, he said, I don't want you to hear rumors. I'll tell you, you know, personally. And I said, wow, where's that leave Keith and I? And he said, well, he says your contracts are due at Skeeter in three weeks. And he said, I would like to see you guys come over and, you know, basically work on deep fees with me here.

And, know, to me, that was pretty cool. That was a big step up the ladder. And, you know, me being the way I am, said, well, I know that you increased your pay off a lot going over there. about us? He said, come out, come down next week and we'll discuss it. So that's kind of how we got started with, tracker. We built a 20 foot fiberglass boat at first, and then the.

know, big aluminum tundras and all the different boat models afterwards. There were rough spots through there. We had to run a ski boat for a couple years. And it was a good boat for what it was designed. It wasn't designed to be a, you know, while I boat on the Great Lakes and stuff like that.

Brian Bashore (16:55.998)
I love that old Tundra, the solid aluminum. I think was Boeing made it. Bruegerman had it back in Nebraska years ago and I was like, that's it. That was the boat I always wanted. I ended up with a Tracker Targa as my first boat. Actually, it even mine. was a buddy's that I pulled out of the barn and said, hey, let me fix this up and ran like work great.

Gary Parsons (16:59.106)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (17:09.378)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (17:14.924)
Yeah. I mean, the boats themselves that we designed were pretty, pretty good, solid boats. know, Tracker had a reputation in those days that they had to overcome. They were kind of considered, at least from the anglers in the North, a cheap version of an entry -level type boat. They've definitely overcome that right now. mean, yeah, right now. actually between them and Ranger, they're

Brian Bashore (17:38.056)
Number one selling boat in America.

Gary Parsons (17:44.832)
like neck and neck for number one in deep B fiberglass sales. So that's quite the allocate when you stop and think about it. Cause Ranger was just dominating in the, in the tournament world and basically pushed London right out of the picture. You know, people from London probably mad at me if I said that, but this reality is reality. Yeah. I'm not going to change history by lying about it. So,

Brian Bashore (18:07.833)
Right, it's the truth.

Gary Parsons (18:13.634)
Hey, that's a quote. I was talking about running for governor of Wisconsin, yeah, the bottom line on it is that they've become a very dominating company and, and Ken has long since retired. So it was quite the story, but there's...

Brian Bashore (18:15.632)
It is. Sounds like some other politicians might want to, you know, write that one down. Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Parsons (18:41.89)
You know, in almost every aspect of the fishing industry, there was a little story like that, you know, with every company that Keith and I ended up being with and built what we did. the way we got into TV, you know, the tournament thing was on our own, right? The sponsorships and stuff are all good. I could pay entry fees and, you know, that allowed me to leave dentistry, allowed Keith to leave IBM. And we never really made a lot.

Keith was able to retire because he very shrewd with the stock market. And he's got a friend who is really shrewd with the stock market. So those two guys invested pretty much their whole lives. I didn't, I bought hunting land. I'm still paying them for hunting land. I wasn't as smart as Kavias there. Yeah, no, no.

Brian Bashore (19:25.146)
Right.

But,

That's not an appreciated asset though and Chase and the boys will appreciate that 20 -30 years from now too.

Gary Parsons (19:37.932)
Yeah, now I'm going to probably sell some of it and we have a tiny little cabin out to the lake. I've got to live at a place with a one level.

because I do, I'm in a wheelchair a fair amount. I'm sitting in wheelchair right now at the office desk so I can move around the office here. Without falling, it's not that I can't walk, I can, but it's getting difficult. And I'm basically, we'll probably get into that before this is over. we got involved with the TV part because...

know, Bass Pro was involved with television on the Bass side a lot. But they didn't have anything for the northern part of the United States. And we were really, we kind of their only connection to the north, right? And so we started doing multi -species shows for Bass Pro. And it was called Outdoor World. And for seven seasons, Keith and I were the freshwater hosts.

And so we got to go all over the place as long as it was fresh water. didn't matter what species we could kind of, like I wanted to go fish the Snake River for those big sturgeon. He said, okay. Yeah. And so I got to go out on a trip of a lifetime. And, you know, same thing with salmon fishing up in Alaska and stuff. Those are things I'd have never probably got to do on my own. And, at the same time I learned the TV.

Brian Bashore (20:54.046)
Awesome. All right.

Gary Parsons (21:10.19)
They had like 20 people in their video department and I'd sit down there a lot, Keith and I both would, and we learned a lot of stuff. And we were doing a multimedia presentation for seminars anyway through Keith's connections with IBM. We were the first ones to do multimedia. The equipment barely fit in the back of a pickup truck, all the laser disc players and stuff.

And if it went down, I was lost, you know, so if I was doing a seminar someplace and it went down, I just gave a seminar. didn't, I got it back, dumped it on Keith and said, fix this. So that's kind of how we did it, but that's that technological, getting it, being ahead of the game, right. is what got us involved with their TV. Well, then I learned the TV part.

Brian Bashore (21:48.414)
Alright, well that doesn't work. Let's move forward.

Brian Bashore (22:03.389)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (22:08.59)
And after seven years, they decided that they were going to quit Outdoor World and that they knew we wanted to start a TV show for the North. So they said, hey, it's time. We'll sponsor your show for the North. And so that's when the next bite was born. And that's 21 years ago. It's kind of a weird deal. And so we did that kind of as a side hobby to tournament angling, right?

So I got to see this whole thing shift around. Now it seems like the tournament anglers are all struggling and wondering why they can't get sponsorships. So the TV guys are wondering, you know, why they can't get sponsorships and there's no money being put back into TV. Well, social media kind of got that all over it up and that in itself, I could probably talk days about it. and, and we can Brian. mean, you want to have multiple.

Brian Bashore (23:02.758)
Yeah, we will.

Gary Parsons (23:08.91)
multiple sessions like this. That's the one thing is I'm obviously not going to be the stud angler like I was back in the 90s. Physically, I'll be 70 in a couple months.

Gary Parsons (23:29.55)
And even at that, think if I was, you know, didn't have this muscle disease, I'd still, I'd be like, one, I'd probably fish for another 10 years. But I can't physically do it. I don't have much for balance or anything right now. The only way that I could get back into the tournament end of things is if I can get on this experimental drug that I've kind of alluded to for, you know, the last year or two. and I didn't get into the trial, because of

a previous blood situation I had back in dental school. And so it kind of kicked me out of the trial for now. So I'm now just waiting. My doctor out at Johns Hopkins said that as soon as they can get an FDA, even emergency, go ahead, she'll get me out of the drug because it is partially working from the way it sounds. I follow some people on social media that are in the trial.

They're having some luck getting this disease stopped and slowed down. So who knows what the long -term ramifications are, you know. But bottom line is some of them are even building back some muscle strength where before they couldn't go upstairs, now they can. So, you know, never say never, right. I've been on that stuff and can get into that position.

Brian Bashore (24:48.114)
Well, that's what... Alright, well that's... Yeah, let's...

Gary Parsons (24:53.534)
where I get my balance back, I'll start tournament fishing again.

Brian Bashore (24:58.55)
I have no doubt you will. it was, you know, the last couple of years for you, it's been obviously, you know, seeing you and the help of some of those young guys traveling with you, know, Gever and Atkins and is, but I'm like, man, Gary's it's a struggle getting in and out and we, we don't fish in the nicest conditions all the time by all means. So it's that adds to it a little bit. And I'm always, we're keeping an eye. I don't read it. I was like, well, just keep an eye on it. Make sure things going okay over there and whatever. We all want you to be out there.

Gary Parsons (25:07.51)
Other tremolo.

Gary Parsons (25:26.424)
Yeah, and everybody, everybody has been watching over me. You know, the guys that travel with, my son, Tom Kemos and Corey, they're fantastic guys. know, Tom Winn is part of that crew now. And, you know, they take care of me like I'm a baby. And then even the rest of the anglers, yourself, everybody else, are always friendly. If they're seeing I'm struggling with something, they help me out. So honestly, the tournament.

guys have become my family. And you're right, there's a lot of them that don't know the history. They don't know that I built Bruce DeShano's planter board with Bruce. They don't know all the little things. I'm sure a lot of them don't realize I built the slow death hook, the original one. There's all the little things that kind of get lost. that's because Keith and I never got to the status of like -out lenders.

