Back Story: An Investment in Friendship

If you work in a store, chances are you’ve got your favorite customers. They’re the ones who always have something cheerful to say, or laugh at your jokes even when they’re not funny, or send new business your way, or pay your entry fee into Walmart FLW Tour events. No on that last one? Then that’s the difference between you and John McGoey.

McGoey manages a Goodyear Tire store in Peterboro, Ontario and counts among his best customers a couple who saw to it that he got to fulfill his ambition to fish in a major national tournament, in this case the Walmart FLW Tour Potomac River Open in early June. Jim and Wilma MacKenzie paid his entry fee, which was $4,000, for the simple reason that they like him and appreciate the service he and his store have provided them through the years.

“Jim and Wilma live up here and have a place in Florida, too,” says the 42-year-old Canadian. “They follow all the FLW events held down there and, like me, really get into the tournament scene. Anyway, they knew that I really wanted to fish in one of the Tour events and when I told them I had been contacted by FLW about an opening in the Potomac tournament, they offered to stake me.”

The deal that Jim and Wilma made with McGoey was this: if he won enough money, he could pay them back the $4,000; if he didn’t win anything, he could take them fishing for a day, which must qualify as the most expensive guide fee of all time.

Naturally, McGoey went for it. He had always wondered how his bass-fishing skills would match up against the likes of David Dudley or Dion Hibdon. As might be expected, the Omemee, Ontario resident is a smallmouth specialist, but nevertheless well-schooled in the ways of largemouths. He’s fished the EverStart series the last couple of years, and his track record includes two tournaments on the Potomac River. He finished 78th and 93rd place in those, but the experience taught him a lot.

Maybe the MacKenzies’ faith in him motivated McGoey, or maybe it was just that all his stars aligned at the right time; whatever the reason, the Canadian angler finished 19th in the boater division of the 2011 Potomac Open and won a check for $12,000.

“It couldn’t have gone much better,” he says. “I had a miserable first day of practice, but then started putting together a pretty good pattern the next couple of days. In the first round of the tournament, I caught a 15-8 sack that included a 5 1/2-pounder, and came in with 14-8 and a 4-pound kicker on day two.

“By then, though, I had caught about 90 fish and had really beat my spot up. The third day I only had three keepers and 6 1/2 pounds. So I didn’t make it to the final round, but got a nice check anyway and felt pretty satisfied with what I had done in my first-ever major tournament.”

McGoey might never fish another Open, though the one scheduled for Lake Champlain in September is tempting him mightily, but even if he doesn’t he’s already breaking better than even. The MacKenzies got their money back after helping their pal McGoey prove to himself that he could fish with the big sticks of the Walmart FLW Tour.

Any way you cut it, that $4,000 was money well-spent.