Luke Dunkin: Pro Bass Fisherman, Songwriter & Podcast Host

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 462 — Luke Dunkin — Pro Bass Fisherman, Songwriter, and Podcast Host.

Cold Open: An Outsider's Confusion Over Bass Fishing's Tours

Luke Dunkin: If you're an outsider — if you're not somebody who follows this proficiently like I have my whole life, and I know the ins and outs of every trail and who's doing what in each format — it's all confusing. It is confusing when someone says, "Hey, I'm a professional bass fisherman." "Oh, you fish Major League Fishing?" "No, I fish the Bassmaster." "Oh, what's that? Like if you just happen to cross MLF on CBS or something." Or if you're somebody who knows Bassmaster and you're like, "Well, you told me you're a professional fisherman, but I don't see you at the Bassmaster." It's a confusing thing. So having one solid thing — if we could ever get there, which we won't, by the way — where all the best pros qualify through something to fish against each other, would be perfect. The problem is, until we have some type of sponsorship, whether it be non-endemic, to make that happen, these touring organizations are all just businesses. Of course they're going to do their own thing and run as many events as they can, because they're making money as long as guys are paying entry fees. So I think having a lot of them can be an issue for an outsider. Now the other side of this is we have a ton of high school anglers now — high school fishing is huge, college fishing is huge. So you have all these guys coming up, and then there's nowhere for them to go. If you want to compete at that professional level for the big money, there are eighty spots on the Bass Pro Tour and a hundred spots on the Bassmaster Elite Series. So you take all these young, talented guys — there's nowhere for them to go, because it's really hard to qualify for BPT, and it should be. But on the Elite Series they only bring in nine or ten new guys a year. You've got to make it through these tournament trails competing against hundreds and hundreds of anglers. So we tell all these kids, "Get into this, tournament fishing is a great thing." But then when they get out of college, there's nowhere for them to go. Nowhere. And we lose a lot of them, I feel like. So I think having another trail like the NPFL is a good thing for that reason. Having MLF out there, having Bassmaster out there, is very good for the health of the sport going forward. I'm Luke Dunkin, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Welcome and Housekeeping

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? We've got a fun podcast for you today. Luke Dunkin has Low Budget Live — a podcast mostly associated with bass fishing, but Luke is a man of many talents. He's a songwriter, he's fished the FLW tour, and now he has a very popular podcast, plus YouTube projects and other things. Fun guy, man, we had a really good time talking on this one. I think you're really going to enjoy it, and if you do, it would be awesome if you could go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating and review. If you don't know what to write, maybe just write that you liked the episode with Luke Dunkin. And if you want to get on the Inner Circle, that's where I'll ask you guys questions for show suggestions, you can ask me questions about fishing, I give a lot of guide referrals there — all kinds of information is exchanged there by text. It's area code three-zero-five, nine-three-zero, seven-three-four-six. Text the word "team" to that number and you'll be added to the Inner Circle, and you'll be the first to get notified of anything new. So I hope you'll join that. Now stay tuned for this fun episode with Luke Dunkin of Low Budget Live. Luke, my man, how are you doing?

Luke Dunkin: I'm doing great. How about you, sir?

Tom Rowland: I'm awesome, I'm doing great. I'm admiring that John Prine poster behind you.

Luke Dunkin: It is something to behold. My dad actually got me that for Christmas last year.

Tom Rowland: Right on, so you're a big John Prine fan?

Luke Dunkin: Absolutely, man, since I was a kid.

John Prine, Sturgill Simpson, and the Nashville Songwriting World

Tom Rowland: Me too, I listened to him all growing up and just loved him. I got to see him a few times — sad to see him go.

Luke Dunkin: No doubt. My wife and I actually got to see him on New Year's Eve going from '19 to '20, so right into the dreaded 2020 when we lost John, we got to ring in the New Year with him.

Tom Rowland: Ring in the New Year, awesome. Just a little bit before that he was at Bonnaroo, I think it was '19.

Luke Dunkin: Yeah, I believe he was.

Tom Rowland: He was great, man — you could see he had that throat thing, his throat got cut out, you could really see that, but he was up there doing it. He played a bunch of old songs I knew and some I hadn't heard, it was awesome. I just always loved him, man.

Luke Dunkin: Such a great songwriter. I'm a songwriter too, I've always written and played songs, so he's always been one of my heroes — simple, but genius at the same time.

Tom Rowland: At that same Bonnaroo, that's when I got to see Sturgill Simpson.

Luke Dunkin: Yes, very good — dude, forget the fishing podcast, this is a music podcast. I am obsessed, man, I have been my whole life.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting — I know you're a songwriter and you've written some songs, but tell me how that happened for you, and when did it start?

