Hunter Bland: From Accident to Water Safety Advocate

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 246 with Hunter Bland.

Introduction

Hunter Bland: The biggest picture I learned is, whether it's fishing, whether it's spending time with your wife, your kids, your family, it's just live every moment like it's your last. And it's so cliche, because I heard my dad tell me that when I was growing up. But there's a lot of truth to that, because we're not guaranteed tomorrow. I'm Hunter Bland, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. Today I've got a great guest. Hunter Bland was a college bass fisherman, and now he's moving into being a bass fishing coach. We had him on a few weeks ago with the whole team, but now we're going to learn a little bit more about Hunter's story himself. Hunter has achieved some notoriety, not exactly in the best or most desirable way. He was ejected out of his boat in a bad accident. Luckily, he made it just fine, but it was a freak accident. He was ejected out of the boat, and because he was wearing his life jacket, and because he got lucky, he didn't get run over by his own boat or any of the other boats in the tournament. Today, Hunter's taking that experience and using it for good, doing a lot of speaking and educating on boater safety. Hunter's got a great story. I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation with Hunter Bland. Alright. Hunter Bland, what's happening?

Hunter Bland: Nothing much. How are you, man?

Tom Rowland: I'm doing well. Thanks for doing this with me.

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. Thanks for having me.

From Baseball Dreams to College Fishing

Tom Rowland: So what's going on? What's your story?

Hunter Bland: I actually grew up playing a lot of baseball, and that was kind of my big dream, to go play college baseball. God had some different plans, and I ended up tearing my hamstring a few times, which kind of set me back and put me on a different path. I saw college fishing on ESPN and everything, and I said, well, I still like to compete. So I went on to fish for the University of Florida. Things kind of went crazy there, and I became their president after being there for, like, three months. I became their secretary, then became their president. I had some decent success in college, a couple of top twenties, fishing all the college FLW events and things like that. And then a couple of years ago, I was in a bad boating accident when my hydraulic steering came apart. From that, I just wanted to help people through boating safety. I filmed the national PSA with the Safe Boating Council, and next thing I know, my phone started ringing from Yamaha and Skeeter and things like that. So here I am. I'm actually Skeeter Yamaha's national boating safety advocate, and I get to fish the Opens. I have a lot of passion for high school and college fishing, because that's my background.

Tom Rowland: That hamstring injury. I've hurt my hamstring one time. That is a horrible injury. How did that happen for you?

Hunter Bland: I actually laid down a bunt. I was not a home run hitter. I was a small-ball type of guy, because I was really quick. So I laid down one of the best bunts of my life. There was nobody at first base, and I'm flying down the first base line. I go to touch first base, and it just, you know...

Tom Rowland: You blow a tire. It feels like you got shot.

Hunter Bland: It did.

Tom Rowland: So you go down. Did you get to the base?

Hunter Bland: I did. I was safe.

Tom Rowland: That's good. So how long does that take to heal for a young man?

Hunter Bland: Normally it's pretty quick, and I worked with UF Orthopedics. They were great, but my problem was I kept blowing it. I would mend it, and then I'd blow it again.

Tom Rowland: When I was talking to Rob, he's got a gastroc injury right now, and I happen to have a chronic thing going on with my calves. I don't know what goes on, but I've had a number of calf injuries. That's what I was telling him. You get it healed up to where it feels good, and then you go back and you think you're going to be fine, and then you tear it worse. Is that what was going on with you, a repeating chronic thing?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir.

Tom Rowland: With those, especially the hamstring, there's just this fear of it happening again. Did you have that fear?

Hunter Bland: Absolutely. It's a weird feeling that most people don't know. Like you said, I don't know what it's like to get shot, and I hope I never know. But it's like you blow a tire. You're running, especially when you're pretty quick, and then something just happens.

Tom Rowland: So how did it happen the second time? You think you're over it, it's just a freak thing, you didn't warm up good enough, and then it happens another time?

Hunter Bland: Pretty much. A lot of times it happens like this: I was through rehab and everything, and they're like, man, you're showing great progression. Next thing you know, I'm running 60-yard dashes, doing fine. My times are up, my speed's back up to par. I play another game, and out of the box, quick movement headed to first base, and you feel it pop again.

Tom Rowland: And on the second one, at this point what are you, 18, 19 years old?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. About 18.

Tom Rowland: So you're bulletproof for the most part in the rest of your life. And then you have this injury that's like, damn, it happened again. Are you even thinking this could be a chronic thing, or this might be the end of it? At what point do you start thinking, man, this is a bad thing that keeps happening?

Hunter Bland: When I blew my hamstring the first time, the negativity in your head starts playing with you. I was like, man, it's just a setback for a major comeback, like everybody always says. Then, once it got to a point, I'd probably spent almost an entire year back and forth trying to get it right, because you'd have little setbacks where something just didn't feel right that day in therapy. That second time it blew, I was like, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to play anymore, just because at that point I'd been working on it for a year.

Tom Rowland: And you get really scared that it's going to happen again.

Hunter Bland: Right. Anytime you're ever running, you're like, man, it's probably going to blow.

Tom Rowland: So at this point, are you thinking baseball might not be in the cards? What am I going to do? Is that when you started thinking about fishing?

Hunter Bland: Pretty much. I was like, man, I want to compete. I didn't want to give up baseball, because my biggest dream was to go play college baseball. I wasn't good enough to go play D1 ball, but I had a lot of colleges I was talking to in the D2 range, some private schools. I knew I was good enough to go play, and I had a lot of discussions with coaches. I even went to West Virginia, because they invited me to a camp. The hardest part was, man, I know I've got to throw in the towel, but there's all that stuff still lingering out there. It got to the point where the door was being closed for me.

