The Secret To Winning With Gerald Swindle
 Where
It All Began
Editor's Note: Thirty-four-year-old Gerald Swindle
of Hayden, Alabama, this year's BASS Angler of the Year,
has lived the American dream in the last 12 years. As
a $12,000-a-year carpenter, Swindle dreamed of earning
a living as a professional bass fisherman. This year,
Swindle already has earned more than $1/2-million in
his chosen sport. If he stays on track, he may earn
$1 million before December 31, 2004.
" I
started fishing bass tournaments with my dad when I
was 15 years old, in 1984," Swindle says. Then
I continued to fish tournaments until I was about 18
before I started fishing night tournaments with my high-school
buddies on Alabama's Smith lake, my home lake. The only
tournaments I could afford to fish had an entry fee
of $20 per boat for two fishermen. At the same time
I was fishing night tournaments, I learned the craft
of commercial refrigerator installation and repair but
later left that trade to become a carpenter."
Swindle loved rainy days because he'd hook up his boat
and take his boat to work with him. If the rain came
down so hard that he and the other carpenters couldn't
work, he'd take his boat straight to the lake and fish
the rest of the day in the rain. "I always knew
if the rain was falling so hard that we wouldn't work,
I'd still get to go fishing," Swindle says. But
if the rain stopped, and Swindle worked all day, then
when he got off work, he'd go to the lake to fish. "I
was so broke in those days  that
I didn't have money to buy the gas required to get my
car and boat to the lake," Swindle recalls. "So
on many an afternoon, my fishing partner and I would
go to his dad's house and get the gasoline out of the
lawnmower and the gas can for the lawnmower. Then we'd
go to my dad's house and do the same thing so we'd have
enough gas to get to the lake and back to go fishing.
I was dirt poor, but happy when I could be fishing.
Many nights I'd go to a tournament, pay a $20 entry
fee and not have a dime left in my pocket once I paid
the fee. I wouldn't have money to buy a cold drink,
a candy bar or a sandwich after the tournament. If my
partner and I didn't win any money, we'd go home hungry
and thirsty after the tournament.
"This
scenario didn't just happen once or twice. Many, many
nights I drove home after a tournament with my belly
growling and my mouth so dry I could hardly spit. On
the nights we won money in a tournament, I might have
enough money not only to eat that night, but maybe to
buy one or two extra sandwiches to take to the next
tournament. Those tournaments were the good ones."
Swindle remembers his first big win, when his partner
and he won $200 each in a Tuesday night tournament on
Smith Lake. "Right then I thought, 'I can really
make money fishing," Swindle recalls.
TOMORROW: SWINDLE'S EARLY TOURNAMENTS
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