Meet the Latimers

How Brian Latimer mixes family and fishing

I’m blogging for the first time since 2016, and I figured because it’s the offseason I’d talk family instead of fishing to start. My wife Rachelle and I just had our second son, Brooks, and Brevyn is six. Family is huge for me, and I don’t know how I could be a pro angler without it. I want to push back on something I hear old-timers sometimes say first, and then we’ll talk about what we get up to.

Family and fishing do mix 

I think it’s worth dispelling the myth that you need to be a single guy who roams around the country like a nomad.

I know everyone isn’t in the same situation, but personally, I wouldn’t want to try to be a pro angler and not have kids or a family. I got married in 2008, and I fished the EverStart FLW Series the first year I got married. There was nearly as much travel for that as there is for the FLW Tour, and it was full-field competition for three days. It was probably a little easier for my wife to get into, because it wasn’t like we got married and then I popped up with this goal of fishing. I was always working toward that, even when we were dating. I fished the FLW Series off and on until 2012, and then I fished them pretty solid in 2013 until I started on Tour in 2016.

We had Brevyn in 2012, and I’ve been fishing at least a full division of the FLW Series or the Tour every year since. There’s a lot of conversation about responsibility where it has a negative connotation, but having kids and a family has been the best thing for me. I can go so hard on fishing that it’s not good, so having somebody else I can talk to about things that aren’t fishing — or go do other things with for fun that aren’t fishing – it’s a good thing for me. Personally, I don’t know how you could do it and not have a wife and family. I spend a lot of time on the road, and I’ve only had a few tournaments that aren’t a lot of stress. Having somebody to bear that with you is a huge plus.

It’s possible to have a family and fish, but our plans are that our family is as big as it’s going to get. Especially with traveling for fishing and so forth, it was pretty calculated on our end. I think it is smart to plan your family. It’s a lot easier to be on the road so much. My brother is 10 years younger than me, so I kind of grew up as an only child. That wasn’t that much fun, so I definitely wanted to have two kids, but we needed to have them a distance apart. I didn’t want my wife to have two in diapers and me be halfway across the country – that’s not fair to anyone.

Staying young

I figured now that I’m in my mid-30s I’m on the downhill side of young. But, having two boys is going to keep me really young because they’re always into so much.

Lately, Brevyn has been really into motocross racing. I’m in my 30s, and I don’t need to be running around on dirt bikes, but I think whatever your kids take up it’s a good idea to not only support them but to take a hand in whatever they’re doing. So, now it’s like I’m 16 years old again, which is all right — it’s fun — but I can imagine having two is definitely not going to be a big party all the time

I rode dirt bikes too when I was a kid, but I never really raced. I’m like a lot of high school fishing parents are – they grew up with their friends fishing, but they never were serious about it. Living in the rural parts of South Carolina, everybody had some kind of toy they rode. I grew up riding dirt bikes, and I always wanted to race but never got to – my parents were so busy building a business and all that they never had time.

Right now, we’re locked inside because we’ve had all this snow and ice, so we’ve had to play video games. I’m trying to figure out what to do today; I can’t do video games again. When you have just one child you pretty much have to be their best friend, so I play video games, I go to those trampoline parks, that kind of stuff.

I actually hate video games. I didn’t even like them when I was a kid. I try to be a good sport about it now, but I still whine about it a bit. He’s better at them, and I have no desire to be good. I’ll be glad when that stage is gone. I don’t really discourage him, though. For some reason parents are under the assumption their kids are going to be 25 years old and working with pen and paper. That’s probably not going to happen, so I’m not opposed to video games or any of that new stuff – you never know what that’s going to turn into.

Of course, we do other things too: We go fishing, and we’ve gone on RV trips, we have fun. All of these things are things that would be totally boring if it was just me.

One thing I’m excited for is when school is out this summer. They’ll probably come with me to Champlain, and I’ll probably stay up there a little bit. I wish we had more tournaments when school is out, but I think because Brevyn is wanting to do more motocross stuff that summertime will be our time to travel and do motocross things. We’ve already got a couple places planned we’re going to go ride dirt bikes at. In the past they’ve traveled to tournaments in the summer, but I think this year we’re going to do more traveling and riding dirt bikes and stuff. It’s a good family sport to be into, just like fishing.

So, that’s the report from the home front – we’ll talk fishing next time. In the meantime, you can follow me on my YouTube channel or Instagram, and I’ll check back in here before the season starts.