Building the University of Florida Fishing Team

Tom Rowland: So fishing was a preexisting thing. That club at your school had been going for a while. What was the school?

Hunter Bland: University of Florida.

Tom Rowland: So that's a preexisting thing. Had you had any contact with those people over there before?

Hunter Bland: No, sir. When college fishing kind of got started, University of Florida won a national championship in 2009 and 2010, I believe. I had seen it online, I'd seen it published, and I'd been watching ESPN, because I'd grown up fishing and hunting. So I saw it on ESPN and knew that they had a club. I got accepted to the University of Florida and figured I'd get my degree, start working on what I want to do, and see what fishing's like at the collegiate level at the same time.

Tom Rowland: So had you fished tournaments before?

Hunter Bland: Not many. Very few.

Tom Rowland: And did you have a boat?

Hunter Bland: My family had a boat, so my dad let me use his boat in collegiate tournaments.

Tom Rowland: Right out of the gate?

Hunter Bland: Right out of the gate.

Tom Rowland: In the collegiate tournaments, what if you don't have a boat? I'm sure there are a lot of kids that want to do that, but they don't have one.

Hunter Bland: That's honestly one of the biggest dilemmas, finding a boat. A lot of times family or friends will let them use one. Since college fishing started growing, some dealerships have started allowing anglers and collegiate teams to take boats from the dealerships as demos. That's kind of rare, but there are a lot of people pitching in. The easiest way is if you've got family or friends who can lend a helping hand, or you just know somebody that comes to the university.

Tom Rowland: But you have to have a boat to get started.

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. You do.

Tom Rowland: There's no non-boater division like in professional tournaments, no pro-am kind of thing in college?

Hunter Bland: No, because it's all in a team format in college. So one of you has to have a boat.

Tom Rowland: So there would be an opportunity for somebody to team up with somebody else. And you chose to bring the boat. So then how do you find your teammate?

Hunter Bland: Ours was a club setting. We'd have meetings and get to know guys, then rank ourselves with small tournaments on local bodies of water and figure out who you gelled with best as a partner.

Tom Rowland: Would you switch up the partners to figure that out?

Hunter Bland: Sometimes. A lot of guys already knew somebody at the university or somebody that was fishing, so some had preestablished partners. And then sometimes it was a matter of, you two are both freshmen, you're going to fish together because that's who's left. You just made the best of it.

Tom Rowland: Is there a coach?

Hunter Bland: There wasn't a coach at the University of Florida. A lot of schools now have coaches, but there wasn't one then. When I was president, I had a couple of other guys helping me, secretary and vice president, but we ran everything student-run.

Tom Rowland: So when you're the president of that organization, what kind of responsibilities do you have?

Hunter Bland: You've got funding, sponsorships, planning all the events, fundraising, lodging, figuring out all the finances. We would fund some guys based on how much money we'd raised to go to different tournaments. It's like all the logistics that a professional angler would do, you're just running it as a club, and you've got more people to worry about.

Tom Rowland: And so what does the fundraising look like?

Hunter Bland: We'd run local tournaments and use those as fundraising opportunities. We'd rank ourselves, so we'd use it as a club qualifier and give ourselves points on how we did, and then we'd open it up as a jackpot tournament. You pay 50 or 60 bucks, and we'd keep 20%, and the rest would be paid back out like any other bass tournament.

Tom Rowland: And what kind of a budget do you have to have? How many teams did you have?

Hunter Bland: We had three teams that we'd give gas money for, and we'd pay for all their hotel rooms. If they had any leftover, they could use it for food. At that time, we were balling on a college budget. We'd be eating peanut butter and jelly at night and using every ounce of every cent we had to put gas in our trucks and gas in our boat.

Tom Rowland: So what happens if somebody wins? Is there cash for the winner?

Hunter Bland: There is cash. It's changed a lot in the past couple of years, but a lot of times that money will go directly back to the club.

Tom Rowland: None of it goes to the angler?

Hunter Bland: No, sir. Everybody knows that going in. It's more like you're learning the ranks, because it's such a high level now. There have been some incredible anglers come out of college fishing, like Jordan Lee, back-to-back Bassmaster Classic champion. He came up through the college circuit.

Tom Rowland: My friend Miles Burghoff, too.

Hunter Bland: Yes, Miles. I know Miles. He's a great guy.

Tom Rowland: I think he was at UCF, right?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. He was.

Tom Rowland: He had a great experience there.

Hunter Bland: For sure. Now he's fishing the pro circuit.

Tom Rowland: He just got eighteenth yesterday. That's really good. It's a tough way to make a living, but there's a great springboard off of the college deal, especially for somebody like yourself that is figuring out all the logistics of the money. Everybody wants to do something they're passionate about, and there are lots of people that are passionate about fishing.

The Business of Fishing and the Meaning of Sponsorship

Tom Rowland: There are lots of people that are good enough anglers to probably make it. But then there's this fine balance of how do you support it? Some people say, well, it's not about the money, but it is about the money, because if you don't have the money, you can't continue to do what you love to do. A lot of people don't want to go there. They don't want to raise money, they don't want to sell themselves to sponsors, or they have a different opinion of sponsorship, like, I'm a great angler and you should sponsor me. So what have you learned about sponsorship so far?