Brian Bashore (26:04.805)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (26:25.462)
and things like that in the people's minds. Probably not even to Babe Winkleman. To the hard cores, yeah, yeah, we're probably considered way better anglers than any of those guys. But to the general public, we never really, I don't think got to that level of recognition. And you know why that is? It's because we hardcore tournament fished the whole time. If we would have just concentrated on media and

Brian Bashore (26:50.044)
Yeah, yeah, there you go. I gave that up.

Gary Parsons (26:55.0)
kind of stuff. We basically would have probably got to be very famous, much more so to the public than what we are right now. But we didn't do that. We more went the Ricky Clunway, right? Clun's a perfect example. He's, you know, he's retired now. He's a right, well, he's going to fish opens from what I understand. But from the elites, this was it, supposedly. And although he's going to find it's not as easy as he thinks it is.

Brian Bashore (27:08.552)
Yep. Yeah, he is.

Brian Bashore (27:23.07)
Alright.

Gary Parsons (27:24.148)
And the bottom line on it is Ricky was the same way. Everyone knows him, everyone respects him, but he never got to be super famous. Van Damme's gonna become super famous. He'll concentrate totally on television and things like that. I would assume he's gonna do really well.

Brian Bashore (27:43.998)
But I think it's to say fishing keeps you young. mean, look, you look great for 70. Rick Klon doing it for 50 years, you know, and he's looked the same for the last 10, 20 years. Takasaki who's tried with me, Ted's, you know, pushing at 70 and physically healthy. He's like, I'm ready to go. You know, whether it's all up there sometimes and like you got some health issues and maybe there's some, you know, it's brain fog for other guys as they get a little older, but.

Gary Parsons (27:52.899)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (27:56.322)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Gary Parsons (28:07.278)
Right. Yeah, I think, I think if you're, you know, if you can stay physically into it, you could, you'll be able to enjoy it for a long time. Politically and all the changes in the industry, you know, the industry itself, the business end of things has changed just as much as the fishing. Who would have ever thought back in 1984 when I started that we'd be looking at forward -facing sonar dropping down to suspended fish over

Brian Bashore (28:08.894)
70 and able to jump in a boat is pretty good.

Gary Parsons (28:36.174)
80 feet of water and catching giant walleyes one on one. I mean, that was Star Wars stuff, right? That's the way it is right now, or you don't compete. And it's a hell of a fun way to fish. It really is. I'm getting better and better at it. Although this year I haven't fished near as much. This is the least I've fished this year in my whole life. It's mainly because I had broken foot. I couldn't walk for a long time.

Brian Bashore (28:46.949)
It's exactly.

Brian Bashore (29:03.772)
Yeah, I talked to Chase just before eerie and he said you plan on going but then you broke the foot or ankle and he's like, I'm like, man, that's just not what he needed on top of things.

Gary Parsons (29:10.218)
And no, was a bad break too. it was, you know, broke in three places and it was a spiral breakup, one of the long bones. And then I was just getting to the point where I was going to come out to Sakakawea with Chase. In fact, I even thought a little bit before that to fish the tournament on the pro side, because I love sack, you know, and, and, I have a really good, you know, history with that place. And, and.

Brian Bashore (29:32.156)
Yeah, me too.

Gary Parsons (29:39.842)
The problem with it was is I still couldn't get enough balance back. So I decided I'll just go out and fish with them. Well that got to the point where I fell again and I think I re -broke another bone. I haven't gone in to get a check but it felt just like the first one. So I'm on a multiple fracture sort of thing right now. Starting to heal a little bit again so I'm hobbling around a little better but that on top of this muscle disease has been disastrous for me.

You know, everything takes me two, three times longer to do. And it drives you nuts. You know, I look back and the times where I have to sit and, and just chill because I don't have any, I'm so exhausted, right? You just reflect on how lucky you were your whole life. And so I don't have any.

Brian Bashore (30:16.21)
Good thing you're a patient man.

Gary Parsons (30:37.23)
I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me because I had a better life than 99 .9 % of any male that's living in the U .S. today. And I will continue to have a good life. I've got a fabulous family. I've got a wonderful son. talk to him most of the time, a couple of times a day. He's taken over a huge part of the business. I think the sponsors have recognized that. I'm going to take TNB into a little different

arena, I want to see us leading the way again. so I've got some things with getting social media articles and stuff going again. And half the people who look at social media scroll it. They don't listen to every video. Young people listen to all the videos, but not necessarily people your age and older. You grew up in a reading world and

Brian Bashore (31:35.005)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (31:35.456)
So there's a lot of times I'll be sitting in an office someplace and I can't play my video and I don't have earphones because I don't have earphones stuck in my ear all the time. But I sure as heck could read. And I do read. I read news all the time. I read four or five hours a day usually. Or something. And so I want to get back into that, do some teaching back like we, and I used to with magazine articles.

Brian Bashore (31:48.35)
See you.

Me too. Yep.

Brian Bashore (32:02.396)
Yeah, you guys got a lot of publications out there and lot of tips and I mean, hopefully put out over the years.

Gary Parsons (32:05.632)
Yeah, we have a huge history of that. you know, with Chase and I, have the platform to be able to present it to a lot of people. And so that'll be, you know, part of what I do for the future in TNB, along with TV. You know, I'll do whatever shows I can. I don't do a lot of tips yet because obviously there's a lot of things that I've done through the years that can be talked about time and time again.

Brian Bashore (32:34.908)
Yeah, you keep the bit on the cutting edge of innovating so many lures.

Gary Parsons (32:34.926)
Let's go.

Yeah, I think just the lures alone and, you know, the, flicker shad, the true story about that is, I took a prototype bait that they had built to Keeson on my specs, out to the turtle flambeau Floydge every day for months and months with a Dremel tool and worked on that action. And so I went there.

you know, probably every other day. finally got the action where, and for me, the bait that, baits that we build have to outfish just about everything else. And, so at that time, the shad rap, you know, raplers shad rap was by far the best fish catching bait around.

And so that was my goal was to build a bait that could catch fish as good or better than the shad wrap. And I believe that I had that action down, brought to Berkeley and they want to make some changes physically to the bait. So it be more distinctive, like the more squared off bill in the front, stuff like that. And I said, we can't do that. You're going to screw up the action. I worked once on this and I was working at that time. This was before Dan Spangler.

Brian Bashore (33:41.373)
it.

Brian Bashore (33:54.206)
Bye.

Brian Bashore (34:00.744)
I was gonna ask was that Dan or when did he start?

Gary Parsons (34:02.338)
Yeah, no, it was before Dan. We actually mentored Dan and then showed him the system when he came on board. But it was with Chris Pitsoulas, who Chris is basically in charge of all lines right now. You might know Chris, but Chris is a dynamo, just a go -getting sort of guy. And so he fit in well with Keith and I. so he says, I can make this action. He said, just give me some time. And so he did.

And he didn't change the body at all. He changed the bill a little bit and he got really close to the point where we both checked off on it. And so it was a true joint effort. but the original action now is basically, we use that as a baseline to develop every action of bait since then, either make it more aggressive or less aggressive. we had all those notes and then Dan came involved and Dan even took it, you know, step.

further. He documented everything and so that whole building base thing was just a wonderful part of my career. And that's all that's kind of you know we can get into specific things in future episodes about hook building and all that kind of stuff if you want. It's a unique thing. It's hard to get into that.

Because most of the companies think that they have a much better handle on fishing lures and stuff than what the angler does. And it could be further from the truth. It's actually exactly the same thing with a lot of the marketing people think that they honestly, I don't want to seem like I know it all because I think I'm talking more from a standpoint of seeing it many times go through it's revolving, but you know, lot of the

Brian Bashore (35:37.714)
Mm -mm. Good. Exactly.

Brian Bashore (35:44.903)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (35:52.338)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (35:56.554)
the marketing people are so numbers -oriented right now. Selling fishing tackle on boats and motors is not that difficult. It really isn't. And it hasn't changed a hell.

Now bottom line is, there are ways to do it and in most cases it doesn't have anything to do, to me in my opinion, to a Facebook like it.

Brian Bashore (36:20.24)
Yeah, there are a lot of bean counters out there trying to dictate and determine what's best for the anglers and stuff.

