Thanksgiving with the Pros

Food, family and relaxation top the list

With tournament season on hiatus for the holidays, FLW pros have a couple months before the start of the 2019 FLW Tour season to tackle to-do lists, spend time with family and prepare for another long stretch both on the water and traveling between events. This time of year, at least, most of those responsibilities are pushed to the back burner in favor of quality time with loved ones, big meals and maybe a couple post-Thanksgiving meal naps.

We talked to FLW pros James Niggemeyer, Nick LeBrun, Wes Logan, Todd Castledine, Tom Monsoor, Casey Scanlon and Darrell Davis to find out how they spend their Thanksgiving time off and what they love most about the holiday.

It’s all about the turkey

What does a traditional Thanksgiving meal look like for you?

Tom Monsoor: I have the traditional beautiful roasted-golden-brown turkey full of stuffing. It’s the best. I’ve tried other stuff. I’ve tried them fried. There’s only one way to do it: in the oven, stuffed. That’s the best turkey there is in the world.

Wes Logan: We normally just do the traditional stuff: turkey and dressing. Sometimes we’ll cook deer meat, like tenderloins and stuff like that, but most of the time it’s just traditional stuff. My favorite has to be turkey and dressing.

James Niggemeyer: My mom is from the Philippines, so we used to have everything – you name it. Now I live in Texas, so we just pretty much have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, cranberries, some sort of vegetable, and pecan or pumpkin pie.

Non-traditional fare

Is there anything you eat that might not be considered a traditional Thanksgiving food?

Nick LeBrun: There was one that’s traditional to me. It may not be traditional to anybody else; it’s sweet pea jambalaya. That’s something that my aunt makes, and it’s kind of a Cajun, Southern-type thing. That’s probably the only off-the-beaten path thing we eat. It’s legit.

Darrell Davis: We normally have deer meat. I love eating deer meat on Thanksgiving. It’s fall season, hunting season. We still do turkey, but we have deer meat, too.

Todd Castledine: I actually almost hate Thanksgiving food. I like turkey meat, rolls, and maybe I’ll eat green beans and some of the other stuff. But all that other stuff they make, sweet potato stuff and all kind of dressings and all that, I don’t like any of that stuff. My wife, she has a tradition of making these homemade noodles. I love them. It takes them a couple hours to make them.

The great pie debate

When the meal is over and the dessert comes out, what’s your go-to pie?

Niggemeyer: It’s got to be pumpkin. Pecan is really good, and it’s a close runner-up, but for Thanksgiving, it’s got to be pumpkin.

Davis: Pumpkin pie, man, that’s it. They normally make me my own pumpkin pie because I eat the whole thing.

LeBrun: I’m a chocolate guy. My wife makes one of the best chocolate pies in the world. I’m kind of spoiled when it comes to that.

Monsoor: Blueberry. I love blueberry pie. For some reason that’s always been my favorite.

Logan: I don’t know if I would go with pie. I like pie, and chocolate pie would be my favorite as far as pie goes, but I’m more of a banana pudding guy. My grandmother makes my favorite, so that’s normally what I eat.

Casey Scanlon: I’m not really a pie guy, honestly. Usually I go for the vanilla ice cream. I just double up on the ice cream.

What it’s all about

What are you most looking forward to about Thanksgiving?

Monsoor: You get to see the grandkids. That’s really special. That’s one time of the three times of the year (including Christmas and Easter) you actually sit down with everybody and just play with the grandkids, and everybody sees each other. Nowadays, that doesn’t happen a lot.

LeBrun: It’s just all about family. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it gets everybody together with a great meal. Everybody’s taking time away from work or whatever they’re doing. Just spending time catching up and visiting, and you get to be around some people you haven’t seen in a while. That’s what it’s all about.

Niggemeyer: I think being bored with family is where the memories are really made. Just kind of sitting around and having no agenda, just to kind of relax and be with each other and do whatever. I think that’s the best part – and eating a lot. We usually end up inviting somebody who has no place to go. We just kind of invite somebody, and we usually find somebody that ends up coming out.

Castledine: We always go to my wife’s parents’ house, and then we go to my mom’s house, and then my sister and their family, so we’ll end up going for two or three days so our kids can hang out with their kids. It used to be a lot of games. Playing 42 (a dominoes-based game) and things like that, that was a staple. Now that we have kids we have to wait until they’re old enough to start playing that stuff. It was like 42 until like 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, or playing cards, and it was every night for three or four nights in a row. We’d do that like six or eight hours in a row. I can still do it, but the kids have a couple more years.

Time for the great outdoors

What about fishing?

LeBrun: I might go fishing a time or two if my wife is shopping the weekend after or something like that. I really try to focus on family and put them on the front burner. I may slip off if I hear they’re really biting somewhere. We may go jack them somewhere, but family is the most important thing.

Logan: A lot of times a couple of my cousins will come down Thanksgiving morning and we’ll go deer hunting, and we’ll hunt until lunchtime and then everybody will go do their thing. But a lot of times we’ll go deer hunting that morning, and we’ll go again in the evening. And if it’s warm, sometimes we’ll go crappie fishing. We’ll just go in the outdoors and do one or the other.

Davis: This year we’re going to the lake house and may be going out on the pontoon boat for the afternoon after we all eat dinner. It’s a change-up tradition this year.

Black Friday shopping

Do you or anyone in your family like to do the Black Friday shopping thing?

Niggemeyer: I’ve done that one time with my mother-in-law because we had specific must-have items that we went in and sniped and got out of there, but other than that, no, no, not at all. We just got up way too early. It was a mess. You can get everything online anymore.

LeBrun: My wife normally gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning. She likes to shop, and I think this year her and my mother-in-law are going to hit it pretty hard. They enjoy it, so I don’t mind playing Mr. Mom when my wife wants to go enjoy something she likes.

Logan: My mom and my girlfriend will go sometimes, but that’s just if they need something for Christmas shopping. They don’t go crazy over all the deals and stand in line for hours and hours. They don’t do all that. I don’t either. The deals really aren’t all that good.

Scanlon: My mom and her sisters get together and plan all that stuff out. I’m usually in a turkey coma the day after Thanksgiving still, so I’m not a big Black Friday kind of guy. I’m too busy trying to re-gift all the other stuff from the rest of the year, so I’m getting that stuff together at that point.

Castledine: No, thank goodness. Not one person will ever leave. We don’t understand it; we don’t get it. I’ve never known anyone in our family to go shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving. I don’t get it. I hate shopping anyway.