Hunter Bland: The biggest thing I've learned, and I kind of have a different take on it because I'm younger than a lot of guys out there, is that coming up through the college ranks, I've been blessed with a lot of deals now that I made the connections for when I was in college. Humminbird and Minn Kota, they're great partners of mine. They were at every single collegiate tournament I ever fished. We'd always shake hands and talk, and after I graduated, we were able to network and continue that relationship, because they have an incredible collegiate program. I was able to take advantage of that when I was fishing for UF, and they supported me after I graduated. What I've learned is that college fishing is a huge networking experience. But I've also seen the industry shift. I did a talk in Wisconsin a couple of years ago, and Kevin VanDam was the keynote speaker. He talked about how gone are the days where you could catch them and get noticed. That guy used to drop 30 pounds in the scales, and everybody's like, my goodness, he did it for the fifth time this week, and sponsors would just flock to him. But now there are so many guys out there that you've got to have a little niche, or be able to bring more than just fishing to the table, whether that's a nonprofit you can work with, or you work with a collegiate club, or you do a lot with young anglers. Mine, personally, is boating safety. That's what I focus on, and I take a lot of pride in it. It allows me to continue to fish while I'm networking, trying to help people boat safe. Sponsorship, in my opinion, has changed. It's really hard for an angler to just rely on catching a bass, because there are a lot of people who can't catch a bass as well as that guy, but they can sell a whole lot of products. And at the end of the day, if you're selling a whole lot of products, they're going to keep you.

Tom Rowland: That's probably the number one asked question over the years. It's interesting, because Shaw Grigsby is going to be in here later, and Shaw was my mentor. He taught me a tremendous amount about the way everything works. He gave me a piece of advice that stuck with me to this day and has been the benchmark of any success we've managed to have, and it's a simple thing. He said, you are worth your audience. If you can continue to grow your audience, if you can have a wider spread, you are worth more. It's a very simple piece of advice, but it's profound and very, very true. When he told me that, there was no social media, there weren't websites, there wasn't even email. So it was, okay, if that's the case, then I need to write articles, take photographs, do seminars, all these things to increase the audience. As that's grown, I've grown with it. Then came television, and more television, and everything else. Now, today, there are so many other ways. Any person could have the size of an audience that the best angler has, like what Kevin VanDam was saying. Today, just an 11-year-old kid catching bass in his backyard could have a bigger audience than somebody that wins a big tournament. There's that balance. You've got to be good, you've got to be able to manage your money, and you've got to be able to justify bringing in money. And then hopefully you'll win something. But you also have to create this audience and do this balance on social media, or have this other angle you're working, like the boater safety. So how do young anglers balance that? How do you target one or two of those things and be really good at them, versus spreading yourself too thin? What's your philosophy on that?

Hunter Bland: That's a really good question. It's something being talked about a lot right now, especially with how broad high school and college fishing has grown across the country. I really think if you can do one or two things really well and create a niche for yourself, it's almost more effective, because a lot of guys are trying to do everything, and they might be running so thin. For instance, I would love to get into the YouTube game, but I just can't wing it, because I'm so busy with speaking, tournaments, and appearances. I would love to film it all, but I know I won't be that strong on YouTube, so then I'm taking away the time I could be putting into seminars.

Tom Rowland: How do you get that wise at your age? A young person believes you can do everything. Then, with a little experience and a little knowledge, or maybe a few mistakes of spreading yourself too thin, you decide, I can't do everything, so I'm going to pick and choose, and saying no to something is actually saying yes to something bigger. How do you gain that kind of wisdom at your age?

Hunter Bland: I don't know. Honestly, it's been a little trial and error for me, but I've tried to pay attention as closely as possible to what's working. I did a video shoot in Texas, and there was a guy who's very successful on YouTube. I was watching him walk around and talk to his phone all the time. He's walking to the boat ramp talking to his phone, walking into the restaurant talking to his phone. But he's got way more followers than I've got. That's what he's good at. I feel like my strength is I can talk and articulate about products a little bit better in person, so I try to use those good conversations and convert them quick, whether it's sales or anything like that. The big picture for me is I've realized that I'm one person, and I'd love to do everything. But if I spend all my time in a couple of categories and work as hard as I can at those, eventually everything will start gelling, and collectively those two or three categories will catapult me. Whereas if I've got 5% of effort in 50 categories, I'm in big trouble.

Tom Rowland: That's pretty wise. It's admirable that you can make that connection right now, because a lot of people can't. They get spread too thin, and then they're not doing anything very well.

The Boating Accident: Ejected at 55 Miles an Hour

Tom Rowland: So the boater safety thing comes because of an accident that you had?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. You may have seen it, I got the whole thing on GoPro. I was the driver in the UF boating accident, where the two guys, the hydraulic steering comes apart, and it was caught on video. That was me. I was the driver in that. Thank the good Lord, we walked away with only some cuts and scratches.

Tom Rowland: So let's go over that. How did that happen? Kind of like your hamstring, all of a sudden, just blam.

Hunter Bland: Just blam. Everything had been proper, maintenance was done, always check the boat, everything was tight. I went over everything every night. It was just one of those freak accidents. That's what I try to tell people now with my work in boating safety: you can prepare for the unexpected, but you can't control it. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. We went through boat check fine, everything was fine. We'd been in the water before daylight for a while, everything operating fine. We blast off, two miles down the river, come over a boat wake, the boat settles back down. I'd come off the gas, trimmed down, done everything I know how to do. And next thing you know, the hydraulic steering comes apart. We were both ejected at, like, fifty, fifty-five miles an hour, somewhere in there.

Tom Rowland: And the other person was okay too?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. My partner, Connor. We both walked away, thank the Lord, with just scratches and bruises and a crazy story.