Gary Parsons (36:25.356)
Yeah, and I mean, I could have some guys really be mad about that. There are also some, there are also some guys in marketing, guys and gals in marketing that are extremely sharp and they look at the bean counting part as only one small part of it.

Brian Bashore (36:29.246)
Alright.

Brian Bashore (36:34.982)
Yes, sir.

Brian Bashore (36:40.838)
It's business and things gotta make sense. They gotta make sense on paper, but there's no better input than from you and Keith and Chase, Corey, but it's also led into the sponsorship realm for you guys that way on the R &D side.

Gary Parsons (36:43.136)
Yeah. The thing is...

Gary Parsons (36:55.638)
Yes. Yes. you know, the, the one thing, and you probably know this as, as well as anything, Keith and I started by calling ourselves the Walla guys. And so for years we had that moniker and then we, we basically gave it up when we started the Next Byte series. And, but we'd never patented it. So when you guys are, are using that, or I don't know if you still use it anymore, but, I

Brian Bashore (37:08.552)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (37:25.568)
I think that for a long time you did. yeah, yeah. Cause we never did. never, we never went for the, I have the copyright on anything. Next bite. No, basically looked at the next bite as a, as a media group more than just a couple of tournament guys, you know, doing their thing. so you know, you learn things through the years and, the

Brian Bashore (37:28.921)
yeah, I got copyright on it.

Gary Parsons (37:54.43)
The bottom line on it is, is everybody needs to have, I don't think in the walleye world you can totally make your living off of your winnings. know, Hoyer's done pretty good with it lately. Tom Wynn's doing okay, you know, with it right now. But sooner or later, you're going to come into some dry spells that'll suck up all your money.

Brian Bashore (38:05.607)
No.

Brian Bashore (38:20.402)
Yeah, I experienced one of those this year. It was not a good year.

Gary Parsons (38:23.01)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it happens. Yeah, I won three back to back to back while I, anywhere the year titles and then missed the fourth year by one point, lost it to Keith. And I was like, I was as dominating as any one of those guys back in earlier part of my history. But then all of a sudden I didn't make a championship right after that. I was like, holy shit. How'd that happen? It can.

Brian Bashore (38:47.65)
Right, what, whoa, this is... Right.

Gary Parsons (38:52.726)
You know, I, I warned Corey Springo that that would come that, you know, and honestly, when he's younger, I don't think he thought that it could come, but it can't. And, we only have four tournaments. make, you know, the wrong move. if you get to the point where you've won a lot, then all you want to do is win everything. And you start losing sight of the fact that you better catch five fish or you're not going to make the championship. And there's a lot of.

Brian Bashore (38:55.411)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (38:58.834)
Here we are.

Gary Parsons (39:22.328)
A lot of things, you know, involved. And even now, if you like, the year, one of the years I didn't make the championship recently is because I went for trying to win green Bay and didn't get a fish the first day. They canceled the second day. I didn't have any fish. So I got zero points and I was out, which that has to, by the way, be a rule that's changed. And it needs to be changed where you get last place points, but

Brian Bashore (39:46.814)
Yeah, it was you and 60 others.

Gary Parsons (39:50.722)
The bottom line is that caught Hoyer that year, same thing. Hoyer and I, neither one of us made the championship this year, caught Corey. And it's like, come on, man. It's, you know, that's not the way things have got to be. So I do think though that in particular, we've got a group down at Bass Pro now that is at least willing to listen a little bit. Although they haven't changed catch, record, release yet, which they have to do.

I mean, I think they do. think it'll kill the sport. That's what killed them. To me, that's why the MWC struggles. They can't go to Minnesota and have a fair tournament. They can't go in a lot of places with Wisconsin now with reduced limits and have a tournament. can't get slots everywhere. It's like trying to, to win a tournament, it's like trying to jump through a maze, right? It's, and there's too many luck steps along the way. And,

Brian Bashore (40:36.165)
Right, and we got slots everywhere.

Gary Parsons (40:50.304)
So actually Scott Fairbairn, I don't know if you know Scott, but Scott is actually one of the top dogs in Minn Kota right now. He quit the fishing industry about the time that AIM started. But Scott and I, in the last years of the professional wildlife trail, we were trying to come up with a system of catch record or catch photograph release that would actually work. And we did come up with it. Scott was probably the mastermind behind a lot of it.

But then as he quit is when we were starting AIM. So I was the one board member that pushed it really hard. Unfortunately, there was a lot of other board members that could see where, you hey, they wanted to go fish MWACs. They wanted to go fish, you know, Lake of the Woods and all these places in Minnesota that we really weren't able to because of the slot limits. was just the states had set up such stringent state rules that you couldn't have a fair tournament. So this kind of

circumvented all of that, right? Because we weren't keeping any fish. We're just releasing them again. so AIM actually took a few years because that's when the FLW and RCL stuff was all going on. So all the Ranger guys were kind of against it because there was big dollars in the tournaments then. Bruce Sampson, I remember when he won, that one was $300 ,000. That was a big payday.

Brian Bashore (42:16.476)
Yeah, it's changed drastically.

Gary Parsons (42:16.82)
One of Lord against got a big payday like that too. and so they're that, that group of anglers were real strong. The rest of the anglers were basically PWT guys with, that were with different boat companies and things like that. And so they struggled for a while until then Tommy Kemos and Chase and Brett King and that crew got in as board members. And, so was at the same time that a good.

weekend team circuit, the owner of it died. He's from the Winnebago area and they worked with his wife and basically incorporated a lot of the team things into AIM and completely, you know, although they use the catch photo release format and AIM has been a big success story ever since. You know, they fill their 100 boats just about every tournament in Wisconsin, Minnesota. They've been able to spread out.

into the Dakotas and it's a wonderful team circuit to fish. There's some still some issues. I think there's a little cell phone use. I don't know as if, you know, there's ever a team format that's totally fair where there isn't some shady stuff that goes on. But on an individual sort of thing, there's no doubt catch photo. It really is the absolute way to go.

Brian Bashore (43:33.329)
Alright.

Gary Parsons (43:46.208)
It would just basically activate all these states again.

Brian Bashore (43:50.102)
It would keep touch on some of that in our, on our podcast here today too. And I was telling him, we have a league night down here on the lake and we use fish donkey. And then there's a new way of coming out of Colorado. Those guys are building. And at first everybody's a little kind of like, I don't know about it. And then once they use it, they're like, yeah, this is great. This is, know, I'm like, I don't want to. Yeah. I don't want to create a league on my lake. I guide it and have you guys come out every Tuesday night and take a bunch of fish out. need my customers to catch them. So I'm like, we're not doing this, but that was that, you know, and now they use it.

Gary Parsons (43:58.338)
Yeah,

Gary Parsons (44:14.254)
Okay. Yeah, why would you?

Brian Bashore (44:18.534)
And it's, and they love it, especially the fact that it's a team thing. And well, if your partner doesn't show up to five fish tournament and your limits, three or four fish, hard to compete. But if you've got an app or you're throwing them all back, you can still get your best five fish. So.

Gary Parsons (44:30.69)
you still can get, yeah, yeah, you can. that's, you know, we're in, I'm in the, I'm probably the most outspoken. They're probably sitting me down there talking about that. You know, I think that's the way that we have to go on some of the professional events. There's no reason.

Brian Bashore (44:41.054)
Yeah

Brian Bashore (44:49.17)
think they're listening down there though. think you're right. There's some new leadership at Bass Pro. Yeah.

Gary Parsons (44:51.926)
Yeah, there's been kind of a big, just even in the last six months, even since the middle of the summer, there's been a little bit change of people who are listening down there. So, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. Gotta have some patience. I've seen all the mistakes made from these circuits. How many have come and gone? They all make the same mistake. I just don't want this one to go the same way.

Brian Bashore (45:18.268)
Yeah, we need the, we need all levels, but you really need that national, that top tier to help get the new anglers out. There's something to strive for from the lower levels to work their way up. Nothing wrong with these circuits. These are great. Everybody should fish everyone, whether you start here or here, we don't have a funnel to qualify here. Like bass does, you can pay to play. can go whichever, know, wherever you and your, you know, disposable income allows you to go or how much risk you want to take. Cause there's plenty of guys that are fishing here that could

Gary Parsons (45:26.999)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (45:47.71)
And there's guys competing here that should probably be competing here. They just have the means to do it and that's fine as I've always called them donators and I was the number one donator this year to all those guys who kept taking the money. but fishing tournaments just makes you a better angler. No matter what level you're fishing. Period.

