Leap of faith
Life changing experiences seem to find people in the oddest places. Couples find love while they are on double dates-with other people. Some of science’s greatest discoveries happen by accident-curing one disease while researching another. Sometimes in football, a receiver will run the wrong route or a lineman will miss an assignment, and while scrambling for his life, the quarterback ultimately finds himself in the end zone.
The turning point in Curtis Samo’s life came seven years ago, driving home in a beat up van following just one more disappointing performance in a string of disappointing performances. With a long drive ahead of him, a lack of musical choices on the radio to hold his attention, and his once promising fishing career crumbling before his eyes, Samo popped in a tape of fishing great Shaw Grigsby. Instead of learning a new casting technique or bait/pattern combination, Samo learned of the significant role God played in Grigsby’s life. The tape would put Samo’s fishing career back on track and his life in order.
“I had had so much success so soon that I thought it was easy,” Samo said, having gone through a string of three wins in a six-month span that included two Red Man Tournament Trail qualifiers and another tournament on Kentucky Lake that netted him a new bass boat. “I guess you could say that fishing kind of became my idol. It consumed me. And I got to thinking that I could win without putting out that much effort. But then things began to turn for the worse. I wasn’t doing well in tournaments and I was jeopardizing my family’s financial well-being.” Friends had been encouraging Samo for some time to seek the peace they had found through their faith. After hearing Grigsby speak of the perspective his faith had afforded him, Samo began attending church with
those friends, and about a month after that defeat, “gave (himself) to Christ.”
“One of my favorite scriptures is `The proud shall be humbled, and the humble shall be honored,'” Samo says. “God has a way of finding us. I was putting fishing ahead of my family. I was not heading in the right direction and was not having much success. In that Grigsby tape, he talked about how finding God helps you take care of the things you think are so important, that God gives you strength to succeed.” As Samo turned his priorities around, the fishing success he had enjoyed early returned. Only this time, the wins were not the most important thing.
Since 1995, there has not been a Red Man All-American without Curtis Samo. When he qualified for his fifth straight All-American with a seventh place finish in the regional championship held on Truman Lake last October, he tied a mark set by David Fritts from 1983 to 1987. And while he has gained a great deal of respect and a few sponsors along the way, including Abu Garcia and OMC-Evinrude, like Fritts, Samo has yet to win the All-American and its $100,000 first prize.
In his first All-American, Samo finished with a respectable ninth place during a brutal two days of competition. His goal since 1990 had been to reach and win the Red Man championship event, when-inspired by the words of motivational speakers such as Brian Tracy and Zig Ziegler-he hung a banner generated from his home computer over his bed that read “Win the Red Man All-American.” Even though he fell short of that goal, the 1995 appearance kept his fishing career alive, having concluded after much
prayer prior to that season that if he did not make the All-American within two years he would give up tournament fishing all together.
His prayers having been answered, Samo returned to the All-American in 1996 on the Arkansas River. Having located several fish in practice, Samo panicked when they did not bite during the competition. Instead of sticking with the formula that had given him cause for optimism, he desperately searched for new fish. The costs of those long runs were inflated due to fog delaying the take-off times on both days of fishing. Samo finished a disappointing 43rd, suffering a shutout on the second and decisive day of competition.
“It was really tough fishing for everybody. Nobody else had found a good concentration of fish. I had located some fish among the grass and logs near the dam. Then I lost my cool when the fish didn’t bite and started running around. That tournament definitely affected my confidence,” he said. “After the tournament, I just packed up and started driving home. About two miles down the road I prayed to God that if I only made one
more All-American let it be the next year, because it would be back on the Arkansas River. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could come back and defeat that river.”
Indeed he was back in 1997 and he recovered enough to put together two good days of fishing for a fourth place finish with 22 pounds, 10 ounces-a 20 pound improvement from the previous year’s showing. “I fished the same spots where I had practiced the year before. But this time I kept my patience and did much better,” he said.
Last year on the Mississippi River out of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Samo climbed out of the 11th spot following day one of fishing and charged into fifth place. Fishing post-spawn and bedding fish in shallow water, Samo utilized a Gambler Dion’s Classic spider grub to boat 20 pounds, 11 ounces-just over 2 pounds behind winner Kim Carver.
With the two-day total of 20 pounds, 15 ounces on Truman Lake in the 1998 regional, Samo positioned himself to go after, not only his first All-American title, but also his lifelong dream of becoming a full-time professional bass fisherman.
“I definitely would like to use the All-American as a launching pad to fish full-time. Being a professional has been a goal of mine for a while now,” says Samo, who works as an independent drywall contractor, which provides him the freedom to pursue his sport in the manner he does now. “I don’t want to put my family in financial jeopardy ever again. So I’ve set a goal to make the jump (to fishing full-time) in three years, but if I could win the All-American, I could likely do it then.”
Meanwhile, Samo will continue to practice on the Mississippi River, just about an hour’s drive from his rural Creston, Illinois, home. After fishing, on his favorite days, his wife, Tina, and girls, Amanda and Leah, will join him for a relaxing boat ride. Leah, 11, enjoys
occasional fishing outings with her father, but angling holds little interest for Amanda who “is 12 going on 20,” according to Samo. The remainder of his time is usually divided between his church’s youth ministry, a program headed by Samo and his wife and of which he is prouder than any of his fishing accomplishments, or coaching girls and
boys basketball teams, grades five through 12.
“I’ve set priorities in my life. I call them the three F’s — Faith, Family, Fishing. And in that order,” Samo reasons. “I believe God gives us all certain talents and skills that put us where He wants us to be. And I really think He wants me out on that water. It is through my fishing that I can glorify God.”
In fact, Samo recently organized a group known as Christian Anglers. They held their first meeting near the end of the 1998 season in LaCrosse, and Samo hopes the group will meet at every qualifying tournament in the Great Lakes Division schedule this year.
With his perspective now firmly in order and his faith-inspired activities accumulating, the question of Samo’s professional fishing future remains. However, the pressure of reaching his fifth straight All-American is behind him and that achievement coupled with his record of high finishes at the season finale has given him good reason to keep
the faith.
“I guess always in the back of your mind you’re thinking, ‘Maybe I don’t belong here.’ My goal is always to qualify for the All-American. It’s just such a great event,” he says. “The day you leave you start thinking how you’re going to get back, because once you’ve been here, you can’t imagine not being here.”
At least for another year, he won’t have to. Samo will be in a newer ride now that he has retired his van after some 250,000 miles and nearly a decade of service when he arrives as one of the headliners among the 50-man field at the 1999 Red Man All-American in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. And more people will be paying attention to him than in the past. But he will be just as humble and grateful as he was last year.
“The more you qualify and the more you make it here, the more the focus is on you. So there is a little more pressure now,” he admits. “I’m definitely no David Fritts, though. I have a long way to go before I’m even in the same category as him. And I think that while qualifying for five straight All-Americans is quite an accomplishment, I look at something like what Kim Carver has done over the last couple of years (three regional wins, a second in the 1997 All-American and claiming last year’s title) is way beyond that. But I have gotten progressively better over the years, with the exception of 1996, and I feel confident in my fishing right now. I know that God has put me out there, so I do want to do well.”