Fishing for life
RCL pro and cancer patient Don Wood has one simple goal: to live to see the next walleye opener
“A lot of tournament fishing is attrition.”
– Don Wood
If anybody knows anything about attrition, it’s Don Wood. In August 2002 the walleye pro from Brooklyn Park, Minn., learned that he had contracted multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that attacks plasma cells. Doctors said that his chances of survival looked grim, if not worse.
Just over a year later in October of 2003, after months of treatment, illness and even the loss of vision in his left eye, Wood found himself enmeshed in the heat of a $500,000 fishing competition at the RCL Walleye Championship. And he loved every minute of it.
Attrition? Oh, Wood knows. He knows about the hours spent in the hospital, the nights spent curled up in a ball, his body wracked by a drug-induced nausea, the days his legs are too swollen to stand on comfortably. Fighting cancer is a war of attrition on a completely different level – much more vital than any fishing tournament – and oftentimes the cancer wins in the end.
But Donny Wood had another battle to fight in October, one that he welcomed gratefully, smilingly. He came to the Mississippi River in Red Wing, Minn., and competed against some 240 of the nation’s best walleye anglers for a chance to win the sport’s richest prize. In this, another tournament of attrition – there was record cold and an extremely touchy walleye bite – the odds against him winning were high. But the odds against Wood just being there were enormous.
And he beat them.
Battle of a lifetime
Standing on the back of Wood’s Lund 2025 walleye boat among a small flotilla of RCL competitors practicing on Buffalo Slough in the Mississippi River’s Pool 3, it’s easy to see how anyone gearing up for the big-money tournament could become discouraged. There is a constant, miserable drizzle, and a bitter north wind makes it hard to feel the fishing line. What’s worse is that the fish aren’t biting – not on jigs and leeches nor on bottom bouncers. It’s only two days before the tournament starts and, given the inactive bite and dismal conditions, it looks like it’s going to be a rough one.
But the man bouncing his jig from the front of the boat isn’t disheartened.
“When I start to feel down, I just think about all the other people that have multiple myeloma who aren’t here now,” Wood says.
The American Cancer Society estimates that about 14,600 new cases of multiple myeloma will be diagnosed during 2003, and roughly 10,900 people will die from the disease this year.
When Wood fell off a loading dock on the job in August 2002, doctors found that he had advanced stages of the disease.
“The doctor walked into the room and said, `You know you’re full of cancer,'” Wood recalls, saying that he knew nothing of it until that moment.
It was a serious, career-threatening blow to the 10-year pro fisherman, but it wasn’t the first. A year earlier, he lost the sight in his left eye due to an infection. When that happened, friend and fellow walleye pro Ron Seelhoff told him to keep his chin up.
“He said, `It’s only an eye, man. You’re just going to have to learn to fish closer fish,'” Wood laughs.
Perhaps the eye infection taught Wood something about perseverance. He says it certainly gave him a good dose of humility. Whatever it was, when he subsequently found out about the cancer, he didn’t mope, but went about trying to fight it with a stiff resolve.
Wood enlisted the help of Dr. Mark Dayton at the Parker Hughes Cancer Center, based out of Roseville, Minn., and Dr. Mark Myers of Suburban Radiologists, in St. Paul, Minn., and began a series of treatments to combat his disease. He underwent radiation, chemotherapy and, earlier this year, was the recipient of an advanced medical technique called vertebroplasty. Multiple myeloma weakens bone, particularly in the spinal column, so Myers inserted plastic into Wood’s vertebra to add strength and replace a tumor.
“It’s usually reserved for women with osteoporosis,” Wood says, adding that very few doctors nationwide have performed the new procedure, which can cause paralysis. “It truly is a miracle. This procedure wasn’t around a year ago.”
The vertebroplasty helped put Wood’s cancer into remission, so Parker Hughes helped put Wood back on the tournament trail by covering his entry fees into several RCL events.