Tom Rowland: Were there people behind you?

Hunter Bland: We were almost passing the first boat. We'd launched boat four that day, and we were almost passing the first boat. And there were 144 more guys behind us, and we're in a river. It's very scary.

Tom Rowland: So was it light enough for people to see you in the water?

Hunter Bland: It was light enough, but you look like bobbing apples out there with all the boat wakes. People see a boat. When the video came out, a lot of people were saying, man, your competitors didn't care about you, they're all racing by. And I'm like, yeah, but everybody's tunnel vision, because you've got your adrenaline pumping in a tournament. The guys that were looking 360 saw us and looked. If they looked long enough, they could realize we weren't on the boat, but it happened so fast that a lot of people couldn't even tell we were off the boat. It kind of just looks like the boat's over there, just starting to fish or something. It wasn't until people saw us trying to get back into the boat that they realized something was going on.

Tom Rowland: How far did the boat go?

Hunter Bland: We actually stayed right there with it. The hydraulic steering comes apart, and it does almost a full 360. My partner goes out thirty, forty yards from the momentum. I'm only about a livewell back, and I miss hitting the side of the gunnel. I do some crazy cartwheel that you've probably seen in the video. And the craziest part for me is the boat came back over the top of me, and I was stuck underneath the boat. It felt like thirty minutes.

Tom Rowland: Did you have the kill switch on?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. The kill switch saved my life, and a life jacket saved my life. But the biggest thing I learned is that I had a manual inflatable life jacket on. My partner had to pull the cord of my life jacket to inflate it.

Tom Rowland: He was 30 yards away. He swam over?

Hunter Bland: Adrenaline and some crazy stuff. He swam right over to me, saw me pop up, pulled my cord, and then we just held on to each other. You're almost walking on water to get back into the boat because of all the adrenaline. It's a crazy experience.

Tom Rowland: How soon does some kind of a marshal or marine patrol come to help you?

Hunter Bland: We probably had another competitor boat there within a minute of us going out, somebody racing to their spot.

Tom Rowland: And are you in cell phone contact with the tournament officials?

Hunter Bland: We called. We were so shaken up, we had somebody else call tournament officials. FLW did an incredible job that day. They tell you they have a flag boat, and they tell you it's not a rescue boat, until something like that happens. They had that thing on pad, and they were running to us as soon as that call came in. We were fine, but it was so cold that morning. The water temps were, like, in the fifties, so they were starting to worry about us getting too cold. They picked us up and rushed us back, and somebody stayed with the boat for us. They did an incredible job making sure we were 100% safe.

Getting Back in the Boat: PTSD and Recovery

Tom Rowland: When that happens, it's kind of similar to your hamstring injury. It's a freak thing, it just blew out. So when you get back in the boat to go for the next time, what's your mindset? You've had this accident, and obviously you had to get back on the horse and ride. You got bucked. What's that like?

Hunter Bland: It was a pretty long time frame for me. We actually went back out fishing that day, but we never cranked the motor. We stayed running a trolling motor. But I got a lot of PTSD from it, because every time I'd get behind the wheel of the boat, I would see myself flying through the air. I'd see everything that happened. I'd go to sleep at night and I'd see it. I'd relive it all the time. I wanted to fish, but every time you get back in the boat, unless you run blindfolded, you've got to drive. It took probably about six months, and then I went to another college tournament, and we'd drive slow. It probably took me a full year to really get back into it and get some more seat time, to where I was comfortable enough to start focusing on fishing again. I'm way more relaxed now, but for probably a year after that, every time I got in the boat, I didn't want to run far. I just wanted to start fishing.

Tom Rowland: I can imagine. So what's the lesson? Like you said, you'd maintained your gear, you'd done all the right things, and you have this blowout. What's the take-home for you?

Hunter Bland: Honestly, it sounds cliche, but there have been a lot of things that have happened in my life, the hamstring, et cetera, the list goes on, for being so young. I feel like I've really paid attention to the things that have happened, and they continue to remind me to live life to the fullest. It's so cliche, but there's a lot of truth behind it, because we go through life a million miles an hour. We'll get off work, run to the grocery store, eat dinner, go to sleep. We'll kiss our wife goodnight, and next thing you know, we wake up, my wife's out the door, I'm off to work. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't taking the time to appreciate every little thing, the simplest phone call, a conversation like we're having. We go through life so fast that we forget to pay attention to the small things. When that happened for me, I was like, there's a reason this happened. We did everything correct, like you said, but it still happened. You can't control everything in life. You can make sure you set yourself up for survival, like we did, wearing a kill switch and a life jacket, but you can't control everything. When I drive home, I pray that my truck tire doesn't blow or somebody doesn't hit me blindside, but I can't guarantee that. So the biggest picture I learned is, whether it's fishing, whether it's spending time with your wife, your kids, your family, it's just live every moment like it's your last. It's so cliche, because I heard my dad tell me when I was growing up, but there's a lot of truth to that, because we're not guaranteed tomorrow.

Tom Rowland: So in your daily life, this accident basically changed everything. How long was it before there was a period of trying to figure out what you just explained to me, that this happened for a reason, and this is going to be how you live your life from this point forward?

Hunter Bland: There was probably a year of contemplating all this, going, why did this happen? That was essentially my senior season of college fishing, and I was like, man, I've got to catch them. At this point, baseball got taken away from me from a freak accident. I want to make it in something, because I'm still so competitive. I still had that drive. I wanted to make it in fishing now, because I'd had a couple of top twenties, and that feels good, competing at that level. It's my senior season, I've got to catch them. First tournament out of the gate, and this happens. My boat accident. I'm like, man, what else is going to get taken from me? Then I stood back and I realized, doors are opening and closing for a reason. It took me about six months, because that's when I filmed the PSA with the National Safe Boating Council. Next thing you know, phone calls start happening, emails start happening, new doors start opening, that I never would have imagined, from something completely out of my control.

