Miles Burghoff: Making the FLW Tour, the MLF Shake-Up, and the California Fires

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 89 with Miles Burghoff.

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today we got a good one for you. One of my first guests ever on this podcast was my friend, Miles Burghoff. He is also the host of Sweetwater, a show that we produce, and just an all-around good guy. Miles is having an awesome year this year. He just made the FLW tour, so we're going to talk about bass fishing.

Tom Rowland: And there's a lot going on with bass fishing right now. There are the traditional tours of the FLW and the BASS tour, but then there is the rise of the MLF, the Major League Fishing tour. So I wanted to get Miles' perspective on that, and so we talked about that. And also, I know that Miles has a connection to the fires in California and wanted to find out about that, because I was pretty sure before this conversation that he grew up in one of the towns that was hit the hardest, and I was right. Paradise, California. Miles has a tight connection there and some pretty good stories. So give it up for Miles Burghoff. He's the host of Sweetwater and a good friend of mine, and I'm happy to have him on the show.

Tom Rowland: All right, Miles. Thanks for coming out and doing this, man. Since the last time that we have done a podcast, you have had a lot of changes.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, a lot of things have changed. I believe that I was one of the first for the podcast.

Tom Rowland: You were. You were definitely one of the first.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah. And so a lot has changed for you too. But yeah, everything's really, really exciting right now. This is really exciting times for me because a lot of things are coming together, not only in my personal life, but in my career, which is really cool.

Tom Rowland: What's going on? Tell me about what you got going on. I know a little bit about what you got going on, but what all has changed since the last time we talked?

Miles Burghoff: Well, I think the last time we talked, I was actually looking to move over here. And now Katie and I, we moved from California, Santa Cruz, over here to Tennessee. And so that part of our life has changed everything. Logistically, she's working for a great dentist in town, and so we're both just loving that move. And then right now, we're looking to buy a house. We've got the down payment to buy a house, so that's a really exciting time and kind of frustrating too. We both have boxes that we need to check, and they may not be exactly the same. So we're kind of figuring that out, but it's still exciting nonetheless. And then the career, working on Sweetwater season five, is being shown right now, which is really exciting. And then making the FLW tour is pretty much the big thing that's happening for me right now.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And so you made that, and then you went to your first tournament. And I was watching through Instagram mostly, and saw that you did really well in that one. What was it like to be fishing at that level?

Miles Burghoff: Well, number one, you're going into the first event of the level of fishing that you've been dreaming of for your entire life and aspiring towards. Once you get to that level, if you've kind of tested yourself over time with competition in general, you have the skill and you have the mindset, but then there's always that little question in the back of your head: do I actually have what it takes? And so it could have gone all kinds of different ways, but it went really, really well. Everything kind of fit into place. I felt very comfortable out there. It was like once I caught that first big fish the first day of the tournament, I said, this is what I'm going to do. This is the same job I've done every single time. As long as I don't crumple under the pressure. And it was just good to be able to do that and not falter because of all the pressure that I was under.

Tom Rowland: And where was this tournament?

Miles Burghoff: This was Sam Rayburn down in Texas.

Tom Rowland: So how much experience do you have on that water? Zero. And so do you like that? I mean, bass fishing is going to unfamiliar water and being able to perform there. That's kind of what a lot of people want the sport to become. You take these people, and they don't know where they're going, and you put them here. And what happens? How quickly can you learn that water? That's what bass fishermen are really good at, especially tournament bass fishermen. So what was it like for that particular body of water? When you see that, does it say to you, like, oh, okay, I'm going to do fine here because it's got all these things that I like? What was that like?

Miles Burghoff: I think in the purest form of professional fishing, I like the idea of not getting a lot of information and just going out there and experiencing new waters and breaking them down as you go. And that's kind of what I excel at, kind of how I train myself. You know my background. I grew up... I was born in Florida, but moved to California. That's where I grew up. And we've got a place in Connecticut, so I had those two parts of the country, exact opposite ends of the country that I would kind of train and fish in each region. And then I moved back to Florida and then up to Alabama, California, and then back over here. And I've fished in so many different regions. I've never been the guy to do extremely well in one region. I'm always the guy that's consistent.

