If you've followed the FLW Tour at all over the past several years, you've heard of Gabe Bolivar. The Californian was the Tour's Rookie of the Year in 2006, logged Top-10 Angler of the Year finishes in each of his first 2 seasons and made four straight Forrest Wood Cups.

But unless you paid real close attention this past year, you might not know that Bolivar didn't compete. When his FLW team deal with Procter & Gamble (Pringles)

went by the wayside during the last off-season due to the floundering economy, and then a promising independent sponsorship arrangement fell through at the 11th hour, he opted to spend the year framing houses rather than finance a tour campaign on a credit card.

"There was a couple of choices I could've made," he said last week. "Fishing was good for me for a few years and I was able to buy a house not too far from the beach and some other stuff I really liked.

"When the team deal fell through, I didn't have enough money to try and fish and also keep my house and pay my bills. I could've tried to sell the house, but I decided to go to work and keep what I have, figuring that I'd work real hard and that maybe during the off-season the economy would come back and I'd get to fish again."

The Ax Fell Late

Bolivar had planned to fish the Tour this year as late as mid-January. He competed in the first Western FLW Series event at Shasta and finished 12th, and intended to go straight from there to the Tour opener at the Red River in Louisiana.

During the period in between, though, the independent deal he'd been counting on blew up. It mattered little that the Red River event was canceled due to dangerous conditions brought about by weather – his own safety net had been pulled out from underneath him and he had nowhere to turn to find another one.

"I'd been working on that deal for 2 or 3 months, and then it fell apart the week before I was supposed to leave (for Louisiana)," he said. "I had all my eggs in that basket and nowhere else to go.

"I had to either do the whole thing on a credit card or sit out the season, and I'd told myself that if fishing ever got to that point, I'd pull back. Going ahead with things the way they were wouldn't have been the responsible thing to do."

Did he miss it? Big-time.

"Until this year, I don't think I realized how much fun I was having. It's pretty easy to take it for granted and complain about all the late nights when you're staying up rigging tackle and all of the driving and all of the stuff that wears on you.

"When you're getting up every day to go and do a job like construction, you start to miss fishing really fast."

A Valuable Skill

Bolivar said he was fortunate to have construction to fall back on when his plan to fish the 2010 Tour season went awry. He took up the trade right after high school as a means to fund his participation in local tournaments and now qualifies as a journeyman-level carpenter.

He competed in just one other tournament after Shasta (the second FLW Series event at Mead). Most of his recreational time has been spent surfing.

With the changes that have recently occurred at FLW (particularly the return of Walmart), he's hoping that another team deal might be forthcoming. If that doesn't happen and he can't find an alternative route to fund the 2011 campaign, he won't be bitter.

"The way I look at it is, I don't want to dwell on the decisions I've made," he said. "If I never got to fish (professionally) again, I'd be extremely disappointed, but on the other side, for 4 years I got to do something that I completely love, and I was able to buy a house because of it.

"To me, that's a success. Any kind of job you do it for security, to have a place to come home to, and that's what I did from fishing. I'm fortunate to have what I have and I felt like I needed to keep that stuff.

"What happened wasn't because of anything I did, it was just a sign of the times," he concluded. "I didn't leave with any hard feelings and I appreciated the 4 years they gave me, and I want to do it again. I fully intend to fish again – I just need to find a sponsor."

Notable

> Bolivar designed two products last off-season – a wakebait for CL8Bait.com called the Water Voll and a crankbait rod for IROD.

> He'd originally planned to fish all four Western FLW Series events, but his job interfered with the third tournament at the California Delta in June. "We were really busy and I was told that if I was gone, I wouldn't be guaranteed work when I got back. I had to make another decision, and I decided I needed to work."