Luke Dunkin: Man, it's crazy — my love for fishing really started at the same time as my love for songwriting. It was all kind of happening when I was eight to ten years old, which is weird because the two don't really go together, but for me it was, they both came into my life through my dad. He was always playing John Prine and John Hiatt and all these great songwriters. I would write poems when I was a kid, eight, nine, ten years old, and then started playing guitar at twelve and started piecing little things together. It's just always been that I'm intrigued by stories, and I think that's why I like doing the podcast so much — I love hearing what makes people tick, their decisions on the water or outside of it. The story behind a song was always so important to me growing up. I loved those MTV Unplugged specials, and growing up close to Nashville we had a lot of singer-songwriters — the Bluebird Cafe and that kind of stuff, where you'd go see the songwriters behind these massive country hits and they'd tell the story. That was always so cool to me, hearing where a song came from and how they came up with it.

Tom Rowland: It's cool to see the songwriters — I have a friend from college who works for BMI and entertains the songwriters, and he has the Key West Songwriters Festival. Every time he'd come to town he'd get me a seat, and my wife grew up with him too, so we'd go see these writers perform their own songs and then perform others' songs that you didn't know they'd written, and then they'd tell the story behind it, and you'd listen to that song completely differently from then on.

Luke Dunkin: That's right. It's so cool — like with John Prine and Sturgill Simpson, I didn't even know they were friends until I was going through album credits one time and saw John Prine was a co-writer with Sturgill. And then after John Prine died, he left Sturgill his Porsche, and Sturgill started recording his new album in John Prine's old studio. All the music I love is intertwined that way — you start digging in and realize so-and-so plays on this and wrote with that guy, especially in that Nashville world, the good songwriters really gravitate toward each other. Something that was so cool about Prine was that he always loved the young guys making their mark, whether it was Jason Isbell — he was the godfather for Jason's daughter — or Hayes Carll in Texas. He always lent an ear to those guys and helped them out. All music's connected in some way — if you like somebody, there's a good chance you'll love ten more people that they're friends with.

Tom Rowland: I can kind of picture Sturgill going to John and saying, "John, I need some help, this song ain't funny at all, I need you to help me make it funny."

Luke Dunkin: Or, "Hey John, I'm probably about to make half my fan base mad with this album," and John's just like, "Yeah, you are, but I love it, go for it, man." That's what I like about Sturgill right now — he's one of the few people willing to put it all on the line and be totally true to himself. I love the bluegrass albums, the recuts, but he lost some people with the rock album, Sound and Fury.

Tom Rowland: That's my favorite.

Luke Dunkin: Dude, it's great, I love it, whether he's doing twangy country or that. The songs, the stories — if you broke them down and he played them just acoustic, you'd be like, man, those are great songs, but the production throws everybody off. I think it's fantastic.

Tom Rowland: I haven't listened to an album as many times as I have Sound and Fury, maybe any album — I just turn it on and drive. It's been a long time since an artist put out an album I want to listen to start to finish. Most people are putting out singles now.

Luke Dunkin: It's a complete work, almost like a rock opera, you can't just take one song, you've got to listen to the whole thing.

Chasing the Nashville Songwriting Dream

Tom Rowland: So tell me, when you're eight years old starting to play guitar and write poems and listen to John Prine, how does that develop into actually selling a song at some point? When did that happen for you?

Luke Dunkin: Man, honestly, I never even knew that business existed until I was probably high school age, junior or senior year. A friend of mine took me to the Bluebird to actually see Nashville songwriters, and you start to realize, wait, all these guys don't write their own songs and this is a huge business — you can get paid to do this.

Tom Rowland: That's how I became a fishing guide.

Luke Dunkin: Exactly, same thing — like going to a Bassmaster weigh-in and thinking, wait a second, guys are getting paid to do this, this is crazy. But for me, the commercialization of it — some people look at it negatively, like it's a nine-to-five job, they have a formula, and there are guys who are very good at that. I was never great at, "Hey Luke, we're going to sit in this room, we're gonna put you with these two guys and you've got to write a song for this artist." That wasn't my deal, because songs for me just happen — it might be three months between when I write one. If I ever just sat down and said, "I'm going to write a song today," that's not how it worked for me, so it was very difficult. I had a publishing deal out of Muscle Shoals for a little while and got paid to write, but never had any big cuts. What's funny is, full circle with the fishing thing and then the podcast for the last four years, I play one of my songs as my intro, and more people listen to my music now than ever when I was actually chasing it. I'm actually going to release some new music in a couple of weeks — I've been writing again a lot. It's just so much fun for me, but I'm not trying to sell anything to anybody anymore, I just do it because I enjoy it, or an idea or a melody pops into my head.

Tom Rowland: You're a creative dude, you've got to have an outlet for that creativity, and I guess the podcast has been part of that, and it's opened the door back up to the music.

Luke Dunkin: For sure. It opened up the opportunity for me to start writing again.

From FLW Pro to Podcast Host

Tom Rowland: So you were an FLW pro — how did that start? You go to that first weigh-in and think, well, damn, you could be a songwriter and you can bass fish like this, I don't know which one to do.