Miles Burghoff: And so I feel like the years of me not focusing on one fishery and kind of putting myself out of a comfort zone when I feel a comfort zone starting to happen, I think that's kind of helped me on the tour. Because when I got to Sam Rayburn and saw that this fishery was essentially eight foot high when we got there... And in a lot of fisheries here in Tennessee, eight foot doesn't mean a whole lot because you have very steep shorelines. It's not very gradual at all. But when you have a very gradual sloping lake like Sam Rayburn that is surrounded by cypress trees and bushes, when you have eight feet of water, that makes a tremendous difference. I mean, you can't even get to the shoreline in most areas, and sometimes it's like a half a mile deep as far as forest that you can't get through.

Miles Burghoff: So when I got there, my lack of knowledge and experience on that lake actually played in my favor, because a lot of guys were expecting to do a certain thing. And once they got there, they tried to beat that dead horse the entire practice period, and they missed the boat. And for me, I like going into a lake kind of ignorant of what the lake generally does, because most of the time when you have a tournament, there's some type of adverse conditions that you're going to be facing that are irregular from just regular fishing. And so for me, just showing up, knowing the generals of the lake, but then also not knowing too much, helped me kind of break down the lake.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting. That weakness is strength. That's a theme that continues to pop up, that sometimes just exactly like what you say, in so many different ways, that your inexperience can turn out to be your greatest asset if you know how to spin it like that. It's interesting that that happened to you there.

The Changing Landscape of Professional Bass Fishing

Tom Rowland: So this was an interesting year for you to be making this jump to the FLW because, you know, I'm kind of an outsider in bass fishing, but I'm a fan. And I kind of follow what's going on over there, but not like an insider like yourself. So tell me about what's going on between... I mean, at one point it was BASS, and then there's FLW, and those two are competing like Coke and Pepsi. And then there's this other organization that has kind of emerged over the last few years that really made a big splash this year, right, in Major League Fishing. So what does that landscape look like right now? It's volatile.

Miles Burghoff: It's different, because nobody knows exactly what the future is holding. Right now, actually, they're holding the first MLF tournament down on Lake Toho in Kissimmee, Florida. And I was watching some of the live coverage of that, because it is public information, so I can watch that. It's interesting seeing that new format.

Tom Rowland: So what is the format? Explain the difference between the three different tournaments.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah. So traditional tournament formats really consist of five fish per day. So you have a five-fish limit. You keep those fish alive. You can take your smallest one when you catch a sixth fish and throw it back for a larger fish, as long as they're alive. That's the basic format per day. So the total weight of those five fish is what ranks you throughout the day. And usually they're three or four days long. The top tours are four days long, and that includes FLW and Bassmaster.

Miles Burghoff: But then MLF came in with a circuit that does no weigh-ins, no live weigh-ins. They do some type of live platform where they talk to pros at the end of the day, from what I understand. But in general, they catch a fish. As long as it's over a pound, they get ranked by that fish. So it's the aggregate weight of all those fish that they catch throughout a day that are scorable bass, which is a pound or more.

Tom Rowland: And they can measure or weigh those on the boat?

Miles Burghoff: Yep. They have trained marshals that have a scale, and all of them are calibrated at the beginning of the day. They try to control everything, and then, from what I understand, they weigh them right there on the boat, and then they release them. It's a cool format. Of course, most of us are used to the five-fish limit, which is what we do on FLW, which makes for a really exciting weigh-in. And we also have a really good live platform on there too. Payoti Perriman, one of our producers, he actually produces that as well. So that's kind of the differences between the three tours, and it's really interesting to see this new format come about. And a lot of the mainstays in the sport, the big names in the sport, jumped over to that. So obviously there's something to it. So I'm interested to see where it goes.

Tom Rowland: So in that format, a guy could catch ten one-pound bass and he would be tied with a guy that catches one ten-pound bass.