Gary Parsons (46:04.526)
No matter what level and it makes you a better angler you have to learn how to control your boat in adverse conditions and You know the guys who don't do well are usually the guys who are lacking boat control They don't even know it, but that's what a lot of it is

That's my dog ramming around back there. So yeah, I don't, I even forgot what the original question was because we've been rambling, but it's, yeah, we rambled.

Brian Bashore (46:37.906)
Well, I mean, we're gonna talk about all our tournaments and moving forward, but I think you covered it and, you know, keep touching on the same thing. We got to go to this catch, footer release. The weigh -ins are great. We got decent crowds and one of the Lake Wahe last year, Francis K, excuse me, was huge and awesome. But would they have been there with or without the fish coming to the stage? It's not like we hold them up and are showing the fish off. There are a few, Jeff has had some guys pull some big fish up, but can we throw a few photos on the screen or can we just still have the moment of...

Gary Parsons (46:52.771)
Yes.

Brian Bashore (47:05.724)
Hey, I caught him here doing this, doing that. Well, I guys need to let those secrets out a little bit more and I get it. Day one, you're not gonna share all your inside of what you're doing, but day two, you certainly can. And then afterwards and hanging out with the fans and getting photos is huge.

Gary Parsons (47:21.782)
Yeah, no, part of that is tournament director's job. I guarantee you if Keith or myself become a tournament director, help with the stage work, they're not getting away with that. It's not happening. I will ask them the same question until and not let them off the stage. You know, the bottom line is if you want to fish at the top level, I don't mind on the other levels. That's a different story, but on the top level, you better be prepared to.

share what you're doing or you don't belong there. It's that simple as far as you know.

Brian Bashore (47:56.19)
I agree 100 % we're supposed to be the leaders in that market and help, You're as a pro -sponsored or a pro -staff or ambassador, your job is to sell.

Gary Parsons (48:06.334)
Well, when you do that and then you don't tell people the details and you don't teach people what you're doing, what use are you to any sponsor that's on your shirt? You're no use to them. And that is also part of your job if you want to be a professional fisherman. I used to get blamed all the time. Now you look like a NASCAR guy. You look like you're a walking billboard.

Brian Bashore (48:33.886)
I am.

Gary Parsons (48:34.394)
I am a damn walking blue board. I said, I don't see youths, you know, giving me money to, to fish tournaments. And the bottom line is I'm helping these companies develop better products. If you can't live with that, then go someplace else and, try to learn how to fish and good luck with that. And that's always been one of my pet peeves because the tournament anglers have always been cutting edge. Between the tournament anglers and the top guides, mean, guides that guide every day.

Brian Bashore (48:41.019)
Yup.

Brian Bashore (48:51.89)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (49:04.822)
They're the guys who really know what the hell is going on. And, and even in the guide standpoint, sometimes they're, their focus is so narrow because their job is to go out, get their fish, come home so they can actually get a chance to get an extra hour of sleep. Right. And that's really what, what it is. I mean, it's such a hard full -time job to guide that, you know, that's, that's what the people that are guiding do, but the good ones,

Brian Bashore (49:21.5)
Yeah, tell me about it.

Gary Parsons (49:35.116)
They innovate. They spend their days off and they go try something that was bugging them in their mind for a long time, either that a new spot or a new technique or a new way to catch fish. And the tournament guys are the same way. You don't go out and beat some of these guys unless you come up with a little bit different angle, because there's a hundred guys out of that top tier group that can win a tournament at any time if they're on the right.

Brian Bashore (49:39.868)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (50:03.374)
And so the bottom line is, there's not a lot of, you know, I can sit in a crowd of 30 people and outfish them all. That might have been the case when I was, you know, young in the eighties and stuff. It's not the case anymore. You're not going to outfish half of them, you know, because walleyes are schooling fish way more than bass are. You know, it's, there's just, if you're in an area with fish, that boat over there with the skill level of the anglers that are in that boat.

Brian Bashore (50:19.09)
No.

Gary Parsons (50:32.066)
are fully capable of catching every big fish that you are. And so you've got to start thinking about different ways. That's like forward -facing. Sooner or was like the shiver minnow when that exploded upon the scene, spinner baits over the trees from Lake Anaheim and then transferring that to Lake Hawaii, all those types of things. Hoyer with his weed fish and all those types of things are.

Brian Bashore (50:42.462)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (50:48.636)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (51:00.334)
are really what can change a person's career. And I don't know if those are getting to be fewer or fewer. I think that they probably are because now we fish walleyes from six inches of water all the way out over 100 feet of water suspended with jigs. And the people aren't going to, the vast majority of people are still gonna do a lot of trolling and stuff because that's an enjoyable way for a lot of people to fish.

Brian Bashore (51:14.416)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (51:29.65)
Well, it's effective to put a lot of fish in the boat quick. You just may not be getting the biggest fish.

Gary Parsons (51:32.174)
Yeah, is. is. yeah, if you're targeting, you know, there's a lot of people who aren't going to go cover 10 miles of water, looking for three big marks to cast to. They're just going to go trolling, catch a limb of a fish, go home and have a nice meal. And that really is what it boils down to. But if you want to learn cutting edge stuff, those are the two groups to learn it from. The guys that are self professed bloggers that

wild every day and every fish they catch, they photograph in video and try to teach you something that we're all they're doing is rehashing the tournament guys stuff. I don't have much respect for them because they have all the time in the world. A good tournament angler doesn't. either fishing tournaments or helping with TV shows or running their own guide business or, you know, taking their extra time running their own business. They're fishing all the time.

Brian Bashore (52:10.386)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (52:16.744)
Yep. Nope.

Gary Parsons (52:29.972)
And you know that you're fishing every day that you can, and then you're doing this on the side and you're doing all kinds of other things on the side with the NPA and all the other things that you do. Thank you by the way for, because you do handle a lot of the political things that the rest of us shy away from. You and Pat and I both do. And I appreciate that because it's really not in my forte or, you

Brian Bashore (52:31.473)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (52:36.647)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (52:45.406)
pleasure.

Brian Bashore (52:59.664)
It's not many.

Gary Parsons (52:59.892)
Eric McQuade's a great example. I can't see Eric doing that. can see him going up and kicking everyone's asses turning them into... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody does something, you know, so that's the only, that's really the only bad thing you have with having me in for an interview is I will ramble.

Brian Bashore (53:03.864)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, policy is nothing sexy for people that they want to deal with, you kind of, it's just, we're just passionate. Yep.

Gary Parsons (53:30.028)
I look at this sport from so many angles all the time.

Brian Bashore (53:34.822)
But you're spot on as a guide, I get asked that all the time, tournaments and guiding and people are like, what do do when you're not fishing? I'm like, fishing. If I don't have a trip tomorrow, I'm still out here the next day trying to, maybe the today wasn't very good. We got to figure out where they moved to, what happened, or if you're on them, then it's time to go tinker. And how do we get them faster, bigger? And I mean, we had a lead night there tonight and I'm jigging, jigging. I went to my Ned rig, a Ned rig.

Gary Parsons (53:55.384)
Yes.

Brian Bashore (54:01.714)
That was it. was the ticket, you know, and then end up having to troll to get a bigger fish. But I'm like, ain't nobody else out here doing this. This isn't a secret by all means, you know, but years ago in Chamberlain, I was throwing Tokyo rig with plastics and nobody was doing that. know, and James Leonard and I talked about it. He's like, yeah, then I'm trolling in three to four foot of water with lead at three and a half miles an hour so I can get the little tiny crankbaits number five flickers or whatever down against current. And it's like, wow, you know, you can long line, you could pull mono or

Gary Parsons (54:09.442)
Right.

Brian Bashore (54:31.368)
or braved through that. I'm like, it just works. Sometimes that kicker prop is stirring up stuff that activates these fish. That's kind of my reason. And instead of scaring them, the water's not clean on the Missouri River when you're on the lower reservoir. of it gets pretty clean. The skak wheel is real clean when we were up there. yeah, it's just what you do. You have to go fishing, but you've known for wearing so many hats, trying to make a living as a professional walleye angler versus basses. Tournaments aren't.

