Catch of a lifetime

FLW Tour anglers Pam Wood and Terry Bolton find love on the tournament trail

Anyone who fishes competitively understands the family atmosphere of the tournament scene. That atmosphere is fostered by the same group of people – competitors, staff and sponsors – meeting in varied places all year long in the name of competition. As such, the group becomes something of an extended family to a lot of folks, so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to see how this scenario can also breed genuine family.

Such is the case of pro angler Terry Bolton of Paducah, Ky., and co-angler Pam Wood of Jonesboro, Ark. Terry and Pam are the latest in a growing line of people who have found their soulmates along the tournament trails. While people meet and marry in real life every day of the week, the story of a tournament couple obviously plays out a little differently.

For starters, the wedding date of Nov. 2, 2007, was dictated by the 2008 tournament schedule, and the honeymoon has been postponed because Terry has sponsor obligations just two days following the ceremony.

But if there is anyone in the world who would understand that, it’s Pam, as she, too, knows the ins and outs of the tournament game, having competed as a Wal-Mart FLW Tour co-angler since 2003. Pam first met Terry that year, when she drew him as a pro partner at the second tournament of the season on Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin.

“Some people, when you meet them, you know you’re going to be buddies with them,” Pam said. “I knew we were going to be friends.”

Friends was the extent of it at that time, as Pam was married and Terry was engaged. Pam’s marriage came to its eventual end, and Terry’s engagement never progressed beyond that point, leaving both of them single when they were paired together again a couple of years later. But still, nothing happened.

“The timing was never very good,” Terry said. “I had a girlfriend, or she had a boyfriend.”

The stars finally aligned last winter, when Terry joined his friend Andy Morgan and a few other bass pros for a weekend of duck hunting in Pam’s neck of the woods. Being in the area, Terry gave Pam a call and stopped by her office. As Terry, Andy and the boys hunted annually in Arkansas, Pam didn’t give a lot of thought to Terry dropping by. Soon enough, though, things changed.

“I was actually on a blind lunch date from you know where,” Pam says of the moment she got the call from Terry last year. “In the meantime, this was probably the coldest four or five days we’d ever had, and the heat at my house went out. The guy couldn’t come and fix it for three days, so I called Terry and asked if there were any extra beds at the duck lodge. I ended up going down there and staying the weekend. We just kind of hung out. That’s kind of where we started making eyes, or whatever you want to call it.”

“It just kind of happened, I guess,” Terry said. “We started hanging out back in the winter, and we’d always been good friends.”

Something to talk about

Terry’s friends knew something had to be up when the annual trip to Arkansas kept turning into near weekly trips.

“He’d go home for a weekend and then come right back,” Pam said.

The pair spent much of the winter together before embarking on the 2007 FLW Tour and Wal-Mart FLW Series, which conveniently afforded them much more time to spend together. Pam traveled with her father, co-angler Jimmy Cox, and she tried to make sure they stayed in the same town as Terry so the pair could hang out and, if nothing else, carpool.

“Terry would always come and pick me up and take me to the Family Fun Zone,” Pam said. “They weren’t really dates that we went on. I can’t remember a time he picked me up and took me to a movie. It’s weird; we never actually went to dinner by ourselves. But we did that all year long, hang out at tournaments, and then he’d come here for a few days, or I’d go there for a few days.”

Indeed, more than 200 miles separate Pam’s Arkansas hometown from Terry’s in Kentucky. But again, it’s that family atmosphere that defines the tournament scene that kept the pair in near constant contact.

However, that family atmosphere has a flip side – much as your great aunt loved to pinch your cheeks and ask when you were ever getting married, the tournament family also loves a good love story – and something to talk about. Pam and Terry’s relationship was no exception. Making matters more interesting were a few specific pairs of eyeballs trained on the two – Terry’s tournament roommates Dan Morehead, Andy Morgan and Ramie Colson Jr., to name a few. The pack is well-known for their antics, pranks and general “boys will be boys” attitude. Luckily for Pam and Terry, they all took to “the new girl” pretty well.

“I think they were cool with it,” Terry said. “I’m kind of the `Last of the Mohicans’ in the fact that I’m the last one – I’ve never been married. I told everybody I was getting old and nobody was going to want me, so I had better hurry up.”

“It’s amazing the response we’ve gotten, especially from his close buddies who thought he would never meet the woman who would be able to love him and his fishing and allow him to do what he loves to do,” Pam said. “I have found that Terry is a package deal. I also get Danny Morehead and Shawn Penn and David Crass and Andy Morgan and Ramie Colson. I knew that up front, going in. They treat me well, and we all get along great. It’s like a surrogate family that travels around when we fish, and then we have our blood family that we come home to, and there is not a big distinction between the two.”

Pam said it was difficult finding a wedding date on short notice that would work for the closest members of their tournament family, but they believe they’ve pulled it off with the calendar set for Nov. 2. Stren representative and sometime-angler Bud Strader is performing the ceremony, and competitors from Michigan to Illinois and everywhere in between are expected to attend.

“We’re blessed because we have lots of people that want to be there. It’s amazing that people would come that far,” Pam said.

Pam does have one rule, though – no tournament jerseys at the ceremony!

The chaos begins

Planning the wedding around not only their tournament schedule but also that of their tournament family’s is how an August proposal turned into a November wedding.

“Never go fish a bass tournament and send your fiancee to find a place to get married, because she might find it,” Terry said, only half-joking. “She said, `Do you think we can do this in a month?’ and I said, `Why not?’ It’s been hectic, but it’s been fun.”