Miles Burghoff: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: So it would lend itself to more action for the viewer, but it would also lend itself to being fishing for smaller fish on purpose, right? In theory. And then... I mean, there's lots of situations, and I'm not a bass fisherman like you, but I've been bass fishing a whole bunch. There's certainly lots of situations where you can choose a bait where you're going to catch a lot of small fish, or you can swing for the fence and fish a giant worm or a bait that's purposefully too big for the small fish, and you're not going to catch them, hoping that you're going to catch a big one. And so, do you think that the pros that are moving over to that are really all about that format, or is there more social media, more coverage, more sponsors, more something involved in those tournaments? What's the draw there? Is it the format, or is it something going on outside of the tournament?

Miles Burghoff: I'm not a hundred percent sure. I think it's more outside the tournament, more of the outside deliverables that they see as a value, whether it's social media following and just more exposure for their sponsors. And they also don't have an entry fee. They voted against having entry fees for less winnings. And there's something to be said about that, because at the end of the day, if you have a certain amount of sponsor money at the beginning of the year, a lot of times, if not all of it, is going towards your entry fees. And so you're starting behind the eight ball.

Tom Rowland: Entry fees on the other two, what are they looking at?

Miles Burghoff: On the FLW tour, it's $35,000 for seven tournaments. So what does that work out to, $5,000 apiece. So that's a lot, but that's kind of the traditional tournament format. You pay to play, and they have paybacks that kind of represent that influx of entry fees.

Tom Rowland: And how many people will get paid on a tournament like that when you're paying $5,000?

Miles Burghoff: In our tournaments, we have 170 pros fishing, and we have 65 people getting paid at any event. So I think the lowest that you can get is $9,000. So you're about doubling your money as far as your entry fee cost. So if you have everything already covered in the beginning of the year, you're making some money.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And how many tournaments in the series that you're doing?

Miles Burghoff: Seven total. Seven tournaments.

Tom Rowland: And is that consistent with BASS?

Miles Burghoff: BASS does a little bit more, and MLF, I think, does a lot more. So it's a lot more travel. That's why I love FLW, is the fact that I've been fishing their tournaments for so long, and I really like that family feel to it. They really do a good job at making you feel welcome, and they do listen to you quite a bit. So I like FLW for those reasons. And another reason is because I don't have to be away from home for that tremendous amount of time. Because more and more, my position as a professional fisherman is shifting less from just trying to make ends meet in a tournament, to fishing tournaments doing the best that I possibly can, and then focusing on the social media and the delivery of the value-adds that I propose to these sponsors that I get.

Social Media and the Business of Fishing

Tom Rowland: I would imagine more and more, just like in every business right now, that's becoming more and more a part of it. Well, it always has been for bass pros and for fishing professionals, but before the age of Instagram and Facebook and social media, it was sports show appearances and Bass Pro Shops appearances or some sort of retailer. And that probably still goes on, because I know you do a lot of appearances and stuff like that, but it seems that the social media has added a whole different twist to it.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, which I'm kind of behind the eight ball, my mindset of it. So it's something that I have to learn. We were just talking before the podcast about how the things that you think would trend in social media really don't get the traction, and it's so weird. And I have to revert from being a perfectionist to just being somebody that is trying to get a genuine, organic message out there that doesn't necessarily have the subtitles, what my name is and all that, or that brushed-up look to it. I have to get away from that, and that's really hard to stop.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It's funny. It seems like on some platforms that type of content does really well. And if you put other kinds of content on there, it tanks badly. And then you have each one of the platforms. Facebook has it. A video that will do well on Facebook is not necessarily a video that will do well on Instagram. And a video that does well on YouTube is not necessarily one that does well on Facebook or Instagram. And so, to really dial it in, there may be the same video, three different presentations of that video, to get the maximum views off of it. But we swing and miss all the time. Stuff that I think is going to be great, just fantastic, and I look at it and I say, man, I could watch that all day long. And it just tanks, and you just don't see it. But sometimes you can post it later or at a different time or a different day, or next month, and it will do not just a little bit better. It'll do a whole lot better. It's almost like fishing.