It's a tough gig to try to do it just with tournaments. Sponsorships are far and few between. You gotta wear several hats. You gotta have media aspects of it, guide aspects of it, TV show. There's very few professional wall anglers that just fish. There's a couple more now than there was a few years ago, but most everybody has a full -time job, owns a company, or is a guide service or whatever they have. They have something else versus the basketball where...

It's a different realm, bigger payouts, more entry. It's hard to kind of compare the two, but a bigger market. mean, a market's still a pretty fair share with the Wallet guys.

Gary Parsons (55:37.036)
Yeah, they can say what they want to say about the market, but I've worked with enough companies where the anglers of the North, the market's tremendous. And maybe it's not all walleyes, but when you start combining crappies and muskies and all the other things involved, it's a significant market. And the South doesn't have a total lock on this.

Brian Bashore (56:05.126)
no.

Gary Parsons (56:06.107)
When it comes to fiberglass boats, almost half the boats are DPs. It's like you start looking at those numbers and they're astronomical. You start looking at some of the big tackle companies. When comes to hard baits, there's no doubt that the walleye world absolutely trounces the bass world in say, in sales. Well, there's so much trolling that you're looking at.

Brian Bashore (56:28.39)
Or tackle junkies. mean, he makes him trolling and I mean, you need help.

Gary Parsons (56:33.762)
You know, all the colors with walleyes where you just need some reds and some greens for bass. And, you know, I'm telling you, you look at what's going on in this fishing industry. You've got Jay Shakur, you've got the two Johnston boys from Canada. You've got Gustafson. You've got some good Southern boys too. But when it comes to smallmouth events, it's over. The Northern guys just absolutely hammer their asses to the ground.

when it comes to average finishes. And I'm telling you, there's, we see it every year in the Sturgeon Bay Open, which is the largest bass event up here. And quite a few of the elites fish it. the, you know, hell, I watched, actually I watched Corey and Chase take money from the Johnstons in the side bets and stuff that are going.

Brian Bashore (57:04.3)
Adam Rasmussen, classic.

Gary Parsons (57:29.838)
Most of the time the Johnsons will just eke them out, but you take the top 20 Walleye guys up here, especially as good as we are with Ford facing Sonar now, and it changes the whole scope of fishing. Now all of a sudden, you're not going to just see all these young guys that are so dominating. Jacob Wheeler is going to have some competition. I would love to see Jacob go up against Tom Winn and like Eric McCoy and some of these guys.

who are really good forward -facing sonar guys up here. I think they may be the only people in the whole country that could beat Wheeler. Honestly. And that is an out, you you wanna start really getting in some tournaments? Have a tournament with three bass and three walleyes and watch the people cry. Because I think that there's a lot of guys.

Brian Bashore (58:01.118)
especially in a 20 mile an hour wind.

Brian Bashore (58:06.65)
Yeah, could be, could be.

Brian Bashore (58:19.258)
Yeah, I think that might be a good next might show. That might be a good show idea. Maybe have a little...

Gary Parsons (58:25.07)
It may be something that we do through the next bite. I don't know you, you know, but you know me, I don't like sitting around and I'll be coming up with ideas like this for, until I probably croak.

Brian Bashore (58:30.054)
Yeah, a little, yeah.

Brian Bashore (58:34.952)
Right.

Brian Bashore (58:40.446)
Yep, those are good ideas of competition. This makes everybody better. know, like Tom and those guys are doing this stuff in 20 mile an hour wins and 30, you know, and keeping that scope down. Yeah.

Gary Parsons (58:50.693)
five foot waves. Let's see that. Let's see the bass studs do that. They're going to have to change their boats.

Brian Bashore (58:57.328)
Yep. Yeah, they usually don't go out with that kind of stuff. So they're be like, how the hell are these guys doing in here? And I don't have it figured out by all means. I kind of need some flat calm and it's a great way to learn it obviously. But once you, you know, master anything, obviously you got to start working in the elements. And I do know that I'll have to get a longer trolling motor shaft on my next boat for sure. Yep. Yep. I'd fish.

Gary Parsons (59:18.414)
All the guys that doing that are going to longer shafts now. They all are. I had a 72 on mine last year and I've got it again on this year's boat. It makes all the difference in the world. I can stay on those fish in some pretty wild weather. My problem is I get thrown off the seat and I worry about going overboard. But as far as the equipment, it can handle it.

Brian Bashore (59:38.151)
Alright.

Brian Bashore (59:44.062)
Yep. Yeah, those, yeah, the boats are, you our boats are obviously a little bigger and heavier and can handle it a little better. But I was fishing next to Tom in a tournament just recently and I couldn't keep my traductor in the water or my motor for that matter, more or less. And I'm like, I'm out, you know, until it laid back down. Then I came over and cracked a couple of decent ones. And that's that's what we weighed in. But Tom won and we got 40 something. So there you go.

Gary Parsons (01:00:04.946)
Yeah. And, you know, Chase and Tom are really good friends. And so they fish together a fair amount. Tom's done quite a few shows for us. In fact, if there are any changes with the next bite, you're going to have the five hosts, but then we're going to start giving a few more allocates and stuff to like, I'd like to work with Eric McQuoid a little bit more as a cohost. talked to Eric about that a couple of weeks ago. He seems pretty excited about it.

Tom obviously Tom Wynn we do work with you know even though he's not aligned perfectly with the sponsors he's made sure that he's been able to hop into one of our boats and share his knowledge with with the public. Same thing with Matt Schiefelbein there's a guy that's a sleeper he's been in the top 10 for the last two or three years so consistently maybe one of most consistent top guys there is right now and so Matt's gonna get a little bit more.

Brian Bashore (01:00:50.11)
That is

Gary Parsons (01:01:03.914)
exposure to that. And that's what I'd like to see with the next bite. You you keep the five main hosts, Cory and, and Tom and Jason and, Chase and myself, you know, they, those, those guys all take care of me more than if, like I was a little kid, right? I don't see Jason's much, but Jason's always so, you know, helpful and knowledgeable and things, but Tom and Cory and Chase, that's, they're like mother hands.

time around. And the bottom line is, you know, those guys are always going to love working with the next bike. And I would love to see the other guys get enough exposure. There's no real platform for the anglers. They can talk all they want about the NWT TV show and stuff like that. But it doesn't single out a lot of these young guys enough to give them enough exposure to even hope to get a sponsorship. Hopefully we can.

we can help with that a little bit. And I think, know, especially with my thoughts, Keith was always open to it, but he was not as proactive as trying to get the young guys involved. I am, I'm passionate about it. And that's exactly why the next bite's still around.

Brian Bashore (01:02:05.202)
Yep, no, it's a...

Brian Bashore (01:02:22.128)
Yeah, and I can second that because I've seen it, you know, from my first NPA conference and then watching you and taking Corey aside and mentoring Corey and talking to these, you know, sponsorship contracts and how do I get these and how do I go about it? And just obviously when you or Keith spoke at conferences, but just seeing you kind of at the corner of my eye, kind of take that guy and, you know, over his shoulder a little bit and try to send him the right direction. think most people haven't seen it and then they missed out.

most of us that are paying attention, they've seen it and that's, yeah, you've definitely made the way and cleared the path for so many of us moving forward and we all appreciate it.

Gary Parsons (01:03:02.732)
Well, I wish I could even do more. You know, the business has treated me pretty well. can't retire because I don't have enough retirement, but that was my fault as much as anything else. No, I've got a really wonderful piece of land up here. Like I said, it's still old.

Brian Bashore (01:03:12.786)
We're fishermen. We never will. We will never retire anyway because we can't sit still.

Gary Parsons (01:03:22.766)
bottom line is, you know, I've had 20 some years with, with a piece of property that I can play with. And, and, you know, I love to, to deer hunt probably, I used to love to deer hunt more than anything. Now I like watching the cameras and seeing if we can grow a nice buck and things like that. So that part is just me and that won't change. I think chase will always be.

as much as he can, as long as he can get support from the industry. We'll always try to keep doing what he's doing. He loves it. It allows him to have some time with his boys. And he's damn good. He's one of the best guys on video there is. And so, I mean, all those guys have turned into, you know, TV stars, really, when you see each one of them could probably host their own show right now.

