Back Story: The Fishing Mayor
Though Doug Caldwell lives in Kane, Pa., his mind is in Clewiston, Fla. No surprise there.
Kane’s town got its first snow on Dec. 2 – four inches, leaving 116 to go to meet its annual average. It was also 20 degrees the other day. Meanwhile, in Clewiston, balmy breezes are sweeping across Lake Okeechobee and bass are stirring and moving toward the spawning flats.
As much as he would like to be at the Big O, the 73-year-old Caldwell has to bide his time. After all, he’s mayor of Kane, population 4,000, and he has official duties to perform. Besides, the first FLW Tour Open he’s set to fish, on Okeechobee, doesn’t get underway until Feb. 3. A long, hard winter lies ahead for Caldwell, though his anticipation of the 2011 tournament campaign will help keep him warm.
Caldwell is one of those true believers who fishes tournaments just because he loves the whole scene. He’s won more than $100,000 during his FLW Outdoors career that began in 1995. When you crunch the numbers, there’s not much incentive for Caldwell to quit his day job and take up tournament fishing full-time. Not a problem.
The remarkable accomplishment of Caldwell’s tournament career isn’t so much the checks he’s cashed, but that since 1996 he’s fished every FLW Tour Majors and Opens except one, and he’s fished them all as a co-angler. Throughout Caldwell’s back-of-the-boat career, the only Major or Open tournament he ever missed was the 2010 FLW Tour event on Lake Ouachita, and that because he had already qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup and decided to opt out of the Arkansas tournament.
Go figure; it’s not as if Caldwell grew up as a bass fisherman who naturally gravitated to the tournament world. If anything, Kane, Pa., is a bedroom community of nothing less than the vast Allegheny National Forest, and the lakes that Caldwell loves to fish are a long way off in time and distance. Even so, he’s as eager to set off on the 2011 tournament trail as any hot young rookie in bass country.
“If I fish all 14 of the Majors, Opens and the AFS [Northern Division] next year, it will put me over 200 as far as the number of FLW tournaments I’ve been in since 1995,” says the mayor, who’s in his third four-year term. “There’s a guy in town who got me hooked on tournament fishing years ago, and every now and then I threaten to kick his butt for doing it. But, really I truly enjoy every minute I spend at the FLW events -from pre-practicing with my buddies to actually fishing the tournaments”
The secret to his success is no secret, according to the mayor. After practice and talking it over with others, Caldwell develops a basic game plan that takes into account the likely fishing patterns for the lake at that time of year. Once he learns who his partner is going to be, he then asks the pro if he is going to be fishing shallow or deep and whether he’s going to fish upriver or in the lower part of a lake. Caldwell then decides on the tackle he’s likely to need for the next day’s fishing.
Caldwell has qualified for 10 Forrest Wood Cups – including the last four in a row – and his best finish came in 2007, at Lake Ouachita. In the co-angler championship round, Caldwell was pitted against Pete Bridges of Tallapoosa, Ga., who is mayor of that town. The battle of the mayors saw Bridges win the co-angler title, with Caldwell placing fourth.
Caldwell aims to make it five Cups in a row in 2011, and it wouldn’t be safe to bet against him. Through the years, Caldwell has learned a lot from some of the best pros in the business. Like any good politician, he won’t be put on the spot by naming his favorite partners, but he’s quick to add that he’s learned something useful from all of them.
“I got to fish with Gary Yamamoto a while back and he showed me an interesting technique with some of his baits that I’d never seen before,” recalls Caldwell. “It really made a positive difference in my fishing.”
What was Yamamoto’s technique? You’ll have to fish with him to find out, because the fishing mayor isn’t saying.