Darrel Robertson – Team CITGO
A Wal-Mart FLW Tour pro team member profile
Darrel Robertson, one of the top professional bass fishermen in the country and valuable member of the Citgo Professional Team, is about as down-to-earth and common as an angler can be. Even with his tremendous success on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the EverStart Series, Robertson’s ego has not changed one bit. He still calls himself a “farmer from Oklahoma,” and maybe that’s what keeps his priorities in order.
Keying on the highlights of Robertson’s fishing career was easy for the Jay, Okla., angler. “Oh, winning the FLW Championship (worth $250,000) and the M1 Millennium tournament (worth $600,000) there in about a six-week span was it,” Robertson laughed. “I’d already had a halfway decent year to start with and that made a good year out of it.”
And that’s correct. Robertson won $850,000 in only six weeks competing in Operation Bass events in the fall of 1999.
One might assume that the likable angler had an advantage on Oklahoma’s Fort Gibson Lake, site of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship in September 1999, but heads certainly turned when he won the Ranger M1 Millennium tournament at Cypress Gardens, Fla., six weeks later. Robertson suddenly became an angler to be taken very seriously. He did something very special after winning the M1 Millennium tournament that lots of folks don’t know about. To this day, he doesn’t like to talk about it, but the angler took a portion of his winnings and paid off the mortgage on a new gymnasium his church in Southwest City, Mo., had just built.
“I think that’s the reason I won that tournament,” Robertson said. “I think God had a plan to win those two tournaments and take care of this deal and it worked out fine.”
Robertson, 50, is married to wife Carol, and they have three daughters, two grandsons and a granddaughter. And it’s very easy to tell when talking to him that Darrel is proud of all of them. He is a very family-oriented individual.
“We’ve got a farm and we run a lot of cows,” he said. “And we’ve got a construction company and we do quite a bit of work all around the United States. We build a lot of storage tanks. We build a lot of water storage and a lot of dry storage.”
In spite of all his fishing success, Robertson still finds it hard to refer to himself as a professional. “I don’t do it full-time. I feel like I’m a professional fisherman (now), but I just don’t do it full-time,” he said.
Robertson, who started bass fishing in 1985, likes the competition, however.
“I had a boat and did a lot of crappie fishing and catfishing and a buddy of mine talked me into fishing a bass tournament,” Robertson said. “It was real tough and the lake was up. It was cold and it was early in the spring and we didn’t catch very much, but we finished about seventh. I thought, `Shoot, we might win one of these.’ So we started fishing and went from bad to worse.
“Then in 1990 or 91, I started fishing B.A.S.S. and I made the top 100 the first year and I stayed in it until I just got to busy. I just fish this circuit now (the pro side of the FLW Tour and the EverStart Series). I’m going to fish as long as I enjoy it. And it seems like the more I fish, the more I enjoy it.”
Look for Darrel Robertson to be on the fishing scene for a long and successful time.