By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
It's been nearly 8 months since Randy Howell won the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Guntersville and only recently, he says, has he stopped feeling like bass fishing's version of the Road Runner – you know, the cartoon character whose legs whirl into a blur as he tries to outrun Wile E. Coyote.
The only difference for Howell was he was trying to keep up with everything he had going on – all of the added demands on his time in addition to fishing another Elite Series season. It made for a more challenging year on tour, but one he wouldn't trade for anything.
"It's hard to even put into words. It's hard to put a phrase to it," he said. "It's been such an amazing bunch of opportunities and an awesome response everywhere I go. It amazes me how many people do follow us, especially after the Classic.
"The last couple weeks have been nice. I haven't had to run around as much. I've had to speak at three or four places, but those were just 1-day trips, little stuff."
To him, it seems like just yesterday he was putting on a crankbait clinic along a causeway on the final day of the Classic at Lake Guntersville en route to his incredible final-day rally that delivered him the title. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw the Elite Series will be making a stop there next April.
"It's going to be so awesome," he said. "When I saw it on the schedule, it was a little bit of a shock because we'd been expecting to see Sam Rayburn. Immediately, I got overwhelmed with the feeling of the last time I was there."
He said he's only been on Guntersville twice since the Classic, both occasions for sponsor events.
"The last time I was there was with Daiwa in May and it was like a surreal experience," he said. "I went back to the bridge where I caught them and people were coming up and congratulating me still."
Opportunity Knocks
The Classic victory not only catapulted Howell into an exclusive fraternity of anglers, it has given him a greater platform to promote the cause of one of his main sponsors, King's Home, a Christian ministry that serves youth, women, mothers and children seeking refuge, hope and help from abuse, neglect, abandonment, homelessness and other difficult circumstances.
"The neat thing is because of the King's Home story and my family's story, the story has crossed over to other places that bass fishing stories never get into," he said. "It's helped attract new followers – women, families and kids. Our story resonates with a lot of people now.
"I'm thankful for my fans everywhere we go, but it's great to see new people getting into it and seeing that it's not a beer-drinking, redneck sport. It's a fun thing you can do with kids and relatives."
In a few weeks, as part of a weekend festival at the King's Home campus in Chelsea, Ala., Howell will help out with a fishing derby and also be on hand as his 2014 Triton is given away as part of a fundraiser for the ministry.
Howell (left) reads the name of the winner of his tournament boat at last year's giveaway at King's Home. This year will mark the fourth year Howell has given his boat away to benefit the Christian ministry.
This will mark the fourth year his tournament boat has been given away as part of a fundraising effort for King's Home. The boat giveaway raised $125,000 last year and he hopes to eclipse that mark this year.
"We can do even more now with this year's boat," he said. "It's the boat I made history in."
Wake-Up Call
Two weeks after his Classic triumph, Howell had to shift back into tournament prep mode for the Elite Series season opener at Lake Seminole. He was admittedly unprepared and it resulted in a 106th-place finish, his first triple-digit showing in a tour event since 2006.
It was the definition of a wake-up call.
"It really was," he said. "I came into that event on such a high. The Classic was still so fresh and I was still on that tour. I came into my house that Sunday when everybody was already at Seminole. Practice was really my first chance to decompress and I didn't even feel like fishing. I was worn out. I almost fell asleep in the boat."
He ran around in practice and marked many of the same bedding fish his competitors had found and after drawing boat No. 102 for day 1, he knew his odds of getting into the best areas were slim. Instead, he started offshore and caught a few fish out of deep trees.
"When I got down the lake and saw everybody Power-Poled down, had I not just won the Classic, I would've gotten in there and grinded it out and picked one off here and there," he said. "I was still riding high and was so confident. I caught a couple big ones out of deep trees and figured, 'This is what I'm going to do.' I caught a couple 3-pounders and lost a 6, but I was going to ride it out thinking I was going to catch a big one. As the day wound down, I only had two fish."
The following day, he knew simply catching a limit wasn't going to help him much, but looking back that may have been his best strategy.
"If I had it to do over, I would've caught a bank limit of Senko fish for 8 or 9 pounds, then gone out deep," he said. "You don't think about all that stuff while it's going on. I tried being a hero again and wound up a zero instead. It was back to reality and my nature is to be a consistent limit-catcher."
The turning point for his season occurred the following week at the St. Johns River as he held the day-1 lead and held on for a 7th-place finish. It started a run of four straight Top-30s and laid the foundation for a 29th-place finish in AOY points.
"That was a big turning point mentally for me," he said. "My confidence was hurt at Seminole. That's why this is the most humbling sport there is. You have to remember the process it takes to get there. It's not about the results. It's about the process.
"The only real fishing I did all year was in tournaments," he added. "I never got to do any pre-fishing. That's not an excuse, but that's how it was. That was different from what I usually do. I try to do a lot of homework and go look at places beforehand to get familiar with them. I fished by the seat of my pants mostly this year. When I see what happens when I get there, it makes me mad for not doing more homework."
Notable
> The Kampfire for the King Festival is scheduled for Nov. 15 at King's Home in Chelsea, Ala. For more information on how to get involved and how to have a chance to win Howell's boat, visit http://www.kingshome.com/news-events.
> Last week, Howell spent a day at Ray Scott's Trophy Bass Retreat outside Montgomery, Ala., filming a segment for an upcoming episode of the Travel Channel show "Trip Flip." Scott's resort will be one of the featured destinations in an upcoming Alabama-themed episode of the adventure show.