Tom Rowland: And you're married?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir, I am.

Tom Rowland: How long have you been married?

Hunter Bland: I'll be married two years tomorrow.

Tom Rowland: So how long ago was this accident?

Hunter Bland: It was in 2017. We'd only been engaged for about two months, I believe.

Tom Rowland: Did she think that it changed you?

Hunter Bland: Absolutely. We always have to have our phones off during the tournament, we can't get any outside information. It's never recommended to call your bride-to-be at 8 a.m. on a tournament day, you're not allowed to have your phone on.

Tom Rowland: So she's told you that she thinks you're a different person after the accident?

Hunter Bland: She hasn't directly said that, but she's hinted at it a lot. We've had a lot of conversations about it, just the way I approach things now. Simple things didn't used to matter as much as they do now to me.

Tom Rowland: Like what kind of simple things?

Hunter Bland: Just going out to dinner. We'd go out on a date, but now it really is a date, because when you go through something that's a near-death experience, you're like, my goodness, if I don't have one of these tomorrow, I better make this one count. That's honestly how I live my life now, because it changed from that accident.

The PSA That Went Viral

Tom Rowland: The PSA, was that your idea, or did somebody propose it to you?

Hunter Bland: I was driving. We had about a four- or five-hour drive back from that event to think. I was like, man, I wonder how I can help somebody with this, because I was so thankful to be alive. I just didn't know how else to channel those feelings.

Tom Rowland: Were you talking to your partner about it?

Hunter Bland: A little bit. Everybody copes with it differently. He didn't want to talk about it as much, so I tried not to bring it up, because it's an interesting topic. But for some reason, for me, I was just like, man, I've got to talk about it. I've got to tell people, wear your life jacket, wear your kill switch. That's what I wanted to do. Right after I started having these thoughts, we waited two days and put it on YouTube. We woke up, and there were, like, 100,000 views. We go to sleep the next night, and I had to go to class, commuting about forty-five minutes. I check my phone when I get out of class, and I have, like, 18 missed calls, from all over the country. I got a voicemail from FLW's PR rep saying, hey, you're getting thousands of calls, we're fielding them all for you. Two days go by, and there are, like, 300,000 views on YouTube, and within about four weeks, there's a million. Now there are, like, 2.6, 2.7 million. It took a couple of days for me to see what was happening in that YouTube video. I was getting ready to start contacting people, just to let them know, hey, if I can help and tell my story, I'd love to. But in the meantime, they were contacting me. So we were meeting each other in the middle.

Tom Rowland: Did you get anybody that proposed anything you weren't comfortable with?

Hunter Bland: Not really. Most everybody saw what I wanted to do and just took it for what it is. Let's show people that if you wear a life jacket and a kill switch, it really will save your life.

Choosing an Inflatable Life Jacket and Mustang Survival

Tom Rowland: And today you wear an automatic inflating one, as opposed to the manual?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. I've spent a lot of time researching it now, and I actually went up to Canada, to Mustang Survival's plant, and got to see everything firsthand. I got to see all the testing that goes into it. I not only trusted their products, because we were both wearing a Mustang Survival life jacket, and that saved my life, so I have a lot of respect for what they do. I got to go up and give a talk to all their employees. That's probably one of the most special things I've done, telling everybody that everybody's an asset there, whether you're in sales, whether you're making them, whether you're putting them in retailers, it all goes hand in hand. I wear an inflatable now because I see the people behind it, I see how it's made, and I see how many tests they do. They test, like, 10% of everything, and I'm not talking about just dunking it in water for twenty minutes. I'm talking about stuff that sits in tanks for hours to make sure nothing leaks. I wear an inflatable now because I learned that a Mustang Elite 28 has 28 pounds of buoyancy, which is actually one and a half times the amount of buoyancy of your standard foam life jacket that we've all grown up wearing.

Tom Rowland: They just came on as a sponsor of the Florida Skiff Challenge, which I'll be doing. It's good to know that you have such confidence in their product, because that's what we'll be wearing as we go all the way around the state of Florida. We start at the top, go around Key West, and then back up to right around here. It's a long race. It's going to take, like, forty hours. There are only about four million chances of flying out of the boat.

Hunter Bland: Better have something to believe in.

Tom Rowland: I was thinking about wearing two life jackets, a foam one and that one. Because we're going at night too, which makes it even worse. And going despite the weather, whatever that turns out to be. Last year it was really bad. I didn't do it last year, but the weather was really bad, and of course they go anyway, just like in a tournament. It's never going to be what you hope it is. I think it's always the worst weather when the tournaments come around.

Hunter Bland: That's right.

Becoming a College Fishing Coach

Tom Rowland: So now you're out of college, you've got the boating safety thing going. Where do you see the next few years going for you? Have you got any other projects you're working on?

Hunter Bland: I actually just became a college fishing coach for Florida Gateway College, so I'm starting that. I'm also kind of toying with starting my own brand based on what I've been through. I don't envision it being anything giant, but if I help a couple of people through it, that would be cool. So I'm doing all this boating safety stuff, fishing the Bassmaster Opens on the Easterns, and now a college fishing coach. That's pretty exciting, because I get to use what I learned at UF as president, plus my experience in college fishing. This will be my third year doing speaking and fishing full time. I get to share that experience and hopefully help some kids get to the next level.

