MLF Role, Move To FLW Have Revived Stone's Passion

By John Johnson
Editor

Marty Stone had nothing to do with professional bass fishing during 2011 and insists it was an enjoyable year. He worked a regular job that allowed him to be home with his family most evenings and coached nearly 70 games of high-level youth baseball for two teams that his 13-year-old son played for.

The only fishing he did, period, was an occasional cast into the pond behind his North Carolina home. Not once did the bottom of his Bass Cat get wet.

He's getting back to the grind this year, though, rejuvenated by a change of leagues and his role as color commentator for Major League Fishing (MLF) broadcasts. His mindset is a long way from where it was in June 2010, when he wrapped up his Bassmaster Elite Series tenure with a 25th-place finish at Fort Gibson Lake in Oklahoma.

"When I walked away from that event, I was sure I was done," he said. "I remember how I caught them, where I caught them and what the stage looked like, and I stopped for a minute and just looked at the crowd. I really felt like that was it for me.

"My family needed me, my children needed me and I don't regret taking the year off. I'm not going to say I was just going through the motions, but I'd lost some passion for the sport due to all the politics and the (state of) the economy. It was nowhere near as fun as it once was."

A New Beginning

The 46-year-old Stone spent much of last year working as a heating and air conditioning salesman for a company owned by a friend.

"It was a great experience," he said. "I found out that I could do something else and make a good living at it. I worked for some great people and set some sales records.

"I went into it not knowing a hill of beans about the business other than I was dealing with hot and cold. But I've always been able to sell, and I did it well."

He said he was preparing to make another career move late last summer – to a position with wealth-management powerhouse Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. He'd taken six of the seven required tests and had scored well enough to be fast-tracked toward a job offer.

Then along came MLF, and all the investment-portfolio study went out the window. He was brought in as one of the original group of angler/investors for the project, which is a partnership between two dozen pros and the Outdoor Channel, and was given the choice of being a competitor or a commentator. He eventually chose the latter.

"That was a decision I went back and forth with for awhile. For one thing, I'm a part-owner of this thing, and I really felt like that for it to succeed, whoever the color analyst was was going to have to have some credibility. I'm going to say this as nicely as I can, but until you've played the game, you can't really talk about it as a color analyst.

"(MLF commissioner) Don Rucks called me and we had a long heart-to-heart talk about it. He said he wasn't telling me that I couldn't compete, but he was telling me that I could boost the longevity of my career and help this project by doing this. So I got to thinking about it more and more and I prayed about it, and it seemed like a good fit. I truly enjoy that stuff."

In the wake of the initial event (the MLF Challenge Cup, which took place at Lake Amistad in November), he's sure he made the right decision.

"I don't claim to be the best angler ever, but I have had some success at a high level. I've been through it and I know what questions to ask when a guy gets on a run or folds under pressure, or when he catches a big fish or he loses one.

"I had a producer with me the whole time down there and he admitted afterward that somebody who hadn't played the game at that level would've never known what to ask."

Back in the Saddle

The next MLF event won't take place until fall, so Stone needed something to occupy his time between now and then. He's opted to fish the full FLW Tour season (six Majors and four Opens) and next week's Open at Okeechobee will be his first competitive event in 20 months.

"My biggest goal in getting back into competition is to be back in top form by the time the season's half over," he said. "My other primary goal is to gain a spot in the (Forrest Wood Cup). It won't be easy because there's some great anglers over there.

"I'm excited about this. I'll be going to a lot of lakes in a lot of different time periods. I'm probably the worst post-spawn fisherman in the world, but this year I'll get a chance to fish in cold weather, in hot weather, on tidal systems and on northern lakes, and I haven't forgotten everything. Somewhere along the line some instincts will kick in and I'll get back to feeling like what I was for so long, which is a professional tournament angler."

He fished his first tour-level season with FLW in 1997, finishing 2nd in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race, and said he's extremely happy to be back.

"That trail's done a lot of neat little things, adding this and adding that, and it's grown in a responsible manner. (Operations Division president) Kathy Fennel was there when I started in '97 and there's some stability there.

"I designed a jersey for the final day (when the organization's non-competing sponsorship restrictions apply), just hoping that I can make it that far at least one time, and I got 12 of my 16 sponsors approved. Four or 5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

"No trail is perfect," he concluded, "but right now, this is the perfect trail for me."

Notable

> After dropping 25 pounds on a fitness regimen last all, Stone underwent gall bladder surgery and endured a battle with diverticulitis (a stopped-up large intestine) and lost another 10 that he wasn't happy to see disappear. At the moment, his 6-foot-4 frame is a lot lankier than in his Elite Series days. "I'm still a little bit under 200 (pounds), but I'm back to working out and I'm the strongest I've been in 15 years," he said.

> He's vowed to be extremely active in the online and social-media scenes throughout the season. "That's changed this whole sport – how you promote, how you reach out. I'm not the best fisherman out there, but I've always prided myself on being able to hold my own with anybody on the promotional side. I know I need to have a very active website with content that's constantly fresh and I need to keep up with all the blogging and Facebook stuff."

> He'll miss coaching baseball this year, but sees a positive side to that as well. "I think the kids might be glad to see me go. They've already heard every good speech and every bad speech I've got. They're ready for somebody else to yell at them."