Miles Burghoff: It really is. I mean, you can bring it back to catching a fish. Sometimes you think that a certain bait will work, and you don't get a sniff. But then you can throw a french fry on a hook. I've seen videos like that. They throw a french fry on a hook, and they catch a fish. It's crazy, our expectations and how they're not always met.

Tom Rowland: When you bring it back to fishing, something like social media, if you go in there with a certain expectation and it's not working, you tend to just... exactly like what you were talking about, when these people went to this lake that you were just recently fishing, and they had expectations on what was going to work. And it wasn't working, and they stick to it to death. It's too much. You can do the same exact thing with social media. You can do the same exact thing with anything. If that's your expectation and it's not working, sometimes it's best to try again, try again, but other times it's best to try something else.

Miles Burghoff: It's weird, because in fishing I've trained myself to be fluid with the conditions and what's happening in front of me. But with social media, I'm still beating that dead horse. I really do sometimes keep on doing the thing that's wrong and try to change something a little bit, but it seems like I need to go a different direction. And I'm getting a grasp of it, but I think that just like it is in fishing or any type of business, social media is something we tend to overthink. And I think it needs to be something that's really organic, and you get an instinct for what works and what doesn't.

Tom Rowland: In the last couple of years, how much have you seen your sponsor pool, the people that you're talking to, the people that you're proposing become a partner of yours in these tournaments, how much have you seen that change and sway towards social media in some way, shape, or form?

Miles Burghoff: This was a really exciting year, because I'm making that huge financial jump. I'm taking a huge leap of faith, man, going to the tour, because it's $35,000. I didn't have any clue where that was going to come from. And then over the years, it's a combination of all the different things that I've been part of, being part of the show that you produced, Sweetwater, and just doing the things that I have been doing for a long time and learning what works and what doesn't. This year, it seemed to come together. I was able to put those proposals together and find out what the weaknesses in a company are and what their needs are, and I was able to actually convey that to them. And it worked out to the point where, it was at the last second, but I ended up getting twice as much sponsor backing as I had had my goal set at, which was unbelievable. It really is a true blessing to be able to say that, because not a lot of guys can say that, but it really came down to learning what a sponsor needs. A company needs to sell product and sell services.

Miles Burghoff: And some companies' needs are a little bit different. For instance, I sold one package that was a non-endemic company. They wouldn't benefit from social media at all, but I threw a hospitality package their way. Bring your VIPs to Lake Chickamauga. I'll guide them for you. You get this many credits per year. That sort of thing. Finding out, do they need to entertain people, or do they need to have a good social media content package? That's kind of what I was able to put together this year. And so over the years, I've been trending up even when things have kind of been shaky, which isn't always going to be the case. I'm going to have some down years. That's the volatility of this sport and this industry, is that you never know from year to year what it's going to be. That's why it's kind of scary home buying right now, because it's like we want this one house, but then this one's kind of the safety, because I think we can afford it even in a lean year. But it's different.

Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Tom Rowland: Man, that's an exciting time. I remember when we were fishing Redfish tournaments, and we were putting down some... it wasn't $5,000, but as I remember, it was pretty significant. We didn't have it. That's what's significant about it. The price doesn't matter. What matters is, do you have it, and how uncomfortable is it? It's all relative. But we didn't have it, and we took a big risk. And at the same time, I'm having babies and I had bought a house. And now you're really putting something on the line when you pull into that tournament. It's on the line. And how do you think that affects your preparation, your mindset as you go into these things, versus just a couple years ago? I mean, you might disagree, but a couple years ago it was a different story for sure. You didn't have as much on the line as you do now. How do you think that's affected your preparation and mindset?