Tom Rowland: So as a college fishing coach, what does that look like?

Hunter Bland: I'm still navigating all that.

Tom Rowland: It's a whole new thing, really.

Hunter Bland: Right. When I became a freshman, there were a lot of guys, and our meetings were like ordering pizza and all sitting around going, so where are we going to fish next week? Now, I've got friends through all my speaking stuff that run college programs. I was telling Shaw the other day, at my last college national championship, I fished for BoatUS. We roll into the parking lot, and there are, like, brand new Dodges all wrapped in the college colors. I'm like, what in the world has college fishing grown to? This whole college coaching scene has changed, and there are a lot of colleges now that have started to acquire coaches to navigate and help excel that program. When I was in college, we were learning everything as we went, and honestly, I feel like I took a lot of time away from my fishing because I was running all the logistics. My goal is to help those kids focus on their fishing, whether they want to be a professional angler, work in the industry, or just learn more about the fishing industry. I want to use all my experiences to jump-start them and cut out the learning curve that I had to learn.

Tom Rowland: So do you have anybody helping you?

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. A guy I actually traveled with and a good buddy of mine, Ron Ryals, and then we're both very excited to be joining Shaw Grigsby as a college fishing coach. It's pretty exciting for me. Ron's a great buddy of mine, and we get to fish the Opens together. We've become great friends over the years. Shaw is somebody I've looked up to my entire life, and I actually got to tell Shaw thank you the other day, because a lot of times we never know who we touch. I told Shaw thanks, because I worked Miller's Boating Center in Ocala, Florida. I worked an event there when I was in college, they have a huge boat show every year, and Shaw is always there. I'd get to see a lot of the guys I've grown up watching. One thing leads to another, I'm there early. I was a junior at UF, I think. At this point, I was understanding, man, I need to do everything I can in this industry. You have a couple of good finishes, but you need all the sales stuff and the marketing to go along with it. I show up at Miller's, and next thing you know, I get put to work selling shoes, of all things. Some marketing rep saw me in a UF uniform and said, hey, bud, will you help me pass out some of these shoes and gloves? And I was like, sure. An hour goes by, and I'm showing off this product. I'm ecstatic, because somebody picked me to help market their product. Next thing you know, Shaw walks up and goes, hey, bud, can you come help me do a seminar? I'm like, say what? Shaw tells me he wants me to do a seminar with him.

Hunter Bland: I'll never forget it. He calls me up there, and we start talking about college fishing. This is probably five or six years ago now. We start talking about what opportunities are out there, how I'm trying to make it to the next level. In the meantime, he's preparing me, and I have no clue. We're in the middle of talking to this big crowd of people at a boat show, and I've never done this. I'm completely out of my comfort zone. In the process, he's like, well, tell me about those shoes you've got on, because I was wearing the shoes they were having me sell. He's just throwing me into the fire, but I had no clue what principles and values he was teaching me when I was in college. So when I had the opportunity to join a coaching staff with him and Ron, it was a no-brainer. It's really special to get to join a coaching staff with somebody you've looked up to your whole time. He has no clue how much those small principles meant, and I tried to share that with them the other day, how much he's done for me and my career, just in the small things of throwing you in the fire to talk in a seminar. Because now I talk all over the country.

Tom Rowland: I'll tell you what, man, you're not going to find a better person to learn from than Shaw Grigsby.

Hunter Bland: That's exactly right.

Tom Rowland: Not only has he got tremendous experience, but he's truly one of the best people I've ever met.

Hunter Bland: He's an incredible individual. Not only is he a great fisherman, but he's a great, compassionate person. He loves the sport, and he loves to teach. That's what I like the most, how willing he is. He's not some of these guys who'll say, I've got to get back to my boat and truck, I've got to hit the road. That guy will stop and talk to anybody, because he knows he's helping somebody.

Tom Rowland: He's always liked helping people. That's been a constant thing with him since the first time I ever met him. I learned a lot from Shaw. He's a remarkable guy, and it's great that he's found time to put himself in that position to help young anglers. I know he would always value that, but he's got a family of his own, grandchildren, a career, and all this other stuff going on. At some point, there's just not enough time. But I can kind of tell, and I'm interested in talking to him about it, that maybe things have slowed down a little bit. His family's grown, and it offers him time to devote toward helping young people. What a great experience that's going to be. So is there a season, or is it year-round?

Hunter Bland: It's pretty much going to be year-round. A lot of the college tournaments happen in the spring, but the national championships that the guys or ladies qualify for will be in the mid-June, July, August area. Then, in the real world, we'll have all those guys involved in seminars, kids' events, and stuff. The business side really gets kicked off when you finish fishing, like September, October. You've got two months to get everything ironed out to get right back on the road again in January.

Passing On the Business Side of the Sport

Tom Rowland: How much of the coaching that you and Shaw will be doing will be about sponsorship, about delivery to the sponsors, about making a sales deck, about how you sell yourself to a sponsor? How much do you anticipate that being a part of this?

Hunter Bland: It'll probably be a pretty big part of the coaching. I envision us being able to share that with our guys or gals, too, because my biggest thing is helping them learn about the entire industry of fishing and the marketing side from the get-go. The sponsorship stuff will play a big key, even booking rooms, helping them with practice. Shaw has a ton of experience on different bodies of water, so he'll be able to give a lot of great insight. Ron and I already joked that we're going to be listening to him. That's what's cool for us, we're actually learning from him. I've fished in college before, so I know a lot of the logistics of tournaments and qualifiers and how college fishing sets up. But a lot of it will be the behind-the-scenes business side of it that we hope to share with those guys and gals too.

