In it for the long haul
Texas native Jim Tutt holds record for most events fished in FLW Outdoors history
Football has its Brett Favre and baseball its Cal Ripken – tough guys who hold records for consecutive starts in their respective sports. If there’s a parallel Iron Man in the ranks of FLW Outdoors, his name is Jim Tutt.
Though Tutt, 51, doesn’t lay claim to any such titles, nobody has fished more FLW Outdoors events than him. Since 1995, when computer records first started being kept, the Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Treats pro has competed in 235 tournaments. That’s a couple of dozen more than the runner-up, Walmart Bass Fishing League (BFL) and EverStart superstar Dick Shaffer of Rockford, Ohio. And Tutt’s total doesn’t include the dozens of tournaments he was involved in before Operation Bass became FLW Outdoors.
“You might say my first event in what would become the FLW was a Red Man tournament at Toledo Bend in 1989,” recalls Tutt, of Longview, Texas. “I remember I was really, really nervous because in those days the Cowboy Division had the top guns like Rick Clunn, Dreabon Joiner and John Torian ¬- and those boys didn’t mess around.
“Back then, the Red Man tournaments were `draw’ tournaments and I drew a guy from Louisiana named Jimmy Duck. He wound up with 18 or 20 pounds and finished second in the tournament. I didn’t have a fish; I didn’t even get a bite. But what was really amazing to me is that Jimmy just showed up with a rod and reel, and four jigs and a bottle of pork rinds in his pockets. That was it – no tackle box and no changing lures all day.”
Tutt failed miserably in his first test, but the experience challenged him to prove to the fishing world that he had the right stuff to win tournaments. It took him another two years of fishing before he weighed his first limit of five fish. The following season he won his first tournament. It, too, took place on Toledo Bend and Tutt drew Robert Hale, the eldest of the Hale brothers (John and William being the other two) who developed the popular Hale’s Craw Worm trailer.
“Robert Hale was `the man’ then, the guy to beat,” remembers Tutt. “Robert was in his late 60s and taught school in Shreveport, but he had a house on Toledo Bend and knew it as well as anybody. So he put me around fish and I caught about 25 pounds of bass out of the back of his boat.”
By the mid 90s, when Operation Bass was in the process of morphing into FLW Outdoors, Tutt was a BFL regular. His first attention-grabbing win came at a BFL regional on Lake Ferguson at Greenville, Miss. Tutt was the top point finisher in the Cowboy Division that year (and the previous year, for that matter) and the Mississippi River oxbow lake suited his style of shallow-water fishing.
“The really cool thing about it all was that I had been dating my future wife (Margaret, now married to Tutt for 11 years) for about a week, and I told her and my dad that they had better come over to the final weigh-in the next day because I was fixin’ to win that tournament,” says Tutt. “Usually, saying something like that is the kiss of death. Sure enough, though, my dad (Sid), mom (Marybelle), brother (Tom) and Margaret drove up, and I did win. That was a nice payday ($93,733, including cash, a boat and a truck).”
Tutt then migrated to the EverStart series, where he fished the Texas, Central and Midwest Divisions. Looking back on his career, Tutt is proud to note that he earned his way from ground level to the top one step at a time, though it was the EverStarts that gave him the biggest boost.
“I liked the EverStarts from the beginning because they were pro-am rather than draw tournaments, and because they also allowed me more opportunity to learn how to fish for smallmouths and how to fish water different from what I was used to in Texas and the surrounding area,” says Tutt. “All in all, I did well in the EverStarts and won three events. That’s what got me a shot at the (FLW Tour) Majors.”
Tutt qualified as a professional for the Walmart FLW Tour Majors in 1998, but at first he was reluctant to join. His father reminded Tutt that he might never get a chance to reach for the stars, and Tutt heeded the advice. He signed up for the Walmart FLW Majors Division in 1999 and, in his first tournament, at Lake Okeechobee, he placed third. Since then, the happy-go-lucky Texan, who lives on 1,600-acre Lake Cherokee, has been one of the most versatile journeymen in the national tournament ranks.
Two hundred thirty-five tournaments and counting. Ask Tutt why he’s fished so many events, and his answer reflects the feelings of most fishermen who participate in tournaments and aspire to greatness.
“I love fishing and I love competing,” says Tutt. “How many people wake up every morning and say to themselves `I can’t wait to get to work?’ That’s the way I’ve always looked at it.”