The life of a fishing wife

The wives of Alton Jones and Todd Ary tell their very different stories of what it’s like to be married to a bass pro

Some say it takes a village to raise a child. In a similar manner, one could also say it takes a village to be a bass pro. Sure, a career can be successfully maintained without the help of a wife and family – many have done it with obvious success – but for those pros with a supportive family behind them, it simply would not be worth it to go at it alone.

Take, for instance, Texas pro Alton Jones. Considered one of the best of pro bass fishing’s current crop of anglers, Jones says you can pinpoint the time when his career began its upward trajectory – the point at which his wife, Jimmye Sue, and their three children began traveling with him.

“If you looked at a timeline of my career and put a dot where she and the kids started traveling with me, that’s when my career took a major upswing,” he said. “I think it just adds a dynamic to my life that makes me perform better. Having their commitment to be with me has absolutely led to success.”

Pro Todd Ary of Alabama also counts on his wife, Misty, for her support, though their story is quite different from that of the Jones family. While Jimmye Sue and the Jones brood follow Alton around the country, Todd’s wife Misty has spent the last three years in medical school in the Caribbean.

“We’re apart a lot, but we communicate on the phone every day,” Todd said. “It’s her constant moral support that makes me a better fisherman – when I have a bad day of practice she has a way of talking me up and getting me ready for the next day.”

Though the separation has made their life a challenge, the Arys have made it work. After all, no family involved in competitive angling is conventional. To prove that, take a glimpse into the everyday life of Jimmye Sue Jones.

Jack of all trades

Though Alton Jones credits his success to his family’s presence on the road, it is no easy undertaking. The decision to follow Alton along the tournament trails – he is a two-tour fisherman – involved sacrifices at many levels, not the least of which was Jimmye Sue’s agreement to begin homeschooling their three children.

Their typical tournament day begins at whatever predawn hour it is that Alton needs to be at the boat ramp for takeoff.

“Many days that entails me taking him to the ramp,” Jimmye Sue said. “When I get back, if it’s still before 6 a.m. we’ll lie back down for a little while and then everybody gets going. School doesn’t usually commence until about 8:30 or 9 a.m., depending on what else we have to do later on.”

Though a homeschooling environment is not usually as structured as a traditional school day, Jimmye Sue said the typical scenario is four to five solid hours of teaching and learning per day. Scheduled around that is playtime with the kids of other pros, meals and, of course, errands.

“Whenever something needs to be done, you drop what you’re doing and you go and get whatever baits are needed,” she said. “I’ve driven an hour and a half to go get a trolling motor. You have to be very flexible.”

Alton concurs. “Over the years she’s learned what I’m looking for – what brands I need, what colors I like,” he said. “I can call her from on the water, and she can find it. She’s getting really good at helping me out with all those logistical things. She saves me so much time.”

The flexibility that characterizes Jimmye Sue’s life was hard-earned, both from her former job as a registered nurse and her current one as mobile wife and mother. Not only can Alton thank her for making him a better angler, he can also credit her for helping him get the dream started in the first place. Jimmye Sue worked full time until the youngest of their three children, now 8, was born.

“I was a registered nurse, and I did nursing education and also computers for a nursing service,” she said. “It was busy here, and it transitioned to being a different kind of busy.”

On the way to the big time

Alton and Jimmye Sue met on the campus of Baylor University more than 20 years ago, and it was there during their dating period that she was introduced to the idea of fishing as a career choice.

“I didn’t have any concept of what that would include,” she remembers. “He loved to fish long before we got married, so the fishing part was not really anything new or different. I guess I had no concept of what it meant to do it as a living.”

When they first started dating, Alton worked part time at a computer store. Sensing that the computer business was not right for him, he tried selling insurance for a couple of years, all the while continuing to fish. Finally, he began competing full time on the tournament trails, working as a guide to supplement his income.

“I had a good-paying job that allowed him to have the beginning and transition years,” she said. “You start out and you spend a lot of money, and you gradually get to where you break even before it becomes a steady income. My job allowed us to be able to do it.”

Jimmye Sue admits the situation was not entirely ideal, as Alton was pulled away from his family for long periods of time while he fished tournaments. Therefore, it became apparent that Jimmye Sue and their three children would need to hit the road. With the nursing profession behind her, Jimmye Sue entered what could certainly be called a new career – managing a professional fisherman.