Tom Rowland: Shaw can offer a lot as far as how to fish a certain lure in a certain body of water, how to dissect that, how to eliminate lots of things so you can concentrate on just a couple. That's all incredibly valuable advice, but it just seems like a guy like that, who has been doing this for so long and has done every part of this business, the true incredible value, not to downplay his technical fishing advice, is that helping navigate through the whole business world may be some of the most valuable. It may fall on deaf ears in a lot of cases, because you've got young people who just want to win. But like we were talking about earlier, if you can't turn it into a business that actually keeps your head above water, then you're going to go back to doing whatever you were doing before. It's such a weird, fine line to walk. You want to go win. What does that have to do with social media, or selling shoes? But it goes hand in hand.

Hunter Bland: It does. It's always those good, generic impressions that you can get from all aspects of it. I had a big sponsor recently tell me, hey, if we get a dealer that calls us because you were very helpful to that dealer, that's pretty much as good as you winning any tournament. At that point, I was like, man, the big picture here. We were having a discussion with some of the administrators from the college the other day, talking about sponsorships, and I'd thrown out some stuff, and Shaw had thrown out some stuff, and I was like, Shaw, am I on the right path? And he said, absolutely. Even for me, going into my third year, it's a comfort having somebody that knowledgeable next to you confirming a lot of the stuff we're brainstorming. I'm going to absorb a lot of it, but there's a lot of stuff he's going to be able to share on the business side, let alone all the fishing knowledge he has.

Tom Rowland: More than you realize. I remember when I first met Shaw, he told me, yeah, we do Joyce Julius and all that stuff. And I was like, what is that? There was no internet to go look up Joyce Julius, so I had to figure out what in the world it was. I guess it was a PR agency that would do all the work to determine how many impressions you were getting. Now a ten-year-old could do on the internet what they were doing back then. They'd say, okay, you were in this tournament, that was on this network at this time, and then they'd get the Nielsen ratings and say that many people saw it. They'd put a stopwatch on it. Okay, you were on screen, those logos were on screen for this amount of time, and they'd do a little equation that says these are the super high-quality impressions you were able to generate. All this was brand new to me. I was just a fishing guide in Key West. I didn't know that's how it happened. That seems super overwhelming, until he says, look, you are worth your audience. Okay, I don't necessarily need to know all the numbers, I just need to know that the audience continues to grow, and that I'm taking the steps necessary for that audience to grow. At one point, you fish 300 days a year, each with one person, so your audience is 300 people. How can you make that bigger? You're great, you catch a fish, and all 300 people love what you do, and they're all buying rods and reels, but you only sold 300 of them. How do you sell 300 at a time? How do you sell 3,000 at a time? How do you sell 50,000 at a time? Well, you have the same message, the same passion, the same enthusiasm, and you do it on TV in front of 500,000 people, and that's how you sell 50,000 at a time. That's when it clicked for me too, just like you're talking about with him telling you all these things. It's not all about winning, and it's not all about selling. It would be super sweet if you could do both, like Kevin VanDam and Shaw.

Hunter Bland: Right.

Tom Rowland: They've done both. They've won, and they do a great job for their sponsors. What a great role model for you and for all the upcoming young anglers. You should take it upon yourself to video it. When he's doing his little coaching things, you never know, man. Shaw might do this for a couple of years and just not have time for it anymore, or move on to his next project. But you should film all that, as an archive for the future. Maybe you only get him for a year. A guy like that has got a lot of people pulling at him.

Hunter Bland: It's a huge blessing to have the opportunity.

Tom Rowland: Think about filming or recording those lessons in some way, shape, or form, because it's going to be bombs of knowledge being dropped left and right. Even upon listening to it at first, you might not even get it. Sometimes somebody can give you incredible advice or incredible knowledge, and you're just not ready to receive it yet. You don't understand enough to know that what he just said is the key to it all. It goes in one ear and out the other. But if you listen to it again, like, there's this book, Think and Grow Rich. Have you ever heard of that book?

Hunter Bland: No, sir.

Tom Rowland: It's a great book. Everybody should read it. When you read it in your twenties, you're like, wow, that's pretty cool. Then you come back to it at 30, and you're like, wow, that's got a lot of secrets to it. You read it at 40, and you're like, oh my God, he just told everybody in the world how to do it. And then you read it at 50, and you're like, if I had just known this when I was 20. You have enough worldly experience that all of a sudden you realize, oh, every secret is not a secret, it's been here all along, I just wasn't ready to receive it. That's where I'd think that if you were to record those things and play them back next year, and the year after, however long you intend on coaching, that could be a part of the curriculum. Hopefully you're lucky enough that he'll keep doing it, and maybe he will. But just like your hamstring and your accident, man, it could just all of a sudden change.

Hunter Bland: I don't know. He's a shocker.

Tom Rowland: He can make stuff happen. So I would say the likelihood of him continuing that from here on out is not as good as the likelihood of him having something else pulling on him that doesn't offer as much time. Maybe he comes and does it a little bit, but you've got a great opportunity this year. And then with Rob too. Rob's part of that too, Rob Chapman. I don't know anybody who knows more about how to build social media than him.

Hunter Bland: Neither do I.

Tom Rowland: I kind of want to come down and be a, what do you call that when you take a class but it doesn't count?

Hunter Bland: Almost like a guest?

Tom Rowland: No, there's a term for it. You audit. You audit a class. I want to audit your fast fishing class.

