Performance Profile: Glenn Browne

This Floridian came prepared to play in the big leagues

Heading into the third event of the 2004 Wal-Mart FLW Tour, Glenn Browne could not stop thinking about what had happened at the season-opening tournament.

At Lake Okeechobee, Browne was fishing well and was confident he would advance to the finals.

“About when I thought I was in good shape, I wasn’t,” said Browne, who missed the cut and finished 11th.

At Tennessee’s Old Hickory Lake, the 28-year-old from Ocala, Fla., vowed to push harder during the tournament’s first two days.

He more than did it, boating the top total in the qualifying round and sitting in second heading into the final day of competition.

Then on day four, Browne zeroed, finishing eighth.

“That fourth day I was a little bummed out when I came in,” Browne said. “Then Rick Clunn came up to me and said, `You fished a great tournament.’ That meant a lot.”

Browne cannot complain too much about his first season on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour. Halfway through the season he was second in the tour’s point standings, just a single point behind Yamaha pro Dean Rojas of Grand Saline, Texas. Furthermore, he was 12th in the EverStart Series Eastern Division points race.

“I wouldn’t say I feel like a rookie,” said Browne, who won the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League Gator Division points race in 2001 and finished second in 2002. “This is the big show, and you definitely notice a difference in the level of competition. But I’m not intimidated. I feel like I can compete.”

Veteran pro Billy Bowen Jr., also of Ocala, first met Browne when Browne was an aspiring teenage tournament angler.

“It’s his dream to be a professional fisherman,” said Bowen, Browne’s traveling partner and roommate on the road. “He puts a lot of time into it, and he’s dedicated 100 percent.”

Bowen said he has seen Browne make strides not only as a fisherman: Browne’s self-confidence used to border on cockiness, Bowen said, an attitude that rubbed some fellow competitors wrong. “But he outgrew that pretty quickly,” Bowen added.

Browne fell in love with bass fishing growing up in Ocala. He and his father were in a bass club and fished in some small events together.

“When I was 14 the first check we won was like $60,” Browne said. “I thought that was big money.”

By the time Browne headed off to the University of Central Florida, he knew what he wanted to do for a living.

“I was a business major,” said Browne, who paid his way through school with winnings from tournaments. “Fishing is a business when you get to this level.”

Browne is also putting his education to use running the floor-care business his father passed along to him – not that he spends much time on the job during tournament season.

“A good friend is running it for me and keeps telling me to just keep catching fish so I don’t have to come back,” Browne said. “I eat, sleep and live this nonstop.”

Bowen concurs.

“When he made the top 10 at Old Hickory, he took everything out of his boat and put it into our room to organize it,” Bowen said. “I said, `You don’t need all this stuff,’ but he wants to be prepared.”

Quality vs. quantity

No wonder flipping is his go-to technique whether he is fishing for fun or fishing for money.

“I don’t mind fishing for a few bites,” Brown said. “You’re not going to go out and catch 40 or 50 fish. But if you catch 10, you’ll probably have a giant.”

In weed-choked lakes in his home state of Florida, Browne will target giant bass by flipping big jigs, worms and tubes into tiny pockets in matted vegetation.

In more open waters in Florida and beyond, he will cast to the bank and bump jigs and tubes down drops.

All things considered, however, Browne uses monster tackle when fishing for monster bass in heavy cover.

“I use 50- to 65-pound-test braided line and the biggest rods I can get,” Browne said. “I keep my drag cranked down. I don’t give them anything – they’re coming into the boat.”

When lighter tackle is viable, Browne will scale back to 20-pound-test mono.

His favorite flipping baits include Texas-rigged, 4-inch-long Gambler tube lures and Gambler Ninja and B.B. Cricket jigs – a lure he designed with friend Billy Bowen Jr.

Browne knows that flipping is not always the answer.

“But it’s my confidence rig,” he said. “When all else fails, that’s what I use.”