Luke Dunkin: Yes — ADD, that's my entire life in a nutshell, chasing too many things at once. I started fishing tournaments with my dad at ten, twelve years old. He'd been really into it before I was born, then stopped for a while, and we'd just go bluegill and catfish fishing, and it was like a treat to get to go bass fishing — I always thought that was some super high-tech thing. He took me to a little local night tournament on the Tennessee River when I was about twelve, and I was like, oh my gosh, it just opened up my eyes. I started fanboying on the Bassmaster stuff, and I actually fished my first professional event when I was nineteen. I almost qualified for what's now the Bassmaster Elite Series at nineteen, missed it by two spots in the point standings — best thing that ever happened to me, because I was not ready at all, though I thought I was. Through a series of different things I got out of pro fishing for a while and went to work after I graduated college. Then in 2015 I got an opportunity through a company I worked for to fish the FLW Tour — they had an amateur side and a co-angler side, and you could qualify to fish as a pro. I dipped my toes in the water, did really well, won an event that year, qualified to fish out of the front, and jumped in headfirst the next year — living my dream, doing good sometimes, not so good other times. Then in 2019 they got bought out, FLW was purchased by Major League Fishing, and I decided to step away from that. I'd started the podcast by that time, but I'm back fishing some Bassmaster Opens this year. It'll always be part of my life, like songwriting — tournament fishing is something I can't shake, it's a terrible addiction.

Bass Fishing's Trail Wars: Bassmaster, MLF, and the Confusion of Multiple Tours

Tom Rowland: There's a lot going on with bass tournaments right now. You've got MLF seemingly, to an outsider, coming out of nowhere and taking over all of a sudden. Why did that happen in your opinion — is it the format, or is it the anglers? I know Shaw Grigsby and Gary Klein were part of that, so there's some ownership by the anglers themselves.

Luke Dunkin: If I'm not mistaken, there are about twelve of those guys out of the eighty who have some ownership in it. I think on the Bassmaster side they didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things, and when those guys made the jump to the Bass Pro Tour there were no entry fees — we've always fished for our own money essentially, but they were only able to do that for one year, and now they're back to fishing for entry fees, so it's shifting again. Bassmaster, as long as they have the Classic, that's the Super Bowl of bass fishing as far as tournaments are concerned, so as long as that's there, Bassmaster's still around and relevant, and the Elite Series is rock and rolling. BPT did change things, but I don't think it was a format thing — I think Shaw and Gary and some of those guys, their goal for twenty years probably, was no entry fees. It's like the PGA Tour — why are we paying to be a professional? It's silly, the entire concept. That's kind of where it formed, and due to sponsorship and the economy they're back to paying entry fees now. I think that's why we saw this major shift, because fifty or sixty guys left the Bassmaster Elite Series — Kevin VanDam, Gary Klein, guys who made their living there for years — and they were just gone overnight. It was a crazy time, that was 2019. Things have kind of leveled out now. We've got another trail I actually commentate for called the National Professional Fishing League, another professional trail opportunity for guys to win money. We stream twenty hours of live coverage from each event online, myself and fellow pro David Dudley, one of the all-time leading money winners on the FLW side who now fishes MLF, but he and I commentate those. We've got six events this year, it's new this year. There's a lot of good in the sport and a lot of bad as far as the anglers go — the entry fee thing needs to be addressed, but it's really hard, because our industry is really small. Pro fishing is not as big as we like to think it is on the bass side — it's got the jerseys and the boat wraps, but it is minute compared to other sports.

Tom Rowland: Professional fishing has certainly had its ups and downs over the years, being on ESPN and then off and back on again. You go back to Alton Jones — I got to fish with him one time down in Key West with Alton and Alton Junior when Alton Junior was just a kid. We had terrible weather, but I managed to catch some gag grouper, which was perfect for them because they were using Cinco worms. It was like the coldest day in Key West history, but he ended up winning that Megabucks tournament — that was a huge one for him, big money. Bass fishing has had the huge money at times, then it's had its ups and downs, but there's definitely a fan base there. I don't know where it's headed, if more tours means dilution and people aren't as interested because the best anglers never actually compete against one another. What's your opinion — is there too many, or could there be too many tours?

Luke Dunkin: That's a loaded question, but I'll try my best. Like I said, if you're an outsider it's all confusing — "I'm a professional bass fisherman," "Oh, Major League Fishing?" "No, Bassmaster." It's a confusing thing. So having one solid thing where the best pros all qualify to fish against each other would be perfect, but until there's the right sponsorship these touring organizations are all just businesses, so of course they'll run as many events as they can as long as guys are paying entry fees. And on the flip side, we've got a ton of high school and college anglers now, and there's nowhere for all of them to go — eighty spots on the Bass Pro Tour, a hundred on the Bassmaster Elite Series, and the Elite Series only brings in nine or ten new guys a year. So we tell these kids tournament fishing is great, but then they get out of college and there's nowhere for them to go, and we lose a lot of them. So I think having another trail like the NPFL is good for that reason, and having MLF and Bassmaster both out there is good for the health of the sport going forward. From a sponsorship standpoint, though, they're all splitting up the same little pie in the fishing world, so there's good and bad — it's a wild time. We've seen mega-bucks before, and at one time the Forrest Wood Cup in FLW, which doesn't exist anymore, paid a million dollars to first place for twenty pounds of bass. Those days are in the past now.