“Ordinarily I take care of all the travel arrangements, making all the reservations and keeping up with different items,” she said. “If Alton has used up his tackle, I’m involved in procuring it, whether it’s calling the sponsors or going down to the tackle store. During the tournament week, any phone calls are coming through me. I field the phone calls and take care of any e-mails.

“It’s a combination of things. It’s not just one particular item. It’s many tasks – I’m a jack of all trades.”

A traveling circus

These day-to-day details of a pro fishing career opened the door for Alton to concentrate more on his fishing – the job that now pays the bills and feeds the family.

“One thing she does for me is she frees up my time,” Alton said. “It allows me to maximize my efficiency on the water. My mind can be focused on the fishing.”

The tradeoff for Jimmye Sue and the kids – Alton Jr., 13, Kristen, 11, and Jamie, 8 – is that they get to see parts of the country they would probably never experience otherwise. An added bonus is the extended family that a national tour creates.

“I’ve heard some people call it the traveling circus because it’s more of a community that travels together as we go from place to place,” Jimmye Sue said. “You miss the friends at home, but you gain friends on the road.”

The constant change in scenery also allows for a unique educational experience for the children, who have done everything from hunting for shells on Sanibel Island to touring Helen Keller’s home in Alabama.

However, riding along on a traveling road show comes at a price, and the sacrifices become harder to bear as the kids advance in age. For starters, sometimes the kids have to put off participating in certain activities because the tour schedule simply does not allow it.

“It’s hard in some ways because they’re getting to an age where they do miss doing things with friends,” Jimmye Sue said. “There were mission trips that Alton (Jr.) wanted to go on but that he had to miss because it’s been during tournaments and things like that. Those things are hard, but right now, it’s the choice we’re making to have more time with our family.”

Making it easier, though, is their newly purchased motor home, which will eliminate hotel stays and allow the kids to pack things like their bikes to take on the road with them.

“This will be a transition year for us,” Jimmye Sue said of the new digs. “But this year we’re going to be busier than we’ve ever been. But the biggest benefit is the time that we’re able to spend together.”

Misty Ary – chasing a dream

Just as sacrifice has been a key part of Alton and Jimmye Sue Jones’ life, so it has also been for pro Todd Ary and his wife, Misty. The Arys are young and have no children, but while Todd will enter his fourth year of FLW Tour competition in January, Misty will enter her final four months of medical school – in the Caribbean nation of Grenada.

The Arys’ story of love, sacrifice and chasing a dream is as inspiring as it is startling. Not surprisingly, the two concede that it is difficult for others to understand how they could spend so much time apart and still stay happily married.

“My grandmother is old school, and when she found out I was going to go abroad and be away from my husband, she didn’t think too much of that,” Misty recalls. “But the one thing I think is so important is that I know if I told Todd, `I can’t do this anymore; I want you to come to Grenada and be with me while I finish school,’ he would be on the next plane.

“But would I ever say that? No. I want him to follow his dreams as well.”

Todd’s dreams of becoming a professional fisherman date back many years, and when Misty first crossed his path soon after his college graduation, she was enthused – but confused.

“He said, `I’m going to be a pro bass angler.’ I said, `You’re going to do what?” Misty remembers. “I honestly didn’t know what pro bass anglers did. We used to go spit fishing, where you put bread on a cane pole and catch fish out of a pond. That’s the first thing that popped into my mind.”

Todd quickly straightened out her misconceptions, and to his credit, he was up front with Misty from the get-go about his future plans.

“Outside of his name, that was one of the first things he told me,” Misty said. “He would just light up. When he talks about fishing, he gets a glow on his face, and you can just tell.”

Also to Todd’s credit, he had been planning for years to take that first step, knowing that making the leap into the professional fishing arena can deal a serious blow to the bank account. According to Misty, he was set and ready to go before she came along, but Todd changed his plans.

“He went to work just so he could provide for us – so that we could plan our life together before he took that step out there,” she said. “He invested and planned his future, and he included me in it. He could have quickly moved up the corporate ladder, but it just wasn’t him. He didn’t have that same glow.”

A change in plans

By now Misty was out of college and developing dreams of her own – dreams involving a medical degree. Pursuing that would completely shake up the world they had settled, as it meant Misty could not bring in any income at the very same time Todd planned to venture out on the pro tours.

“We had the American dream – the house, the great jobs, the steady income, money in the bank,” she said. “We basically had it all, and then I decided I wanted to go to medical school. He was going to put off his dream so I could follow mine.”

Given the timing of the situation, Todd’s willingness to sacrifice is all the more remarkable, as Misty’s decision came on the heels of the news that Todd had qualified for the FLW Tour.