“They’re really the only reason that I’m still fishing,” he says.
Devils Lake
At the Devils Lake, N.D., RCL event in June, Wood experienced one of those true tests of spirit that mark a cancer patient’s existence.
After landing a contending sack weighing almost 17 pounds on day one, Wood geared up to make a push into his first semifinal cut. However, he had undergone chemotherapy shortly before the tournament and was feeling its effects.
“I was sick, throwing up that night,” he says, recalling how he doubted if he could fish another day. “I was in the hotel bathroom in a three-point stance. My wife came and she’s standing outside the room. She says: `Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You wanted to do this.'”
It was tough love – and it worked. Wood pulled himself up by his bootstraps, went out the next day and caught 21 pounds of walleye. He finished the tournament in 35th place and earned a berth in the year-end championship.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asks rhetorically.
Thus buoyed by his wife, as well as their two children and a new grandson – “my present,” Wood calls him – not to mention the staff at Parker Hughes, the RCL angler made his determined push to the October championship.
A champion regardless
Back in practice, the rain on the Mississippi River’s Pool 3 shows no signs of letting up, and the walleyes are showing no signs of acting up. As Wood lights the big motor and makes a run about a half-mile downriver to check a spot by the Prairie Island nuclear power plant, the 40-degree temperatures turn the raindrops into little ice spears that seemingly drive through your sunglasses, piercing your face and eyeballs. It is a miserable day of fishing.
But not for Don Wood, who sees any day on the water as a day well spent. He suffers from recurring pain in his feet and he tires easily. He has had blood clots in his lungs and has even had to fashion a custom clip to tie on crankbaits because his fingernails are too weak to do the job. Nevertheless, for Wood, casting for walleyes under almost any circumstance is more than just recreation, or even competition; it’s therapy.
“The thing you have to watch out for with cancer is burnout,” he says. “Fishing helps push me to a new level of endurance. And it’s more than that. When you get up on the morning of a tournament and head down to the lake, there’s that smell – almost like a sweet smell. It gets your adrenaline pumping, which makes me stronger.”
When the sweet smell of fishing competition rolls around to start the championship Wednesday morning, it is definitively cold. Below-freezing temperatures and frosted boat decks at sunrise make for a long couple of days on the Upper Mississippi, perhaps no more so than for Wood. His plan to lock down to Pool 4 and mine a hot spot he found earlier in the week comes up empty, and he posts two goose eggs in the opening round. He finishes the week in 195th place with no keeper fish. Still, he collects $900 just for competing.
However, it’s all relative for a guy in Wood’s position. Pro fishing is challenging and can be rewarding, sure, but it obviously pales in comparison to the mental and physical ordeal of fighting cancer. His goal is simple: All he wants is to stay healthy enough to fish in next season’s walleye opener.
“It would be a nice thing to win, but you’ve got to be realistic,” he says. “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
Lucky man
Perhaps it is meant to be for Don Wood. One night during the championship, he and his wife won $450 playing the slots at Treasure Island, the casino hosting the event.
A good omen, perhaps?
Not only that, after Wood missed the tournament cut, he stayed in Red Wing and kept on fishing despite the conditions – and maybe even directly because of them. The same day that Mark Keenan won $300,000 as 2003 RCL champion, Wood went back to his fishing hole below the dam and saved a little face by landing a nice 6-pound walleye.
Was it redemption after a tough tournament and an incomparably tougher road getting there? Maybe a little, but Wood prefers to look at the road that lies ahead rather than the mileage behind.
“The real hope for cancer is the longer you survive, the more the technology has a chance to help you,” he says.
“You asked me if I felt like I was a lucky man? Yes. Yes I do. When I get to whining too much, all I have to do is think about my wife, my two beautiful kids and my beautiful grandchild. That puts a stop to it.”
Attrition? You bet. If you’re Don Wood, all you can do is keep fishing. And fighting.