By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
The start of the 2017 Bassmaster Elite Series season will be a rough time for Matt Herren, even if he can overcome the pain he's presently enduring and post a couple of solid finishes leading into the Bassmaster Classic.
The 54-year-old veteran from Alabama has a partially torn peroneal tendon in his ankle and is hobbling around in a walking boot. He's been instructed to keep it immobilized for another 3 weeks, and then he'll return to his doctor for further evaluation. If rest doesn't promote sufficient healing, then surgery may eventually be required.
With the season opener at Tennessee's Cherokee Lake just a week away, Herren isn't able to give the tendon as much rest and elevation as has been prescribed.
"I'd love to do that if somebody would pay my bills," he said last week. "If somebody would go to Cherokee and get me a Top-10 (finish), I'd just stay home and try to let it heal.
"That's not going to happen, though. I've just got to suck it up."
Not Sure What Happened
Herren's ankle was bothering him a bit when he made a pre-practice trip to Florida's Lake Okeechobee (site of the season's second derby) a couple of weeks ago.
"I wasn't really wanting to fish," said Herren, who won last year's Toyota Texas Bass Classic and finished 21st in the Elite Series points race to qualify for his sixth Classic. "I went down there specifically to make one lap around the lake. I've been there so many times, but I hadn't been there since 2014 and since then they've had a hurricane and real high water.
"I just wanted to get the lay of the land and see what's changed. I wanted to know where everything was at so I'd know where to start (when he returned for official practice)."
He accomplished what he set out to do, but the pain in his ankle went to an entirely new level when he stepped from his boat to the dock after his second day of exploration.
"Apparently I'd done something to it earlier and didn't know it, and when it finally popped the pain was unbelievable," he said. "It was almost like somebody had poured a bucket of boiling-hot water on it."
He drove home and had the injury diagnosed at an emergency room that Friday night. He stayed off it for the next 3 days, and when there was no improvement by Tuesday morning, he placed a call to Birmingham orthopedist Dr. Kenneth Jaffe, who's helped him manage his ailing shoulders for years and is also treating the knee injury of reigning Angler of the Year Gerald Swindle.
"I have his personal number, so I sent him a text," Herren said. "I told him what the condition of my foot was and asked him what I needed to do, and he said to be at his office in an hour."
Hard to Follow Orders
Jaffe placed Herren's ankle in the walking boot and instructed him to stay off of it as much as possible. But preparing for the new season has required a certain amount of mobility, which is presently a slow and painful proposition for the angler.
"I've been out in my garage limping around, trying to make some upgrades on my boat," he said. "I've been trying to play service tech and get ready to go, but I can't get much done very fast because I can't get around."
He'll ditch the walking boot and don lace-up boots when he gets to Cherokee. He'll use ibuprofen in an effort to keep the pain at a manageable level.
"I can lace those boots up real tight and give my ankle some support, but it's going to be an inconvenience, to say the least. I really ain't got a choice – I'll crawl into the boat if I have to and I'll just have to be careful. If I do something stupid I could tear (the tendon) completely. The goal will be to keep it supported and not do anything stupid.
"The doctor told me that the best course of action would've been to put it in a cast, but he understood my job and he knew that wasn't an option for me. Hopefully I can take care of it and it'll heal itself up."