Miles Burghoff: Honestly, it's weird. I feel more comfortable now than I ever have felt. I feel like I'm at the level that I want to be at, and now it's all up to the preparation and just doing the job that I've been doing all along and not being complacent and learning more. So I honestly feel like I've learned from mistakes as far as keeping overhead low. That's one of the biggest things that I've had, is like, okay, I can afford this credit card. I can max this thing out and afford it. It's only $50 a month. What does that matter? And, oh, I can afford this car. I just need to sell a couple more guide trips a month. And I've learned that whatever I can do to bring my overhead low is a really important thing. A few years ago, it wasn't a great spot for me, because I didn't feel the progress moving forward, which was a really big issue for me. Because I've always been focused on my goals. I've been goal-oriented. And when I don't see forward progress, it's kind of a depressing period of time. So now, with my forward progress and kind of understanding what my strengths and weaknesses are, and tripling down on my strengths, including preparation, social media, and everything else, it makes it a lot easier.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. What's the lesson there for a guy that is... I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are right there where you were, like no forward progress, doing what they think is the right thing, not making any progress towards the goal that they can see on a day-to-day basis. What's the lesson? How do you manage to continue to do the work when there's no progress forward that you're seeing?

Miles Burghoff: I think the only time you don't have progress is when you're spitballing and throwing things against the wall, but they're not your strengths. If you don't understand what your strengths and weaknesses are, that's one of the most dangerous things as a competitor or as a businessman or even at home. It's like staying away from that one conversation that makes your wife angry. That's very important. Being a little bit more cautious and tiptoeing around that. But knowing your strengths and weaknesses is, I think, the most important thing that everybody should know for every walk of life. And it's the most important thing for me, because I've tried to be somebody that I'm not, tried to be that guy that is good on a certain social media platform that I don't feel comfortable with, or try to do that technique out there on the water that I don't feel comfortable with.

Miles Burghoff: And once you learn what your strengths are and the things that you enjoy doing... I'll use fishing as an example. I like shallow water power fishing, and I like to do that. And it seems like whenever I do that, I tend to do better. But when I try to force-feed something else, I'm fighting against other guys that that's their strength, and then it's a completely different deal. The results are just terrible. So in general, step back, look at what your skill set is, what you enjoy doing the most, and then triple down on that, because you have a market. Whether it's a market you're catering to, the fish, or you're catering to a social media following, or you're just catering to your family, whatever you do that's your strengths can really build momentum. I think momentum's only stagnant when you're trying to do too many things. That's my thought on the whole subject.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I like that. But building the momentum is huge. And if you're just not seeing any forward progress whatsoever because you're constantly working on your weaknesses, that can damage your confidence for sure, because you're just not doing well. But at the same time, you are doing well because you're working on your weaknesses. And yeah, it's not fun. So there's a real fine line and a real balance between tripling down on your strengths, but also not just running from your weaknesses. At some point you've got to work on the weaknesses and make that weakness a strength, but that's the fine line. And being a tournament angler or being a professional fishing guide is just a metaphor on life. How much do you plan on doing that shallow water power fishing and staying away from the deep water structure or whatever, because there's going to be a tournament that you go to and that's not going to work. And are you comfortable making that change or not? And you just compare that to anything in life. If you just focus on that one thing that you're strong at, it's going to work a lot of times, but not every time.

Miles Burghoff: And then there are cycles too. Like if you're too good at one thing, when that cycle... again, fishing. Flipping and pitching is a shallow water tactic where you're fishing heavy cover. The old guys, Denny Brauer, Tommy Biffle, those guys that were really well known for that, they dominated tournaments a decade and a half ago. But nowadays, more versatility is needed. So you definitely have to keep up with the times, but your strengths are always going to be there to keep you propped up to where you don't fall too hard, is kind of my perspective on it. And learning to trust your gut, I think, is probably one of the best things, because your gut is going to tell you what's happening right now and what you need to focus on. Because everything that you hear, all the information... when I began, I just absorbed every book, every video, everything I could. Nowadays, I rarely do that because I've learned to trust my instincts, and I kind of go with the flow, and it seems to work. I'm not saying that you need to stop learning, but you need to learn the things that are relevant to you.