Tom Rowland: Maybe it comes back — all it takes is a big sponsor who sees that if they give a million dollars, they'll make twenty million back. That's how it works.

Luke Dunkin: That's exactly right, ROI, that's what it's about.

Tom Rowland: I never thought about what you said — high school and college fishing looks awesome, lots of people coming up, but I never thought about what they do beyond that, because there are so many schools with programs, and then they get out and they're competing for nine spots. That's super competitive.

Luke Dunkin: It's tough. And I'm not saying everybody who fishes tournaments deserves to be a pro — being a professional is something you earn, you work your way up and qualify. But there are so many talented anglers who kill it in college, and then there's nothing for them — they have one mechanical issue in a Bassmaster Open and they don't qualify for the Elite Series, so they never get to showcase their skills and potentially make a living doing what they love. I think it's really good to have these options, and I think we always will, because there's one thing I know about bass fishermen — really it's true of all fishermen — nothing's ever good enough, we're never satisfied, there's always a bigger one, always more money somewhere. It's a lot like a union in a way — as long as somebody's waving another carrot, guys will go there. We've seen it before, the Bassmaster guys went to FLW when FLW was paying big money as a new tournament trail in the late nineties, and then Bassmaster upped their money and guys went back. We've seen this several times, so I think these trails are around to stay for sure.

Tom Rowland: That's good, it's good for the sport, getting so many people out there. This year there's been anglers coming out of the woodwork because of COVID, I'm sure you've seen it in the bass world, we've certainly seen it in saltwater — lots of new anglers.

Luke Dunkin: That's healthy too, if managed properly.

Building Low Budget Live From Instagram Lives to a Real Podcast

Tom Rowland: Your podcast is awesome, and you guys have a good time on there — tell me about starting that, because it seems like you started pretty early for podcasting.

Luke Dunkin: About four years ago, and honestly we didn't take it, and I still don't take it as serious as I probably should — hopefully my sponsors aren't listening to this. The name Low Budget Live came from the fact that I had music equipment and figured out how to convert some of it into podcast equipment, and we'd broadcast these LBLs live on Instagram. We had no laptop to record on, we were up for twenty-four hours dragging this equipment around to events, backstage at the Bassmaster Classic broadcasting into an iPhone on Instagram, and then it was gone twenty-four hours later. I had one night with Bill Dance, Jimmy Houston, and Roland Martin all at a corner booth, and I have no record of it other than a screenshot somebody took while watching it live. Stupid — we did that for about a year, just for fun when we were at these events. Finally a friend of mine, Brian Stockell, who's a producer for iChip Live, called and said, "Dunkin, you've got to start recording, you're wasting your time, people want to go back and listen to this." So I invested in a little bit of equipment and started recording and getting more serious about doing a weekly audio podcast for iTunes and Spotify. Then in 2019 I was documenting my FLW tournaments — a friend of mine, Austin Boyd, was filming, and we were showing the good, the bad, the ugly behind the scenes, where we stay, what we do. I got on YouTube, never had done that, and in the fall I started just setting up a camera and throwing the podcast up on YouTube. Well, that's when people started really paying attention — I had a low listener base up to that point, and then YouTube just exploded, people started watching and commenting, and it's just been a lot of fun. There were definitely a lot of bass fishing podcasts before me — the guys from iChip Live, Bass Talk Live, Straight Cast, all good friends of mine, thank the world for those guys, but there were a lot out there. What helped me the most, I think, was that I was just honest, I didn't run from anything. There was a lot of controversial stuff going on in 2019 with the split, and I always spoke my mind about it, and people seemed to enjoy that. If you're talking to me on this podcast, that's the same guy you're going to talk to if you run into me on the street.

Tom Rowland: I guess you've got to balance being a little careful with sponsors when you're speaking your mind like that.

Luke Dunkin: A little bit, but the sponsors came to me. I had Starbrite back in the beginning — I've actually got a bottle right here. We did this as a goof once, brought one of these bottles to an Instagram Live and I said, "presented by Starbrite," just being funny, and they called and said, "Hey, we want to start doing that for real," because they were already sponsoring my fishing at the time. I was on their deal, and they said, "We want more of that." So truly, I mention them on every show, shake a bottle at the start, but most of my sponsors came to me — some were with me when I started, but a lot of them are newer and reached out because they were fans of what I did. The number one thing I tell them is, look, I'm probably going to step on your toes at some point, I hope not, but if I do — and we've had a couple of situations where they call and say, "Hey, we got a phone call" — I'll tone it down. It's just a very small industry, and when I talk about one tournament trail, some of my sponsors sponsor some of the other tournament trails, so it can get interesting, but I'm very grateful that people are there. The people I work with are very team-Luke on everything, and it's a blessing, because I hit record and start talking sometimes and listen back and go, I'm not sure I said that — but not a lot.

Tom Rowland: That's also the problem of talking and recording so much — sooner or later you say something you maybe shouldn't have, but not everybody has a microphone in front of them as much as you do.

Luke Dunkin: That's right, you've got to be kind of careful, I'd imagine.

Favorite Guests and the Boats and Pros Series

Tom Rowland: What's been your favorite guest that you've had?

