Boyles Fishing for Late Father
Mike Boyles, the Walmart FLW Tour pro from Kimberling City, Mo., is on his way to Kentucky Lake to fish the fifth stop of the 2016 Tour season, and he’s traveling with a heavy heart following the death of his biggest supporter, his father, Dr. Lyle E. Boyles.
The elder Boyles, who was a school superintendent in Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky, passed away after an 11-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 81.
Mike was pre-fishing for Kentucky Lake at Pickwick Lake when he was called about his father’s passing early Saturday morning.
“I was kind of semi-prepared for it,” says Mike. “He’s had cancer for 11 years. At Christmastime he still looked pretty spectacular. I thought then this might be the last Christmas I was going to spend with him. That cancer, it spread from his prostate to his bones to kidneys to lungs to brain. It’s crazy for 11 years to fight it, then in a couple months it starts coming back, even with all these high-dollar treatments he was getting.”
Mike began fishing the Tour as a co-angler in 2004 and fished his first full season from the front of the boat in 2015. He recently signed a multi-year title sponsorship deal with Timeshare Refuge in Kimberling City and says it was his father who really helped him to be successful with the business side of fishing and with learning how to succeed in a competitive environment.
“My dad was big into sports – a big coach,” Mike says. “He could’ve played professional baseball back in the day. He was always my armchair quarterback when it came to fishing. He wasn’t really into it, but he read enough about it that he was a strategist. It was neat that he was able to always follow along and know what I was doing. He would call me all the time just to talk fishing. We basically spoke almost every day for as many years as I can remember.
“He was always supportive and tried to help me get a title sponsorship. Even though he didn’t hunt and fish, he did anything he could to help me,” Mike adds. “He was instrumental in helping me get a resume together and sending them to everybody. My dad, in his final year of battling cancer, got to see his son get a title sponsorship to fish the Tour. Then last summer I got my U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license to be a guide. After all these years of struggling he got to see me find some success.”
Practice for the Kentucky Lake Tour event begins Sunday, June 5. The tournament is June 9-12. Mike currently is in 127th place in the AOY standings. Funeral arrangements for his father have not yet been set.