Miles Burghoff: If you can't compete against somebody doing a certain thing and it's so far out of your core strengths and what your gut instinct can effectively tell you how to approach it, then you should probably just avoid it and work on it on the off time. Like what I do out on Chickamauga, I'm constantly fishing out there and working on my deepwater strengths. And now, honestly, out on Chickamauga, I feel more comfortable out in deep water than I do in shallow water. So it's weird. You have to keep on learning. You have to keep on evolving.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. There'll always be that time when all of a sudden you're kind of like, well, I must have gotten better at this, because now I feel like, given the choice, the choice was always to do the other thing. And now all of a sudden I'm thinking, well, based upon all these different conditions, I think going to my weakness is the best thing to do. And that's when I think you know that that work has paid off and that you have turned a weakness into a strength. But that's such a fine line.

Tom Rowland: Do you think that with this new format... for all these years, you've had this five-fish format. And of course, you're talking about some of the best fishermen in the world. So you have to take that into account too, that of course these guys know how to catch small fish as well as they know how to catch big fish. But do they? I mean, they've made a living catching five big fish. Do you think this format is going to open the door to someone newer or someone that has different skill sets to really excel at this new format? Like now all of a sudden, catching ten small fish is the same as catching one big fish, where that guy couldn't even survive in the old format.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, I think so. And that's the exciting thing about FLW right now, is the fact that we've got a lot of anglers that... this may be something that people criticize a little bit, but there's a lot of anglers that not a lot of people have heard of, but they're going to hear of them. They're going to hear of a lot of those guys that are fishing the tour right now, because they are great anglers. I've always said that the best tournament angler in the world may not be the best angler in the world. And so I really believe that tournament angling is so different than just traditional fishing.

Tom Rowland: Anytime you put any parameters around it. I mean, you can say the best charter guide in the world is not the best tournament fisherman in the world.

Miles Burghoff: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: And it's absolutely... I mean, there are guys that have clientele, and they're booked for life because they're fun to be with, and they always show you a good time. You always catch some fish. And if you don't, you're still going to have a great time. And they just know lots of jokes and are just a fun person to be around. Very, very entertaining. A person like that's going to be booked for life. A person like that may not place in the top 65 of the tournament, but it's a totally different thing. The guy that won the tournament may have a horrible disposition, and nobody wants to be around him. And that's why he's a tournament fisherman, because he can spend all day by himself. And if he's a charter guide, that's where he's going to end up too. So he might be the worst charter guide ever, the best tournament fisherman ever; the best charter guide ever, the worst tournament fisherman, because all this guy wants to do is talk. He's going over to the other boats. Hey, what's going on? Nobody wants to talk to him. Anytime you put any sort of parameter around the fishing, whether it's live bait versus artificial, or offshore versus inshore, or fly fishing versus spin or whatever, you're going to see that some people are way better than others at those little things.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah. Going back to the new format and now that we have three tours, I think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. And I think that FLW is really exciting because it has been more of a grassroots program. And I'm excited to see some of the talent that they're bringing to the forefront now. And they've got great media platforms too. So I think this competition that has happened in the industry, this shake-up, is going to improve all three platforms.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Competition almost always helps. But one of the things... correct me if I'm wrong, because I really don't know what I'm talking about. But it seems like Major League Fishing has been around for a while. This is in the first year. But the big difference is that at some point, you were able to fish... I mean, there were people like Ish Monroe was fishing BASS and FLW. Is that correct? And there were a couple of other pros, and it was a major deal. You had to have two rigs, and you'd fly back and forth between the two and jump in and fish this tournament and then go back over to the other coast and get back on the other deal. And there were a few people that were able to pull that off. But from my understanding, a lot of these tournaments were scheduled on the same weekends. I mean, there are only fifty-two weeks in the year.

Miles Burghoff: So there's only so much tournament time, and holidays. And most of the time, they don't do winter, fall and winter.

Tom Rowland: So is that one of the things that made this year the year that you had to choose?