Luke Dunkin: Oh man, that's tough. I'm lucky because outside of the podcast I'm friends with a lot of these guys, from fishing with them, so a lot of times it's like two buddies talking on the phone, and I think that's what helps the podcast too, because a lot of good friends of mine come on since they've been successful and I'm lucky to ride their coattails in that regard. On LBL I do a series called Boats and Pros, where we go out in old boats and basically film a life-story kind of thing — I surprise them when I pull up with these junky, terrible boats. I have to say, not to dodge the question, but every one of those Boats and Pros episodes has been a favorite because it's a deeper dive than I get to do on the podcast. But I'd say Jason Christie — who just won an Elite Series event — his Boats and Pros and his LBL appearance were two of my favorites, because he's a real quiet, guarded guy, and he got emotional on Boats and Pros. I made him cry, and I thought I might get in trouble for that later, because he's a tough guy, but I asked him a question about something in his family and he got emotional — it was really cool to see that. Then on the podcast he did a deep dive on a technique that I couldn't believe he was saying publicly. Those are always my favorites — I've got five or six guys where, when they start talking, it's almost like they say more than they realize, because behind the scenes you guys have little secrets and sneaky things you don't get to hear about on the YouTube videos. When it comes out a little bit I tend not to jump on it, because I know they might regret saying it, and I hope people miss it, because I don't want to use it against them.

Tom Rowland: The funny thing about those little nuggets is sometimes the guys don't even realize that's the missing piece of information everybody's been wondering about — how do these two things connect — and they've never spoken about it publicly, but to them it's just obvious. Nobody's ever asked them the question the way you do, as a fellow bass fisherman, and sometimes they'll just give it up freely. I've had people get emotional on my podcast too, it's very interesting. Do your guests usually wear headphones?

Luke Dunkin: They do.

Tom Rowland: When I first started, I had the same headset I'm wearing now and I'd give it to the guest, and you could almost see them realize they'd never heard their own voice quite like that, and they'd just keep talking, and then the next thing you know, everything comes out. That's why I like doing them in person so much better, because you can turn the volume up in their headset to where it's kind of loud and their own voice sounds weird to them, and then the next thing you know they're telling you stuff they've never told anybody.

Luke Dunkin: The ones I get to do here at my house, in what I call the Low Budget Live bar and grill — which has no grill, it's just a bar, my wife always asks why I call it that, I say it's one of those idiot things that came out of my mouth one day when I hit record and it stuck — I've only been able to do two or three actually in person, especially with 2020 being so hard, but they're always so good, because it turns into a natural conversation, set up a camera, turn the mic on, not even really any topics planned. I had Justin Atkins, an Elite Series player who lives down the road, come up earlier this year, and it was one of my favorites just because I know Justin so well, and he let his guard down and it was just like him and me hanging out.

Tom Rowland: You're going to get that a lot because you know these guys off the water on a personal level, as opposed to doing it with somebody you've never met before, where everybody's a little guarded and wondering if the other guy's trying to get them to say something. When I was doing them in person I would always try to do something with the guest first, fishing or working out, whatever they're into, to share that with them, and then they'd relax. That requires a lot of time though, so I was kind of disappointed having to move more toward doing it over Zoom because of COVID, but on the other hand it did open up the guest possibilities greatly — I was just doing one with somebody from Montana ten minutes before we got on this call. You seem to do both, Zoom and phone.

Luke Dunkin: I do, I mix it in. Honestly it comes down to how much time I have to edit — phone calls are easier. I record on Sundays, I've got five kids, man, a million things going on all the time, so it depends on the guest too. Some people are driving or in between events, so if it sets up to do Zoom I'll do that — I started utilizing it a lot more in 2020 and I enjoy it, but the phone calls, for me, I'm just old school with those a lot of times. So I mix it in.

Tom Rowland: You can get good stuff on the phone, especially with a guy just driving — probably kind of lonely anyway, so he's gonna talk.

The Grind of Life on Tour: Bass Pros, Rodeo Cowboys, and Wrestlers

Tom Rowland: Between being a rodeo cowboy, a bass pro, and a WWE wrestler, those have got to be three of the toughest gigs — you're away from your family all the time, and you're getting beat up in all three of those. You're taking a hard ride across the Great Lakes and getting beat up for three days, then you've got to get in the truck and go. Same with a rodeo cowboy, you just got thrown, now you've got to get in the car and go somewhere else. Same with a professional wrestler — even if it's fake, that doesn't mean a three-hundred-pound guy doesn't land on you accidentally sometimes, and now you're carrying a torn labrum around for the rest of the season with no time to heal.

Luke Dunkin: The Undertaker, now retired, has done some podcasts, and I used to love wrestling as a kid — you hear those guys talk about working two hundred days a year, tearing something and getting shot up and going right back out, no time for surgery because you're the Undertaker and WrestleMania's next week, you're gonna do it with two blown-out knees and they just try to make it easier on you somehow. Their stories are incredible, but you're right, you just go on to the next show.

