James Stricklin is about to plunge into bass fishing's biggest pond.
The Texarkana resident earned a spot in this year's Bassmaster Elite Series by finishing among the 2010 season's top seven point-scorers in three qualifying tournaments.
The 2011 Tour begins March 10 in Taveres, Fla. and runs to June. Stricklin is one of 15 newcomers to make the field which consists of 101 fishermen. The Elite series is the fisherman's equivalent of the Super Bowl. Annually each event on the tour is part of ESPN2's The Bassmasters program.
Although Stricklin's a newby on the tour, he's a veteran when it comes to competitive Bass fishing.
"I had to put it down off and on over the past 20 years simply for financial reasons. It's an expensive sport," he said. "It's hard to obtain sponsors that are going to pay the big money in order for you to fish."
A competitor's expenses, Stricklin mentioned, are tied up in equipment, which includes boat and trailer and transportation to each tournament along with entry fees and lodging.
Unlike most newcomers, Stricklin didn't have to scramble for sponsors after qualifying to the Elite Tour.
His stroke of luck came in a chance meeting 13 years ago where Stricklin met fellow fisherman Dwight Pruett in a smaller tour event.
"We had a lot of fun and he had confidence in me that I could go out there and do this stuff," Stricklin said of the relationship he had struck up with Pruett.
The two men fell out of communication for nearly a decade before Stricklin moved to Texarkana from Jasper, Texas, in 2009.
Since then Pruett has shifted his career focus from fishing to automobiles. Pruett is the owner/general manager of 1st Choice Auto and Texarkana's Cash Express branches.
Pruett remembered Stricklin and was more than willing to back his former competitor/sidekick when approached for sponsorship.
"He still has a lot of passion for fishing," Stricklin of Pruett. "And he knows that I do. He's given me a chance to fulfill my dreams to be the best in the world."
The association between the two men has also allowed Stricklin to dip his toes in the business world.
Between fishing competitions, Stricklin purchases cars for all three of 1st Choice's Texarkana auto lots. His role expands in the off-season to being in charge of inventory control of the auto lots and the Cash Express stores.
"When I'm (in Texarkana) its nothing but car business when I get up until I go to bed," said Stricklin. "(Dwight) does allow me to take off and do what I have to do to be good at fishing. The circuit is about 4-5 months long. I still buy cars during that time then I'll go back to doing cars full time after that."
With the blessing of his boss/sponsor, Striklln's main thrust is preparing himself for the Elite Tour.
"Right now I've been working out the last month and a-half to lose weight and build my stamina up for the season," he said. "Everybody says (fishing) is an easy job and that it's great. It's just like anything else, it's a lot of hard work."
A hidden part of Stricklin's preparation is assimilating to each of the competition venues. "You've got to do a lot of homework on places that you've never been," he explained.
Most of the homework, called pre-fishing, comes hours before the event begins.
"You get in the water an hour before daylight and you do a 14-hour day from 5 o'clock in the morning until 8 at night and most fishermen are not going to stay out that long."
"Fishing's probably a lot more about knowledge than anything," Stricklin continued. "The top bass fishermen in the world are around 40. That's about my age. It's 20 years of fishing and tournament experience that gets you there. But once you get there, you still have to perform fairly well to stay there."
Tour events are a grueling process.
Most tournaments take four days to complete. Day one begins with 100 fishermen in separate boats. The number is cut in half the next day. Only the top 12 survivors make the televised finals.
"One of the hardest things about bass fishing is that it's not a team sport," Stricklin said. "You're fighting the weather conditions, the fish, the boat and your equipment. "You have all these obstacles that you have to overcome in order to catch that one fish and you don't have a teammate to help you if things go wrong. So you have to be real strong mentally."
Mental focus and the sport's competitiveness are what drew Stricklin to Bass fishing at an early age.
"When I was 8-years-old, my mother asked me what I wanted to do for a living and I told her I wanted to be a professional bass fisherman," he recalled. "My title sponsor asked me, 'Why did you pick such a hard sport to get into because it's very competitive and very hard to get into?' I told him I didn't choose it. It chose me.
"The whole fascination of the competitiveness is that you have this little creature in the water that you can't see that you have to figure out. It's like a puzzle."
One puzzle Stricklin's solved is devotion to fishing.
"The passion for it never goes away. Once the passion goes away, I'll stop. But I don't think the passion's going to go until I'm 6-feet under."
When it comes to achievement, Stricklin has goals. But his bottom line is being able to fish.
"I'd love to be Rookie of the Year and Angler of the Year. But I also have to be realistic," he said. "So instead of setting too many goals for myself, I'm going to go out there have fun. I'm going to think every minute that I'm doing what I love to do for a living and I know that I'm good at it and have it end up where it ends up."