Miles Burghoff: I saw a window of opportunity with this whole shake-up, because obviously FLW lost some anglers, and BASS lost a tremendous amount of anglers from their platform that went over to MLF. And so I saw an opportunity, as a young up-and-comer in the sport, that this is the year that I need to take the reins and go after it, and just go after it with everything I've got. And that's why I spent a month and a half searching for sponsor backing to be able to pay for it. So for me, I think that this whole shake-up really opened a door for me, and I think that it's the same thing for a lot of people in FLW and over in BASS too.

Inside a Tournament Week

Tom Rowland: When you're going to one of these tournaments, how far in advance do you leave for that particular tournament?

Miles Burghoff: I'm usually leaving on either Thursday or Friday and possibly Saturday, depending on... I'm traveling with two FLW pros, Braxton Setzer and Rob Jordan. And whenever one of us books the house... obviously you want to get there as early as possible so you have a nice, leisurely preparation time, get to know the area, know where all the amenities are and everything.

Tom Rowland: But there are rules as far as what the practice period is.

Miles Burghoff: The practice period starts on the Sunday prior to the tournament, which starts on Thursday, and you've got three days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. And then Wednesday is an off day, which I absolutely love. Having an off day is great.

Tom Rowland: So you can get to the location early, set up your tackle, get everything ready, but you can't be on the water. And you can't get information. And that's a funny thing, because you pull up in your wrap truck and everybody wants to throw you information. How do you deal with that?

Miles Burghoff: I have to preemptively let them know. At Rayburn, I was getting ready for the final day. I was at a Dollar General just grabbing some supplies, and the lady in there was super nice. She was a local. She was just interested in what was going on, and she started trying to show me pictures on her phone. And assuming that there's a bait in the mouth of the fish, I don't want that information. So I had to tell her, hey, I can't get any information at this period of time. And so they understand that. And some people take offense to that, but it's nothing against them. It's just you have to preemptively do that, because we do take polygraphs.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So you can get there early. And you're traveling with two other people. And then somebody's going to take charge of booking someplace. Are you looking to be on the water? Are you looking just for a safe place to keep all your gear?

Miles Burghoff: At this next place, we're staying with a good buddy of mine, Ted Sullivan. He lives on Toho, which is not something that's easy to find. There aren't a whole lot of places that live right on the water. So we're going to get down there. I'm going to get down there probably Friday night and just kind of slowly get everything together. We're probably going to have a cookout, fry some halibut from Alaska, which I keep on... I haven't brought you some. I should have brought some today. I feel bad now. But yeah, we're going to do that prior and just kind of leisurely get everything, because you don't want to rush anything.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Miles Burghoff: I've learned that. I always seem to do that. I call it future Miles. Whenever I have a tight schedule, it's future Miles's problem, and then I have to deal with it.

Tom Rowland: So where did you find your travel partners?

Miles Burghoff: Rob Jordan is part of the Z-Man team, which has been great. Z-Man's been an awesome partner of ours on the show, and me personally, both Joey and I personally outside the show. And it's just a great group of guys, and he's one of the pro staff. And so I gave him a call when I found out I was going to fish the tour.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. And so even with those people, the people that you're traveling with and other pros, you can't talk amongst yourselves?

Miles Burghoff: You can. You can only talk with competitors that are fishing the tournament. So for instance, if you fish day three or day four and a pro has been cut out for those final days, you can't talk with them. So if they're going to compete in the next day of competition, you can talk with them. But I generally don't tend to talk too much. We talk about generals, but I think all of us kind of respect our own space, and we'll throw each other a bone when it comes around. But generally, the guys that I stay with, we just don't talk that much about specifics.

Tom Rowland: And are you guys traveling down there together, like in a convoy, or do you just show up?

Miles Burghoff: No, we just show up. Every man for himself out there on the road. That's a lot of miles.

Tom Rowland: It is. A lot of miles on the road.

Miles Burghoff: I guess that's why they called me Miles.

Tom Rowland: That's right. Because you're going to put on a lot of miles. What do you do? Listen to books or podcasts? What do you listen to?