Tom Rowland: It's just like what you were saying about bass fishing — it's gotten so competitive, with so much talent below you, that you don't just not show up, because if you don't, they put the next guy in there. Even if you're The Undertaker, you've got to keep showing up, even compromised, they'll do some other little thing, but you've got to be there. It's the same with bass fishing — if you have a mechanical issue and can't fish, you're done. It was the same in the redfish tournaments we did — if you have five good finishes in a six-event series and one bad one where you finish seventy-fifth, it's over, a guy who got tenth place in everything beats you because one thing blew you out of the water.

Luke Dunkin: That doesn't mean you're a bad angler, but that's the perception — what I call the mom's-basement crowd in the comments, beating a guy up for having a bad tournament. I joke about it, but these guys put everything on the line to do this. Just because a guy finishes seventieth out of a hundred doesn't mean he's a bad angler — you don't know how his week went, there's such a fine line in professional bass fishing between a hundredth place and winning, and it could be a lost fish, a mechanical issue, being late to weigh-in because of a mechanic, so many variables, or you could be in the exact right area and the winner simply beat you to it first. I hate seeing people pick on professional bass fishermen from an internet-comment standpoint, because it could just as easily go the other way and they'd be holding the trophy.

Tom Rowland: In so many of the tournaments we've fished — bonefish, redfish, tarpon, or some combination — you can get into this mindset of, I want to make the board, I don't want to get skunked, so I'm going to fish conservatively and go to an area where I know I can get five fish. But then you've got the other guy swinging for the fences, saying I'm going to go over here and either win or come in last. How much of that is going on when you see somebody torpedo and people give them a hard time, not understanding that guy was swinging for the fences?

Luke Dunkin: There are definitely guys who do that, and I think the most successful ones are those who, after the practice period, can analyze what they found on the water and know whether they've got a chance to do something special or need to figure out how to survive. The guys who do that well know when to take their shots — this pattern's lining up the way I like to fish, the weather's right, we're on a lake I like — and they know whether to go for it or just make a top fifty, get a check, get points toward the year-end championship. You see a lot of young guys come in and try to swing too hard, too much of the time, whereas your veteran guys are the ones you always see in that check line, because at the end of the day those ten-thousand-dollar checks add up. You might not be winning every event — there's a guy, Gerald Swindle, one of the most popular professional fishermen ever, who's never won at the top level but has two Angler of the Year trophies, and if you ask most professional bass fishermen which matters more, winning a tournament or Angler of the Year, most will say Angler of the Year, because it rewards consistency over an entire season. He's won two of those, he's won three or four million dollars fishing, he's never won one of the big blue Elite Series trophies, and people talk about him like he's not good — are you kidding me, that guy's in the check line every week no matter how many events he fishes.

Tom Rowland: And he's been there for twenty years.

Luke Dunkin: Absolutely, longevity, and that's so hard to do too. I'd always take that consistent career — the guy who can show up no matter where they drop him out of a helicopter and find five bass, that's cool to me, besides the big heavy-hitter guy weighing the giants, that's fine too, but the guy who always figures out a seasonal pattern is so cool to me.

Tom Rowland: He's going to always be there, and that's really a skill in itself — not only figuring out where they are, but coming in with respectable fish, a top twenty or top ten, and you may not win, but then you've got the other guys who are winning a lot, like Jordan.

Luke Dunkin: Jacob Wheeler, Brandon Palaniuk again.

Tom Rowland: All those names — young, tough-to-beat guys who seem to always be there. I grew up in Tennessee and always wanted to be a professional bass fisherman, I thought that was going to be my thing, but then I learned about fly fishing, got interested in that, and then saltwater fishing, and now I just watch from the sidelines on the bass fishing side. But whatever you say about tarpon, permit, or bonefishing, I have so much respect for those guys, because even with my short stint in professional redfishing and the other tournaments we've done in Florida, it is so hard to be consistent in those things. Then you see somebody like Kevin VanDam or Jordan Lee or Jacob Wheeler or Brandon Palaniuk, and not only are they consistent, it's happening for them — even when things go wrong. Wasn't it Jordan whose trolling motor broke or something, and he just said, well, I'll fish here, and ended up doing great?

Luke Dunkin: Yeah, in the Classic five or so years ago, his motor went out and he fished the same area and still won. And you know this term — he's a fishy dude, he's got gills, he's just always around. I've known Jordan since he was a kid, and it's like he just falls into it all the time. He's all aw-shucks about it, but that guy's a stone-cold killer — if he shows up at the ramp during a tournament, you're like, oh no. Same with Wheeler, same with all these guys — I say this a lot on the podcast, they're obsessed, more competitive than you, better than you, and when they're not in a tournament, you know what they're doing? Bass fishing. That's what they do on their off days, working on techniques they're not good at, they'll go spend seven days straight getting better at it, and then the next tournament they beat you with it, because they're obsessed with catching and figuring out bass. You have to love it, take the sponsor stuff and the business side aside — and they're good at that too, which is what makes them dangerous, guys like Jacob and Brandon are two of the best on the business side, social media, video, they kill it and beat your brains out on the water. You have to love it, and it's the same in the salt world — by the way, every bass fisherman wants to be a saltwater guy, and I think every saltwater guy wants to be a bass guy.