Brian Bashore (01:04:20.902)
It takes a knack, that's for sure.

Gary Parsons (01:04:22.434)
Yeah, they're very natural on film, but more importantly, they don't come off as hokey and as trying to shove something down your throat because they're not. They're trying to help you catch more fish and show you the different ways guys are doing it. That's what TMB is all about.

Brian Bashore (01:04:40.304)
And they're, yeah, that knowledge base with those guys. like Sedge Keurig, who's been doing this for a long time, they just, they know a lot and they're not gonna keep those secrets. They're gonna share it with everybody. It just makes everybody better.

Gary Parsons (01:04:45.87)
Hmm.

Gary Parsons (01:04:51.82)
Yeah. Well, you know, Jason's kid is still a kid. He learned how to fish through the old man. And I'm not saying whether he's better than his dad. His dad claims he's a way better bass fisher. Well, I don't know. If you put the dollars on the line, Jason Shakir, it's pretty damn tough to beat. He's got a fishing rod in his hand. it's like, it's kind of...

Brian Bashore (01:04:57.096)
Right.

Brian Bashore (01:05:06.234)
Right?

Brian Bashore (01:05:11.82)
It's pretty tough.

Gary Parsons (01:05:19.694)
He's like an unsung hero to me. Jason's got multiple world titles when you stop Quiet he's quiet. He's like Kevin McCoy Kevin McCoy is very quiet, but he's one of the best anglers there is you know in today's world still to this point

Brian Bashore (01:05:25.436)
He's just quiet. He's just kind of quiet guy.

Yep, I was just saying.

Brian Bashore (01:05:36.37)
Yup. And you touched it earlier that there's not a lot of media platforms out there unless you create your own. Like this or your own YouTube or you're hoping for, even NWT is televised, but you may only get a one or two minute shot on a good day. All right. Yup. Yup. it's, know,

Gary Parsons (01:05:44.182)
No, no, there really isn't.

Gary Parsons (01:05:52.236)
Maybe, you know, and that's going out before shows, right? It's going out if you do well.

Brian Bashore (01:06:00.894)
In general, all that guys aren't great at creating a lot of that stuff, even though whether it's on social media. All the platforms and opportunities are there for them, but they're just putting their head down and going fishing.

Gary Parsons (01:06:10.826)
Yeah, and it takes time and money and it takes the desire to do it.

Brian Bashore (01:06:13.22)
It does. The desire and the time, I think, are the two big things that a lot of them probably just lack. Like I said, are not many that just make a living doing the walleye game. They have other businesses and other jobs, so they just don't have the time to build that brand up, in a sense, off their social.

Gary Parsons (01:06:32.81)
So yeah, that's kind of where some of the business stuff goes. We could talk all sorts of business things. I think that there are things to share that might help some guys, but I also think that it's important to keep that upper tier level of anglers going so we still have new news to talk about.

you know, the hot button right now is forward facing, but there's still all kinds of things, you know, what makes a crank pit, what makes the action work compared to the ones that don't. There's, there's all kinds of things. What, why are walleyes more keyed in on color than what bass are? There's, you know, there's so many things we don't know about walleyes still. Yeah. Well, probably forever. I mean, I've got 40.

Brian Bashore (01:07:05.338)
Yes, there is. There is.

Yup.

Brian Bashore (01:07:19.634)
This is

There is still and will be for a long time, but. Probably.

Gary Parsons (01:07:29.708)
years and studying them as much as anyone has. And they're a tremendous fish. They really are. It's almost like they're beyond all the other species. The only ones to me that are even closer, small, is they...

Brian Bashore (01:07:44.83)
Yeah, I said is there a dumb fish or a smart fish? I'm gonna put that wallay into the smart fish category if there is such thing, but it's definitely tricky.

Gary Parsons (01:07:56.694)
Yeah, well, I think that they're temperamental. You know, I think that they can turn on, turn off. They, we don't know why they, they're kind of like talking to women in a way. I'll have every lady in the fishing industry calling me on that one.

Brian Bashore (01:08:08.528)
I was gonna say, sounds like menopause to me or something. Maybe. I don't know. We're both in hot water now, Gary.

Brian Bashore (01:08:19.71)
Yep, 100%. Truth, this is real talk. There's no limits.

Gary Parsons (01:08:26.306)
Yeah, smallies are close. They can be pretty persnickety at times, but then they can be suicidal at times too. So they're very similar in some instances. Larges, largemouth are their own world. They're for the most part a shallow water fish. There are times in the winter where they go deep, but they're pretty easy to catch in those times because they're fairly aggressive. So, yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:08:40.508)
Yeah, they are.

Brian Bashore (01:08:53.278)
They are. You've left that that's a probably a good place to wrap it up. You've left everybody with a whole bunch of cliffhangers. So we're going to have to do this several more times to break down a whole bunch more of these these you know these topics. I know sponsorships huge for people. You know we talked a lot about the net next Biden. What's up and just your career path. The story alone is inspiring and I think that's it's going to drive a lot of you know anglers to take that leap and make those moves and but the business side of this thing that.

That's a podcast of its own and nobody better to explain that than yourself.

Gary Parsons (01:09:24.781)
Yeah, yeah, and I'm not going be as interesting to the general public, it would be, it should be interesting to some of the young guys that are trying to go to that upper level and maybe get more serious about this.

Brian Bashore (01:09:40.028)
Yeah, I mean, get, Chase can speak to that as well. We get a lot of co -englers in the boat and I was like, you doing this just to do it? You know, or are you and half of them are like, no, I want to move up. You know, I want to try to make a career or do it or something. We're like, no, I'm just trying it out. I'm only going to fish aim or MWC or something like that. I'm just trying to expand my knowledge base by fishing with you guys. But like I said, half of them are looking, looking to make, make the move. it's like, there's a lot more to it than just catching fish.

Gary Parsons (01:09:50.84)
Yeah. yeah.

Gary Parsons (01:10:07.852)
Yeah. And I mean, it's almost like, it's almost like a chess game in some way, shape or form. And then you're, you're dealing on the sponsor end with a lot of people who don't really follow. Most of them don't follow the tournament thing. You know, we work with a company right now called Whitewater and a clothing company. Fantastic guys. Most of them are Cabela's.

buyers and yeah, yeah, Aaron, Aaron is a wonderful guy, but he's just an example of all the people that work there. And, they follow the tournaments. They follow everything that their pros are doing. In fact, I would bet when some of these tournaments are going on, half the offices is watching their, their computer screens. And those guys are the most sincere guys that we work with.

Brian Bashore (01:10:37.916)
Yeah, Aaron Amber was on one of our early episodes,

Brian Bashore (01:10:50.642)
Nowhere.

Gary Parsons (01:11:06.794)
in terms of building better products and stuff too. Honestly, are a tremendous company and I fully expect them to be one of the biggest players in clothing in a very short period of time. Their clothing is unbelievable because of the fact that they listen to all of us. They bring us in multiple times and multiple phone calls and stuff constantly tweaking little things with what they're bringing out.

It's the same organization that makes scent lock and scent block. So you know these guys aren't screwing or how. They're the real deal.

Brian Bashore (01:11:34.11)
It's

Brian Bashore (01:11:37.542)
Yep.

No, got the Great Lakes bibs and code and hands down the most comfortable rain gear I've ever had by a long shot.

Gary Parsons (01:11:50.484)
Yeah. And wait till you put the insulated ones on. are good. Yeah. They're, they're unbelievable. So, But I mean, that's the, you just still have some good old fashioned companies out there that, that do work with the anglers and do certain things. Then you have others that are pretty big corporations and they're all handled differently. Every one of them are handled differently. So that is the one thing that, you know, I've always offered it.

Brian Bashore (01:11:53.565)
Yeah.

Yep, I'll be looking for those for fall and winter.

Gary Parsons (01:12:20.706)
And as long as I know someone's serious and they're not going to waste my time, you know, I'm always open to helping anglers out. Some of the young superstars, I'm not kidding you, some of them need some help, some of them are doing okay, but they don't realize what they could be doing. Getting involved with R &D is a big deal with every one of these companies. And we're seeing the industry trying to shut that out more.

