REALLY SMALL FISH IN REALLY BIG POND
Time from home, self-doubt make Bassmaster tour tough on rookie
For the second consecutive day, Darrell Ocamica cast his lure fruitlessly into the murky waters of Many, La. He drifted in his boat along a shoreline without the satisfying yank of a big bass at the end of his rod. The scant fish he reeled in were too small to keep. It was only a practice day before an early April fishing event, but Ocamica, 40, started thinking he bit off more than he could chew as a rookie in the Bassmaster Elite Series.
That night, he called a friend.
“I’m ready to come home,” Ocamica said.
He had given up a comfortable job as a maintenance manager and left his wife and three young sons behind in New Plymouth, Idaho, so he could fish professionally. He had mixed success at tournaments in Jefferson County, Tenn., and Okeechobee, Fla.
After he had spent the majority of nearly 10 weeks on the road, the chase for his lifelong dream became a torturous wait on the Toledo Bend Reservoir in Louisiana.
An angler idling on a lake feels like a nomad in the desert.
“It gets to you, dude,” Ocamica said.
He stuck it out, and in the next tournament in Jackson, Miss., finished with a haul good enough for 48th place out 109 professional anglers.
Ocamica’s ebb and flow of self-doubt and confidence as a Bassmaster angler will be tested again between Wednesday and Sunday at a tournament on Lake Sam Rayburn in Lufkin. It will be the fifth of nine Elite events this year. In each, the top 51 finishers receive cash prizes, and the winner nets $100,000.
An Idaho native who looks more suited for a skate park than a pond with his soul patch and forearm blanketed in demonic tattoos, Ocamica has won $30,000 after finishing in the money three times. He placed 38th at his first Bassmaster Classic — bass fishing’s Super Bowl, which Ocamica has eyed since he began prodding the Payette River at 8 years old — in March on Lake Conroe.
He qualified at an open tournament in November 2016 for a spot on the pro tour.
“I have too many ‘what ifs’ in my life,” said the lean 6-4 athlete, who wishes he had attended college, where he believed he could have competed in basketball and track. “Now I’ve got a third stage to be able to do this: professional fisherman.”
Except for flying to Orlando for a family cruise, Ocamica had never ventured farther east than Houston before the Classic. Since then, he has endured a 34-hour drive over three days from Idaho to Florida. Bassmaster anglers each will rack up 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year towing their boats in trucks that exhaust fuel tanks like cans of Red Bull.
The 150 to 200 days of the year away from home and the costs to compete discourage some hopefuls. Anglers spend roughly $80,000 on bass boats and must pay $50,000 to enter the Elite Series.
Sharing the passion
Ocamica relies on a benefactor, who he did not wish to name. That luxury made ditching his $40,000 annual salary job easier. Competitors must finish the tour in the top 70 to qualify for the next season, but rookies have two years to get their feet wet.
Pro anglers confront a catch-22 between winning and sponsorships. They need top finishes to increase their exposure, but they also need endorsements to obtain the best technology, like fish finders with 3D imaging.
Promotion is as much of a hustle in the sport as tracking bass. Before the Bassmaster Classic, 52 anglers posed for photos in their boats parked outside Minute Maid Park along Texas Avenue like a fleet of sports cars. Ocamica peered over at veteran Skeet Reese, an eight-time BASS winner with more than $3 million in winnings, whose yellow jumpsuit boasted more logos than a race car.
“I’m a really, really small fish in a really, really big pond,” Ocamica said.
Ocamica was not originally granted a chance on the tour. At a November tournament for amateurs, he finished second, behind Ryan Lavigne, of Gonzales, La. Turning pro was Lavigne’s dream, too, but he declined the invitation. He worried about walking away from a stable job as an oil refinery operator. He considered the potential risks for his 3-year-old daughter and pregnant wife.
“I wasn’t ready to put her and my wife through hard times if I didn’t make it on the tour,” Lavigne said. “Once you leave your everyday life and go fishing for a living, if you don’t catch them, somebody might not eat.”
Ocamica extols Marni, 37, his wife of 16 years and an accounting manager, for encouraging his pursuits. After their first date, Ocamica showed her his fishing rods rather than his romantic interests. She said it took weeks for him to “put a move on me.”
She developed a fishing fixation once she understood Ocamica’s passion. They named their firstborn Fisher three days after Ocamica made his first pro tournament. Ocamica looked at the ultrasound and said: “This looks just like my fish finder.”
Marni’s friends have joked that she now is like a “single mother” caring for three sons — Fisher, age 11; Jaxson, 8 and Jerret, 5 — but she bares the responsibilities proudly. She has wanted Ocamica to fish full time.
“We always talked about: What if you got that chance?” Marni said.
That long-awaited opportunity moved them to tears when Lavigne passed up the tour. After Ocamica received the invitation, he and Marni went on an errand but instead sat in the truck for 30 minutes to debate the logistics of their new life apart.
For all of her cheer and humor, Marni also is a crier. Her baby face showed stains from tear trails after Ocamica gave her a kiss the morning of the Bassmaster Classic. Her blue eyes went bloodshot that night when she watched him ceremoniously hoist a bass in each hand at Minute Maid Park. She cried in Ocamica’s arms each of the four times they have reunited this season.
Lonely times apart
Countless hours adrift are to be expected among the frustrations of fishing, but the Ocamicas still are wrestling with their separation. They celebrated Mother’s Day early. Fourth of July will be Darrell’s first without his sons. FaceTime has helped them parent together. Darrell instills discipline so well that when the boys misbehave, one asks Marni: “You’re not going to tell dad, are you?”
Nights, when Darrell and Marni usually would watch ESPN while eating cereal, are the loneliest, especially when Darrell does not have wi-fi to FaceTime or good cell service to chat, like right now in Lufkin, Marni said.
In times like these, Marni occasionally turns the lights off inside a walkin closet and sinks to the floor to weep. The smell of Darrell’s clothes comforts her.
“It doesn’t last long, but just enough to catch my breath and reboot,” she said.
In the morning, she will feel better, she said, because Darrell will have found service.
“I’ll get to the lake first thing in the morning and send her a photo to let her know I’m thinking about her,” Ocamica said.
He hunts down a cell signal with the same vigor as he would a bass, sending off a text and casting out a line to start a new day.