Crossing Over to Saltwater With Carter Andrews

Luke Dunkin: I swear, Carter Andrews told me that one time — he said, buddy, I wanted to be a bass pro growing up, and I said, you've got the coolest life of anybody I know, why would you want that?

Tom Rowland: He definitely does, and that's not something he just told you — he told me that twenty years ago in Jackson Hole together. He said, this fly fishing's okay, but I'd really like to be bass fishing right now, I want to be smallmouth fishing somewhere. He learned there were smallmouth in Idaho and went up there.

Luke Dunkin: He has promised me a trip to that lake a few times, and I'm still begging at this point — so again, Carter, publicly, I'm calling you out once again. I've got to spend some time in the boat with Carter, and I hope to do the same with you at some point — I've respected you guys for so long, I'm always the Tennessee boy watching the saltwater stuff.

Tom Rowland: Actually, me and Carter are both Tennessee boys too — I grew up in Chattanooga, Carter grew up in Nashville, and my wife's from Nashville, right down the street from the Bluebird Cafe, in that Green Hills area. So Carter and I both cut our teeth on bass fishing, and then the funny thing is we both ended up in the same place in Jackson, Wyoming — he was working for one outfitter and I was working for Bressler Outfitters, guiding at the same time in those places, and then we came back together to fish a bunch of tournaments together, him and Heidi. We fished the Redbone tournaments in the Keys, we fished the Mad Fin together. He's a Florida guy now, he's had a great career and a great life, he's got a great show now, but Carter is a guy who truly loves fishing — when you go fishing with him it's not about how we do it, he's just all in. The last time I actually went fishing with him, he invited me up to his dad's lake in Nashville, and we were catching these little fifteen-inch bass and he was as excited as if we were catching tarpon or sailfish.

Luke Dunkin: They just love it, man. I've been fortunate — people have asked me what it's like going with Carter, and I've found this with a lot of guys, I'm sure you're the same way to share a boat with — it's not, dude, it's all business, I'm having fun, but I want to catch fish, and he's the same way. From the time the boat leaves the dock to the time you get back, Carter is on it. I lost an absolute monster African pompano with him two summers ago — we were filming it, they'd shown up the week before, and he said, man, we never get to do this, let's go out and do it. We caught a couple of sailfish on one of these wrecks off Fort Pierce, and then for these African pompano he said he was taking me to the spot, and I hooked one, and he said it was the biggest one he'd ever seen, and then a shark got behind it. I normally wear deck boots in the boat, but I was wearing flip-flops that day, and he'd told me not to wear flip-flops in his boat — I told him I'd left my boots at the house, I wore them on day two, but on day one I'm fighting this giant pompano, a shark's coming, he's telling me to get it up, going crazy, and my flip-flop bends, I trip a little, and it gets sharked. He went bananas on me — like we just lost a million dollars, like I would have in a bass tournament. He's going, are you kidding me right now, that's the biggest African pompano I've ever seen, I told you not to wear those flip-flops. And I'm like a little kid, yes sir.

Tom Rowland: So you know what you get Carter for Christmas — a cheap pair of flip-flops from CVS for about ninety-nine cents, and you send him a pair every Christmas from now on, just on autoship, so he'll never forget.

Luke Dunkin: He would appreciate it — he'll think it's funny in a couple of years.

Tom Rowland: So do you do much saltwater fishing?

Luke Dunkin: I do, not near as much as I want to. My dad and I have a place in Orange Beach, Alabama, so we go down there and red snapper fish and stuff, but I'm obsessed with redfish inshore sight fishing. I love going to Apalachicola — one of my favorite places on the planet, I discovered it a couple of years ago, Apalachicola Bay is just this pristine fishery I love. I like going to Venice and doing that too, but I only get to go five or six times a year, nothing like I want to, but I love the opportunity. The last time I was down with Carter, getting to do five days of it in a row with him was a dream come true, targeting different species from snook to sailfish over five days.

Tom Rowland: You've got some endurance if you can keep up with Carter Andrews for five days.

Luke Dunkin: Five days, eight, and nights.

Tom Rowland: I'm out by eight-thirty, I'm like, goodnight Carter, I don't know what's going to go on after I leave, but I'm gone, I'm not even gonna attempt it — it's like trying to box with Mike Tyson, you don't even know where the line is.

Luke Dunkin: You've got to bail at some point.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Luke Dunkin: That man is a pirate, dude. But yeah, I get to enjoy saltwater stuff — I've got a bucket list of saltwater species like everybody else, and I try to knock one off every year, still no telling where I'm headed this year.

Future Plans for the Podcast

Tom Rowland: So what do you think your plans are for the podcast?