“I felt as guilty as I possibly could, because I knew what a big deal that was,” Misty said. “Monetarily, we were thinking, `I don’t have a job, and your first year of bass fishing, you have to sponsor yourself.’ We decided, `You know what, we’re just going to do it.’ We made some adjustments and ended up both following our dreams at the same time.”

To expedite the process, Misty applied to only one medical school, and that one school was located in the Caribbean. The choice seems odd at first, but the explanation makes sense.

“We were ready to get on with our lives,” she said. “I got to start earlier there. When you apply in the U.S., you aren’t guaranteed a spot, and I graduated at the top of my class. You have to wait to see if you got in, and then wait another year until you can start. Or I could go (to Grenada) and be almost done by that point.”

With Todd’s blessing, Misty set off for medical school, and Todd put together a solid rookie year on the FLW Tour in 2003, ranking 26th in year-end points and earning $40,000, including championship winnings. To put the timing of all this in perspective, Todd and Misty got married in December 2002. In January 2003, Todd began his first FLW Tour season and Misty left for Grenada the next month.

The Arys rely mostly on the telephone to keep in contact with each other, though there are other ways. Last season, Todd flew to Grenada after every tournament, and Misty has been known to sneak out of class early a few times to catch Todd on FLW Live – an interactive feature on FLWOutdoors.com that shows real-time weigh-in results – during an event.

“In all the years we’ve been together, we have not gone a single solitary day without speaking,” said Misty, adding that the couple was together for more than four years before they got married. “Sometimes we talk for 20 minutes, and sometimes we speak for three hours on the phone. I remember when I was having a rough time and Todd was at a tournament. I just broke down, and he took time the night before the tournament began and talked to me for two or three hours. He’s the best motivational person I know.”

Give and take

If sacrifice is a key word for the Arys, so is balance. Last season, they put that balance to the test with Todd’s rigorous and exhausting schedule of fishing tournaments and then flying to Grenada.

“He says it didn’t affect him, but I have to disagree because I know how much he loves to be on the water,” Misty said. “I know of one specific time when he really needed to practice but we really needed the time together, so he changed his plane ticket (to stay in Grenada longer).”

The way Todd sees it, flying to Grenada that often was just his way of trying to be there for Misty the way she has been there for him. In Todd’s rookie year of FLW Tour competition, he made the top-10 cut on Kentucky Lake, and Misty was there in the audience, having flown all the way from Grenada to watch Todd on the big stage.

“With it being her last year in school, it was important to me to be there for her the way she’s been there for me,” Todd said. “I have no excuses for the poor performances that I’ve had, but it’s been a struggle. What we do for a living takes 110 percent of your focus, and if you’ve got anything drawing away from that, it affects your performance. I’d fly in five days before a tournament and throw my tackle in the truck, and I hadn’t been fishing for two weeks. You work extra hard and put it in God’s hands and go from there.”

Given the circumstances, Ary’s performance in 2005 was remarkable. He finished the year ranked 37th, and though he did have a poor tournament here and there, he still made the championship and earned more than $48,000.

However, the upcoming 2006 season should be much easier for the Ary family. Misty expects to graduate from medical school in April, and she’ll take her board-certification tests in August before beginning her clinicals. That leaves her four months free to be nothing more than a pro fisherman’s wife.

“When I’m home, we’re stuck together like glue,” she said. “I try to go to tournaments because I love it. I love backing the boat in even though I’m not that good at it. When I go with him for practice, I’ll go out there on the boat, but I don’t fish with him because he can’t practice because I’m hung up all the time!”

Though Todd has sacrificed a lot to allow Misty to achieve her medical dreams, no one is more proud of her either. In fact, despite the drawbacks and the distance, Todd says it is her achievements that fuel his own fire.

“It’s what keeps me going, to be honest with you,” he said. “It’s like I told her, I don’t walk for myself. I’d do this sleeping in a trailer and eating tuna fish every night because I just like to fish. The pressure I put on myself is because I want to help her provide for her dreams. Seeing her so focused and driven feeds my passion. And she says she feeds off me too, so we make a great pair.”

True to form, Misty also sees their challenges as advantages, noting that when they are together, they have all the time in the world since Todd’s job does not have 8-to-5 constraints.

“We’re both dream seekers. It’s funny that two people who are so goal-oriented would end up together,” she says of their unconventional partnership. “To me, memories are so much better than any kind of gift.”