Page 24 - Erath

off until then I’m going to be down there looking,” Stoker said. “Basically what you’re doing is trying to fnd the fsh. They’re going to move, of course, but if I can fnd them today and stay with them every week until the tournament, I’ll know where they are.”

He said the time he spends away from his family in pre-fshing mode is the only real negative to his lucrative hobby. “I’ll get there at 5 o’clock Friday afternoon, put my boat in the water and fsh until after dark,” he said, explaining the schedule that takes up every minute of his weekend. “Saturday morning I get up at 5:30 and fsh from daylight until after dark. Sunday I do the same thing. Then I drive home.”

“That part of it is not really a family deal,” Stoker said. “They don’t want to be out there for 16 hours straight. That’s something I pretty much have to do on my own.” But, he said the positives outweigh the negatives, especially when he’s winning 5-digit frst-place purses.

“More than anything,” Stoker said, “I’m out there to win. I’m extremely competitive. I only go to win, I don’t go to get third place. Any time I can fsh a tournament and pay my expenses, I see it as a positive. When (frst prize) goes up to $50,000, of course, having that money means we can keep going.”

“As long as I’m winning like that,” he laughed, “I don’t think my wife’ll