Luke Dunkin: Man, I really want to keep growing it — that's why I talk to friends and my wife about it a lot. I really like talking to you about saltwater, about music, I have so many interests, and that's where I'd like to see it go in the future, because right now it's a solid bass-fishing crowd, and they don't always want to hear about the other stuff. I've had saltwater guests on, people I'm interested in, and they don't always want to hear that, and they let you know it — trust me, my listener base will let you know in the comments, the "low-lifers," as we call them, speak their minds. But I'd like to start doing more shows a week — right now I do one a week, and I'd like to see it where I could do two or three with multiple guests outside of just bass fishing, hunting, saltwater, music, whatever, lots of different guests.

Tom Rowland: Maybe you just start a separate show for that — don't try to get the bass fisherman to listen to somebody they're not interested in, keep that base intact, and then start another one that's just whatever you like.

Luke Dunkin: No doubt.

Tom Rowland: But you do have a lot of interests — the music thing is really cool, that's got to open up a tremendous amount of guests for you, being close to Nashville and a little bit of an insider there. When you get Sturgill on, I'll be there too, he likes to fish.

Luke Dunkin: Listen, I know.

Tom Rowland: I heard him talking on a podcast he did with Rick Rubin, and Rubin asked what he'd been doing, and he said, well, mostly all summer I've just been fishing. And I thought, that's it, I'm getting Sturgill Simpson on either the show or the podcast one way or another. He'd probably want to go — everybody loves to fish at some point, they've got a memory tied to it. You could definitely get some songwriters and musicians on to talk about fishing.

Luke Dunkin: That's for sure.

Tom Rowland: There's a ton of them that like it. I like UFC a whole bunch and I've been able to connect with a bunch of those guys just through fishing — you figure out Clay Guida loves to fish, and you wonder if he'd want to go fishing, and sure, he'd love it. It's fun, I've been watching him on TV forever, so it was kind of a fanboy deal, but he turns out to be a good fisherman, he moved down to Florida just so he could fish more. It's a fun thing about the podcast, you get to open that up and talk to somebody like that for an extended period, like the Boats and Pros deep dives you do, you might never get to talk to that person like that even if you're friends.

Luke Dunkin: That's right.

Tom Rowland: So is that video, audio, or both?

Luke Dunkin: It's video, and it's an overly produced video too. We started doing that late 2019 into 2020, and I've got to film one this year between the NPFL and everything else going on. We filmed six last year, the goal was twelve, but with COVID we had to cut it short right in the middle, got a couple more filmed in the fall, and I'm going to start filming some very soon — got some guys lined up, it's so much fun.

Tom Rowland: How did you get the idea to show up in a beater boat?

Luke Dunkin: I'll be honest — full disclosure, I'm a huge fan of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, huge fan, I love the goofy music and the fact that he just pulls up. Now he's not in beaters, he's in super cool cars, but I loved the way it was filmed, I watched all of them on YouTube and Netflix. So I thought it'd be cool if somebody did something like that in a bass boat, where you go out with a pro in his boat, his sponsor boat and all that. And I thought, what if you just went in the junkiest boat instead — I've got a boat-dealer friend here at home who keeps some great used stuff, and he's been my facilitator on that. That idea just popped up and we started knocking it out, it was an absolute blast filming those.

Tom Rowland: It's an interesting idea, because you take a guy who's got every single gadget known to man — they're showing up at his house with pallets of electronics, every lure — and now you tell him, bring one little bag, or actually don't bring anything, I've got everything we need, one tiny bag and two rods, and you're gonna use this trolling motor that sounds like a coffee grinder and do it the way most everybody else has to.

Luke Dunkin: That's right, that's a great concept.

Wrapping Up and Where to Find Luke Dunkin

Tom Rowland: Well, man, it's been great talking to you and getting to know you a little bit.

Luke Dunkin: Absolutely, man.

Tom Rowland: We'll definitely see if we can get together and go fishing.

Luke Dunkin: Yeah, definitely, and an LBL, we've got to do an LBL, it'd be an honor.

Tom Rowland: You let me know, we'll do it. So let everybody know how they can find all your stuff, you've got tons of it.

Luke Dunkin: Tons of stuff — Luke Dunkin's Traveling Circus is the YouTube channel where all the insanity happens, fishing videos, Boats and Pros, Low Budget Live every Monday, and then on Spotify, iTunes, all the places podcasts are found. And Luke Dunkin on Instagram and Facebook, where I'm acting a fool sometimes as well. Thank you so much for having me, Tom, I really appreciate it.

Tom Rowland: I appreciate it too, it's fun to talk the music part, I like that.

Luke Dunkin: Absolutely, dude, we're gonna get into more of that at Bonnaroo.

Tom Rowland: I'll have my — I'm going, I've got an RV, still have my tickets from last year. That's a thing I surprisingly do with my daughter, she's seven now, so I've taken her since she was, well, since she was young, and it's just an awesome thing to do, experiencing that with your kids, seeing everything we wanted to see, and it's a cool crowd.

Luke Dunkin: This year's lineup is killer too, dude, it's gonna be fun.

Tom Rowland: Maybe we'll pull up at the same place, do some — sounds like a plan.

Luke Dunkin: Alright, sounds like a plan.

Tom Rowland: Sounds good, man, well, thank you, Tom — we'll talk to you then.

Luke Dunkin: Appreciate you, man, absolutely, see you.