Hunter Bland: The fast fishing class.

Tom Rowland: You should, though. That's incredible.

Hunter Bland: I know. If you had, like, a sponsorship for Fishing 101 with Shaw Grigsby and everybody else, my goodness, that would be tickets only, 50 people sold out in five minutes. And these anglers are going to be able to have that experience for an entire year at a time. That's pretty incredible.

Scholarships, Team Sponsorship, and Growing the Sport

Tom Rowland: What are the requirements to stay in the program? I've got two boys at Montana State, and they love hunting and fishing. My younger son almost fished at SCAD. He was talking to the coach, and then he decided, I don't know if this is for me, and went a different direction. Then that program since dissolved. But there were scholarships there. So does your school offer scholarships for bass fishing?

Hunter Bland: We're going to be working on a fishing scholarship. We're still figuring out all the logistics, but there are going to be scholarship opportunities where, if they're on scholarship, pretty much all their fishing is going to be covered.

Tom Rowland: That's an interesting thing too, that Shaw could probably help with, and Rob could help with, and all these mentor-type people, is figuring out how there might be opportunities for sponsorship or ownership that would equate to one or two scholarships a year. Those guys can figure it out. They know the people that might be interested in that, and the situations that someone finds themselves in where they'd want to donate that kind of money for tax purposes, so they could have this fishing scholarship.

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. The cool part about it, that I learned a little bit when I was in college, is that if you think about it, when I'm building my own media kit, and what you were just talking about with impressions, we're building it on one individual, whether that's me or Shaw. We're building it on ourselves. The great thing about college fishing is, say you have a title sponsor come to the table. If we've got ten or fifteen people all wearing that same jersey with that title sponsor and prominent branding, that's ten or fifteen times the exposure that one angler would get. Because of how big college fishing is now, it gets replayed on ESPN and World Fishing Network. All this stuff is televised. So you've got fifteen chances to be on TV, or if you get multiple teams that do well, that's two anglers on the stage or on TV getting interviewed at the same time, but you could have multiple teams. There's a lot of value in that when you're calculating college fishing stuff, that's unique to college fishing, because you're doing it on a team basis, not an individual basis.

Tom Rowland: Plus then you have the whole angle of growing the sport. This has long been a challenge for everyone in freshwater and saltwater fishing. As social media grows, as video games become more all-consuming for kids, there are fewer and fewer kids getting outside. Every company I work with is interested in whether you've got any ideas for how to get more kids involved in the outdoors, not even just fishing, just how do we get them off the couch and outside. That's where this college fishing has got a tremendous amount of value for the whole industry, because if it's popular, then you have kids that want to do it at 10 and 11 years old, thinking, I'm going to fish in college. If you're going to fish in college, you've got to get really good between 10 and 18 years old. So those are really important years that could help get them outside. Maybe they fish in college, maybe they don't. But if they have any desire to, maybe they go fishing five more times a year, and that's a win.

Hunter Bland: Absolutely.

Where to Follow Hunter and Not Finished Fishing

Tom Rowland: So where can people follow you? And if there's anything the people who listen to this podcast could help you with or support you in any way?

Hunter Bland: I would really appreciate anybody following along with all the boating safety stuff I'm doing, the kids' fishing events and everything.

Tom Rowland: Where do they see that?

Hunter Bland: Facebook and Instagram. It's Hunter Bland Fishing. And I'm actually getting ready to start a brand called Not Finished Fishing. It's kind of a play on words. We're not finished fishing.

Tom Rowland: Is it "not" finished, like with a K?

Hunter Bland: It's actually just N-O-T. I thought about it, and I thought that was a little too cheesy.

Tom Rowland: That's like "just add water" on a saltwater boat, or "reel salty." I decided I was never going to name a boat "reel" anything, R-E-E-L.

Hunter Bland: I contemplated it and I was like, no, it's just cheesy.

Tom Rowland: Or "not reel."

Hunter Bland: Right. That's right. Not reel. But I started that because it's a way, I have goals to eventually, we're just coming out with some hats and stuff like that to start, but I have goals for that to fund college fishing scholarships and be able to give back to the industry. A lot of my brand is, as you wake up every day, you're not finished with life. That's the idea.

Tom Rowland: I like that.

Hunter Bland: We appreciate all the support. It's going to be exciting, this college fishing stuff and the new coaching team.

Tom Rowland: What about following your university team? How does somebody do that?

Hunter Bland: We're still working on all the details of what our social platforms are going to be. That's Florida Gateway College.

Tom Rowland: What city is that in?

Hunter Bland: It's in Lake City.

Tom Rowland: How many students in that school?

Hunter Bland: I don't know.

Tom Rowland: Small, medium school?

Hunter Bland: It's a smaller school.

Tom Rowland: So many of them, like UCF, when my daughter was thinking about different schools, we looked at that one, and it's one of the biggest schools. I couldn't believe how big it is. Sprawling and huge, and it's one you don't really hear that much about, as opposed to the University of Florida. You never know. I never know the size of schools, because, like, MTSU in Tennessee, that's bigger than the University of Tennessee. Most people don't realize that. It seems like a little school, but it can be a giant one. Well, good luck to you, man. You've got a lot of good things going on. It's fun to talk to you, and I'm glad you were wearing your kill switch and your life jacket.

Hunter Bland: Me too, man.

Tom Rowland: Because you've got a lot more to give. Anyway, thanks, Hunter. I appreciate it.

Hunter Bland: Thank you, man.

Tom Rowland: We'll talk to you soon.

Hunter Bland: Yes, sir. Thank you.