Brian Bashore (01:12:30.418)
Beacon it.

Brian Bashore (01:12:34.856)
Bye y 'all.

Brian Bashore (01:12:42.034)
Yeah it is.

Gary Parsons (01:12:48.428)
because they don't like paying royalties. the bottom line on it is when you help a company make a lot of money, which in some aspects, every one of these anglers do, they should be rewarded for that. it shouldn't be just buy a pat on the back and a couple of free rods. It should be more than that. And that's the business aspect that Chase and I try to talk to people about. Everyone with the next bite.

Brian Bashore (01:12:52.126)
for it.

Gary Parsons (01:13:18.432)
realizes that. Chase has helped Tom win off quite a bit. you know, I think it's pretty obvious I've helped Corey a lot. And so has Chase. They're best friends and they talk business now that I don't even get to hear about, which is fine because they're both very smart young men and they know the game. so, yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:13:33.182)
Yep, which is good. That's... Yep.

Well, speaking of leaving them with some info, you got a little nugget to help some of these guys on their way. Just a quick tip for the future angler out there looking to move up in the tournament world or just make his weekend fishing better little nugget.

Gary Parsons (01:13:54.806)
Yeah, I think a good thing to think about is every one of these companies need content. know, the one major shift that has happened in the world of fishing companies is that they all are trying to do their own thing. They're trying to send out emails to everybody so that they can sell their products through email. They're trying to come up with their own social media outlets.

They, for them to get even photos of a lure, they have to hire an ad agency because a lot of the people within the organization aren't capable of taking a good photo. So they hire agencies and they pay these agencies a lot of money. One of the things that you could do is to come up with a game plan where if you approach a company and first of all, you got to know the right person to talk to. And has to be someone more up the ladder than what you think usually.

So you got to find out and get a meeting with that person, but you can't come into it with a game plan where I'll fish these tournaments and you just pay my entry fees. That's not going to work anymore. They have thousands of anglers doing that. You've all heard that same, same scenario. It's true. You know, if you, you hear someone like Michelle Kilburn from Mercury, she gets thousands of applications every single year. And, you know, so you're just one more of the yapping dogs that are.

coming after trying to get a sponsorship. But if you can come in and help them in an area where they need help, and that is always in photographs and little video clips and things like that, you know, taking cool photographs is a big deal for them. And it's a big deal for every one of the companies. And we're on the water all the time, so you see that special sunset. You see the...

sunrise you see the steam coming off the water in the morning just take your damn time and stop for that second it's only going to cost you a minute of your fishing time and snap some photos if you've got a high -end iPhone or a good a really good Android device you know have my my Android phone and I've got a one plus open it's got Hasselblad lenses in it

Brian Bashore (01:16:01.768)
for it.

Gary Parsons (01:16:20.01)
is, you know, those are some of the highest quality lenses in the world of cameras. And so some of these really good phones will take, you know, cover quality photos, and which the ad agencies don't have even a chance of that. You have this giant fish laying on your carpet with a lure, you know, that you just caught it, snap a photo of it, and then collect it for each company and make sure that

people will get their hands on some of these things. Now you're going to find that you're going to give a lot of it to the people and get lost in the shuffle, right? And you'll say, well, damn, I took 20 photos I to mass bro shops and they didn't even use them. Well, the bottom line is, as sooner or later, someone's going to use them. And the bottom line is you get credit for helping them at that point in time and you become valuable to them.

Brian Bashore (01:17:10.768)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (01:17:19.022)
pretty soon they'll start leaning on you. I mean, we supply photos and video through the NextBite to all the companies that are on our shirts. And that has been probably the biggest change. And it's one nobody talks about. It's one that is, to me, is way more helpful than a lot of the social media that is being done right now. Yeah, and you know.

Social media is in itself, I think that we could talk a long time. I'm by no means an expert at it, but I have a lot of thoughts about it. There are companies that I deal with right now that think it's the end all. That's the only way that you can disseminate information. No, that's not necessarily the truth. Th grassroots is still way stronger than any of them realize. there's still, you know, social media is part of that. Don't get me wrong.

Brian Bashore (01:17:59.356)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:18:10.126)
It's hard to monetize all those people you talk to at the gas station or after a tournament or to articulate that to those sponsors of... Right.

Gary Parsons (01:18:14.696)
Well, you can't. They can't measure it. But they can't even measure Facebook like or any of that stuff. You know, they think they can. They want to tell you they can, but they can't. They don't know if that's turned into a sale. They might be able to do conjecture about it later. But, you know, spread it out. This Twitter, which has turned to X, is a big deal now. There's, know, when Elon Musk does, he just did a...

Brian Bashore (01:18:21.278)
All right.

Gary Parsons (01:18:44.91)
a kind of impromptu poll on what president they're going to vote for. Instead of getting a sample of a thousand people where the sampler is only called, you know, certain group of people, it was kind of a skewed deal. Elon has, he showed the statistics of conservatives, the liberals, all of that. They're all about equal in that 30 % range. So he's got a pretty well -rounded group.

Brian Bashore (01:18:56.238)
One side.

Gary Parsons (01:19:10.958)
of people that follow his platform. And it's a platform, right? You gotta look at it as a platform. So when he asked that question and he gets these huge numbers that are, you know, there were like 6 million replies in two days. That's not a thousand, that's 6 million. That's a pretty good cross -section of what's going on in the country.

Brian Bashore (01:19:15.23)
Thank you.

Brian Bashore (01:19:34.802)
It's a little more legit polling than the thousand phone calls that were made.

Gary Parsons (01:19:36.52)
Yeah. Yeah. And then you see the real results and your eyes go, whoa. You know, and that's not the story that's being painted. And we could get into the politics end of things, but bottom line on it is, is you can utilize a format like that too, to grow your, your social media presence. Where Facebook would algorithm you to death.

And you only have 25 people that see your stuff, even though you have 20 ,000 followers, you might be able to do better by spreading yourself through all the different venues, YouTube, all the, you know, rumble, you name it. that's, yeah, that's what we're trying to do too at The Next Bite is have so many fingers out there that, in ways to teach people. And then grassroots does make a big difference because sooner or later you're going to hit people that are going to say, I want to learn how to fish more.

Brian Bashore (01:20:14.258)
Yeah, it's it's getting trickier.

Gary Parsons (01:20:31.776)
I'm going out and get this product so that, and then you've helped the company that way too.

Brian Bashore (01:20:36.798)
I've said it for years as the social media stuff's an avenue and it's a tool you need to use it, but you don't own it. And it can go away tomorrow. And what's plan B? You you got the emails, you got the webs, these things you own and have, and a lot of that can go away too, obviously, but not with the click of a button. You have more control over your assets and a bit of your assets. Our world is your following and your fans. And you gotta be able to reach them outside of gas stations and sports shows and working at the...

Gary Parsons (01:20:44.252)
yeah.

Gary Parsons (01:20:58.712)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:21:05.374)
local Bass Pro shops on the weekend type thing, that's great, but when you can reach 40, 50 ,000 people in a matter of minutes versus four or eight hours, you need to keep something in your back pocket.

Gary Parsons (01:21:14.414)
And that's the thing. So I gave a seminar at the NPA a few years ago. You asked for that last tip, And this was supposed to be part of it. But I told the young guys, they were all high schoolers that were in fishing clubs. And I said, I'm going to be a little different than the rest of these guys. When you go through high school and you go through college, all these companies are going to be sitting there.

Brian Bashore (01:21:22.716)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (01:21:29.179)
Yeah, there was a lot of them.

Gary Parsons (01:21:41.942)
you're going to be able to use their products for free and you're be able, you know, they're sponsoring the teams and all that kind of stuff. And the fishing industry looks like a really, really fun industry to be in. I said, and then you're going to graduate and then you're going to talk to these same people who are, were sponsoring all the high school things and stuff and you are going to go nowhere. I said, so your first level is to become a stud fisherman.

And you need to hone that level of skill to the point where you can open somebody's eyes when you enter into the big leagues. And so for all of you that are fishing team events, that's what you're trying to do and that's good. But you need to do more than just what you do at school. You have to study the fish that you're going after. You have to basically get to be better than a guy who's 40 years old and has been doing it for 20 years and probably could kick your ass around the block without trying.