“Terry and I knew within a couple weeks of hanging out that this was going to be a permanent situation,” Pam said of their desire to get married. “We both wanted to say it, but neither of us wanted to freak the other one out, so we didn’t say anything for a month and a half or two months. Then it was like, `We should have said it sooner.'”

Sooner or later, the topic of a wedding did finally arise, and Terry and Pam realized their schedules really would not permit them to get married before the end of the 2008 season. But with the long-distance relationship, and Pam’s two children missing Terry when he wasn’t around, they decided to put the pedal to the metal and just get it done, no matter what.

“He had fished that BFL Super Tournament (on Kentucky Lake) about a month ago, and I knew that we would get married in Kentucky, because he’s going to come here to live, so I thought it was only fair,” Pam said. “I basically came to town to hang out and see where we might get married.”

She lucked out, stumbling upon a local photographer’s wedding garden with open dates either the first weekend of November or next March or April. It was then that she approached Terry at the weigh-in line and asked him if he thought they could pull it off in a month.

“I told him to go weigh his fish in, because I knew I didn’t have his undivided attention,” she said. “I figured, `It’s just a fancy party; I’ve thrown a party before,’ so we went and booked it. Then the chaos began.”

The chaos included an eight-day stay on Pickwick Lake for the FLW Series’ Eastern Division season closer, where Terry scored a top-10 finish. While that’s always a good thing, it didn’t help that the wedding planners lost a lot of time stranded in a remote hotel with no internet access. Then a series of severe thunderstorms rocked the Kentucky Lake area, knocking down more than a dozen trees at Terry’s cabin, turning his attention away from the situation at hand.

Meanwhile, Pam busied herself mailing wedding invitations from the tournament site, and Terry headed home to begin cleanup around the cabin. At that point, temperatures in Kentucky finally began to feel autumn-like, as highs fell from the record-breaking mid-80s to the 60s with days of near-nonstop rain. With an outdoor wedding on the books, it was one more thing for Pam and Terry to worry about.

“They had my bachelor party Saturday night, and I’m too old to stay out that late anymore,” Terry said. “The storm blew down 16 trees at the house, and in between trying to plan a wedding, last week I was at Clarks Hill shooting a TV show. In between working and putting on a wedding and cutting trees and staying out until 2:30 in the morning, I’ve had a busy week. I’m getting ready to go pay the caterer and the lady making the cake and somebody else something too – I can’t even remember.”

A true partnership

What makes the rush-rush wedding plans doable is exactly what makes their relationship doable – it’s a team effort. Both Terry and Pam extol the benefits of having an understanding partner and friend on the tournament trail, a benefit that will multiply next season as they fish the FLW Tour together as husband and wife.

“I’ve really enjoyed it this year,” Terry said of the dynamic he shares with Pam the angler. “It’s exciting to have somebody to share all that with who knows what you go through. It’s kind of tough when one’s doing good and the other’s not. But I’m looking forward to next year, because it makes life so much easier the way the travel schedule and everything is.”

Pam admits the two of them are quite competitive with each other, even though they are each the other’s strongest supporter and biggest fan.

“I cannot stand for him to beat me, and he can’t stand it either,” she said. “Every time we step in the boat, I always want to catch more fish than him – bigger fish, more fish, it doesn’t matter. Both of us were athletes, and we have that competitive spirit and fire. We don’t like to lose. It’s fun. It’s a challenge to see who can pick out the right lure.”

For Terry, the biggest advantage of having Pam as a partner is not only the understanding but also the invaluable assistance of having someone with you on the road who is all too familiar with the tournament lifestyle.

“It’s just nice to have somebody there to help you out and help you do things,” he said. “It can be just doing laundry or helping me put on fishing line. And it works both ways – me for her and her for me.”

He admits that the unique lifestyle of a tournament angler has cost him in his previous relationships. Therefore, finding Pam is all the sweeter for a guy like Terry, who has waited a while to find it.

“My career has been hard on my dating life,” he said. “Having someone who understands it means a whole lot. I can’t get in trouble for going fishing, which is very important. I can still do other `man’ things and get in trouble, but I can’t for going fishing!”

Pam agrees, noting that she, too, stokes a competitive fire within her, and she knows that her unique perspective of the life of a bass pro allows this relationship to thrive.

“When we started dating, it was a natural fit for both of us,” she said. “He knows I know how important (fishing) is for him. I have the same passion that burns within him. I don’t do it at the same level, because I own a tackle company and I have other commitments, but I fish as much as I can and try to keep a balance between family and work and doing what I love to do, which is fish.”

Pam and Terry do prefish together, though Pam worried at first that she might be a distraction. She told Terry in no uncertain terms that if having her in the boat with him before a tournament detracted from his success, she wanted out of his boat. For Terry, though, having her around was a benefit to his competition as much as it was for Pam’s.

“I learn every day I’m in the back of the boat with anybody,” Pam said. “Terry’s very patient, and he’s very much a teacher. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from him. He’s very much out for my success as much as he is for his. It’s been a wonderful experience. We get to spend time together, and whether we’re catching fish or not, we still love to be out there, and we love each other’s company.”

In just a few days, Pam and Terry will be passing out chocolate bass party favors as they celebrate their marriage and further tighten the bonds of what has become a very large tournament family. Pam and Terry are just another example of what can happen when two worlds collide on the FLW Outdoors tournament trails.

“Not a whole lot of people in life can say that they truly love their job and the people they go to work with every day, and we’ve both got that,” Pam said. “It’s a comfort that we’re both doing what we love to do.”