Now with forward -facing sonar, I think it gets easier for the young guys, right? Because it's way shorter, you know, like Chase's son, oldest son, is already really good at it because he's been playing video games his whole life, And so for him to pitch a jig out on top of fish's head is like nothing, it's child's play. Those guys have been going out and catching co -hosts and kings by throwing jigs at

Brian Bashore (01:22:44.446)
Learning curve is definitely short in the period.

Brian Bashore (01:22:53.988)
Right, boy.

Brian Bashore (01:23:01.426)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:23:09.231)
fine, fine.

Gary Parsons (01:23:09.494)
of the open water. If you could believe that, Chase, that's what Chase and Logan have been doing lately. Logan is out fishing the old man all the time. So it's kind of cool, but that's what the young guys have. They can actually have an easier time at it now too, because I think that they can catch on to what's really doing well in the tournament world. But I think that's the first thing that you have to do. You have to be good enough that you can develop a reputation.

Brian Bashore (01:23:18.661)
you suck. Alright.

Gary Parsons (01:23:39.47)
When you get a reputation, your reputation is basically your open door to being able to have other anglers listen to you. Okay. If you're constantly taking 80th place in the tournament circuit, I don't care at what level, people are going to say, yeah, you fish tournaments, but can I really learn anything from them? If you are like a John Hoyer and you've come up with some innovative things or a Dewey Hell, who lately has been doing really well or Eric McCoy or.

Tom Nguyen, Corey, any of these guys that have developed their reputation and have that reputation, then you can talk to people and they'll listen and they'll want to learn from you. If you don't get that respect from your peers, you're not going to help the company at all. And it's not that Corey's trying to sell something to Tom Nguyen, but I guarantee you that when Tom Nguyen talks about something,

They want to know exactly what he's doing so that they can become better anglers too. And so that's, that's the way that whole game works. So it's, it's kind of like when Michael Jordan got involved with Nike, right? He's just, it was his reputation of being the best basketball player in the world. There's still a lot of people that think he is or was at that time. And, you know, he was able to bring that, that attention getting persona.

Brian Bashore (01:24:51.325)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (01:25:06.302)
into the world of Nike shoes. this is no different. This is no different. And if you do things the right way, if you have that background in fishing, where you can answer every question that there is given to you about fishing, and you have the admiration of your peers, then you can do whatever you want in the fishing world. So that's the first step. And the second step then is to dig into the business end of things. And there's not a lot of people you can turn to for that.

But I know in the Northern marketplace, you know, we're here. Jason and I both feel those questions all the time. I helped teach Ted the business, Ted Takasaki, the business of fishing. And at the same time, I worked with Mike Wilfront a lot. But, you know, Mike, who probably is better fisherman than Ted or myself, runs a big construction business in Illinois in the summer.

He gets so busy during the rest of the year that he wouldn't work on his business aspects of fishing very much. And basically he never did get the big, big sponsorships and stuff. And then when times got tough, he got caught and he got bitter. And so then he didn't fish tournaments much anymore. know, Kimo said it best. Yeah, see, you know, every once in while, Michael come up, especially on a Green Bay tournament, he likes to fish those.

You come up and say, I see GoFront came up and took our money again. You know, and that's coming from the past and he's competing against all kinds of young guys that don't even know who Mike GoFront is. And he's cashing checks just like he used to. And Mike's probably pushing 60 some, 65 maybe. But the bottom line on it is, is anyone could learn the business end of things, but you have to commit to it. And, you know, Ted committed to it.

Brian Bashore (01:26:37.288)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (01:26:48.754)
He's a stick.

Yup.

Gary Parsons (01:27:02.89)
He was the president of Lindy Little Joe for years. That's pretty cool.

Brian Bashore (01:27:05.948)
You know, it is, he's a, he's got quite a story as well. That is a, that is, that's the tip. That's, that's it people. There you go. How to, you know, work in the business and the sponsorships. think what Gary's basically saying is separate yourself from the pack, you know, by having the little, the little niches and the photos.

Gary Parsons (01:27:10.968)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (01:27:23.084)
Yeah. And you can learn that upper echelon, that reputation getting stuff by fishing as a coangler on the end of the day. You know, I'd rather see young guys learn the right way than to struggle around in team tournaments and stuff and not have the exposure to some of these really talented anglers. Because there is no doubt that some of these anglers are a step above normal. There's no doubt about it.

Brian Bashore (01:27:30.79)
for sure.

Gary Parsons (01:27:52.242)
And you've heard a lot of their names, you know, in this last hour or whatever we've been talking, you know, the Hoyers, honestly, the, you know, all the guys that are pretty much stars on the NWT right now. They, to get it, to get a day in the boat with them, it would be invaluable. My biggest regret is having Tommy Scarless as one of my best and worst friends. We fought as much as we loved each other.

was not to spend a couple of days on the river with him. It's my biggest regret. The guy was maybe the best river fisherman there ever was. And, you know, he passed and that knowledge is gone. Well, for the guys that fished the tournaments with him and were in his boat and, and had that experience, man, you were lucky people.

Brian Bashore (01:28:27.342)
Yep, yeah, gotta do the river.

Brian Bashore (01:28:49.68)
One of my one of my guides got full rich fished with him as a co at doubles lake a few years back would have been one of those last years and he's got the best stories and the best. didn't didn't have a great day, but they had an amazing day. And I mean, it's got like it doesn't do that. He just guides now. But yeah, that's that's memory is gonna last him the last time they learn so much, not even so much just about fishing. But this is after Tommy had fallen from.

Gary Parsons (01:29:02.744)
Yes.

Brian Bashore (01:29:16.51)
trees standing and just so much just life in general. He was like that was he talked all the way home just stories and I mean I remember most of them and I could talk for an hour about them but maybe I'll just got on here talking about them someday but it was yeah something he'll cherish forever.

Gary Parsons (01:29:17.634)
Yeah.

Gary Parsons (01:29:30.72)
And every one of these upper echelon guys have that to share. Right now, I'd love to fish a couple of days on the reservoir with Dewey. I'm a good reservoir stick. think that, you you look back at all the top finishes I've had there, I would be qualified as one of those. But I think Dewey's doing some special things and I'd love to see how his brain ticked. know, those are the types of guys you get a chance to have a crack at.

Brian Bashore (01:29:35.475)
Yep.

Brian Bashore (01:29:54.984)
Yep.

Gary Parsons (01:29:59.118)
compete at first to learn from. can't, you want to separate yourself? That's how you separate yourself. Because when you go back home to the home crowd, you'll kick their ass.

Brian Bashore (01:30:07.74)
Yes, no.

Brian Bashore (01:30:11.92)
Yep, you will. There's no doubt about it. Newy's been doing that to plenty of us over here in Dakota for quite a while.

Gary Parsons (01:30:16.501)
yeah, yeah. I've turned from a stud to a donator myself.

Brian Bashore (01:30:20.828)
Yep. Yep. Yep. It's just the life lessons and the learning curve sometimes costs a little bit, but pay attention, pay attention to what these guys are doing out there. And we're not always right or doing it the right way, but just pay attention because it's so small details and how to carry themselves on and off the water and all these things that just make you a better angler and person.

Gary Parsons (01:30:26.168)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:30:44.068)
Awesome Gary, this is good stuff. We've been on here for a while and we're definitely going to have to revisit you because we got a lot, a lot more to talk.

Gary Parsons (01:30:50.597)
I'm an open book anytime you want. This is fun.

Brian Bashore (01:30:54.376)
Let's wish you some good health, speedy recoveries and hope to see you back on the water, wherever that may be and whatever capacity that may be. But nonetheless, we'll be watching some.

Gary Parsons (01:31:05.26)
Yeah.

Brian Bashore (01:31:06.418)
on camera, behind camera, wherever. I know I love it. I love the show. I think everybody loves it. And we'll drop some links on here. I'll pick a show that features Gary in it. We'll put that down here in the links below as well as a few other things. So all those viewers can watch it. But other than that, thanks for your time, Gary. And like I said, we will definitely get you back on here again. And thank all you for tuning into this episode of Real Talk Fishing with No Limits. And stay safe and we'll see you on the water.