Miles Burghoff: Of course, I listen to podcasts. We've talked about it before. I listen to the Joe Rogan podcast a lot. I've listened to, of course, some of yours, and listened to some fishing podcasts. I've kind of gotten out of the fishing podcasts a little bit sometimes. I listen to Bass Talk Live, which is one of my favorites, Ike Live. I still listen to those, but it's also a time for me to kind of get my news intake and understand what's going on in the world, because I don't do that at home ever.

Tom Rowland: I'm on a news blackout.

Miles Burghoff: Dude, it's actually a good thing. It's good to hear platforms where you have long-form conversations like we're having right here, because you can actually talk about subjects in depth. But as far as news goes, I can't handle it.

Tom Rowland: I've been on a news blackout for about six years. I mean, I just don't watch the news, and I don't read the newspaper. I find out about it, because the news cycle is so fast that while I'm not getting it on Twitter every single second, within a couple of hours somebody's telling me about something of substance. I just don't have to subject myself to that. And most of the stuff that I miss, it's not even worth worrying about anyway, but, man, it makes me feel a lot better to be on a news blackout.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, amen to that. I try to stay out of the news as much as possible, because it's just a crazy mess.

The Camp Fire and Paradise, California

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, some of the news that I saw that made me think of you right away were the fires in California, and you've got a serious connection to that. What was that like for you?

Miles Burghoff: So November 8th, it was just a regular day in Tennessee. We're just hanging out, and around 11:00, I had talked to my mom earlier that day, and then at eleven she calls and says that our house is on fire. The house that I grew up in that she still owned, and she was in Georgia at the time, staying with my brother. And so I'm like, okay, do you have insurance? That's the first thing that I thought of, if she had the insurance that could cover it. She said she did, so I was like, okay. I didn't think anything of it other than the fact that the house was on fire. I thought it was maybe an electrical issue or something. It was localized to our house. But then I started seeing some Facebook posts that I kind of breezed over at first, then I started seeing some real serious posts of my friends doing Facebook Lives or doing some kind of video or photo post of them surrounded by flame, looking like it's completely pitch black out except for flames all around them.

Miles Burghoff: And then I realized what was going on, and that was about 11:30 in the morning over in Tennessee. But over there, people were just waking up to flames in their yard. And so that fire, they called it the Camp Fire, and it was moving at a rate of 80 football fields per minute.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Miles Burghoff: And you just think about that kind of speed. It breezed through so quick that... you look at the pictures, you still see green foliage, because anything that was high enough, it was blowing so hard laterally that it just destroyed everything on the ground and just breezed through at such a tremendous rate. And just the heat. I had to call some of my best friends over there and see if they're okay. A lot of them I couldn't get through to because a lot of the towers had been destroyed. But some of them I talked to. Everybody that I talked to that was in town, that wasn't in the next town over for work, was still in the fire.

Tom Rowland: Wow. That was Paradise, right?

Miles Burghoff: Yeah. Paradise, California.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Because that was the name when I did hear about this news, and I finally broke out of my news blackout to say, what is going on in California? And the one story that I did see was talking about Paradise, and I was like, why does that sound so familiar? And then it wasn't long after that that I talked to you, and you were like, yeah, that's where I grew up. And it's so weird when you see something like that, catastrophic damage somewhere, and then you make a personal connection to that. Like, wow, that's where Miles grew up. That's bizarre for me. And then for you, it's way beyond bizarre. It's like those are your friends and your family and your house and your belongings and everything that is going on in there. We deal with a lot of hurricanes and stuff, but that fire... I mean, 80 football fields a minute, that's faster than you can run.

Miles Burghoff: Way faster. Faster than you could drive in the traffic. The hardest part about the whole thing was just being away from it, not being there. You feel so helpless. You just want to help the community that you grew up around, and you just want to be there. You feel like there's this feeling of FOMO, fear of missing out. But it's not fear of the excitement of it, but fear of not being there for the people that you care about.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Miles Burghoff: And that was the hard part, not being able to be there for people. And so we really wanted to go over there. Katie and I both grew up there. That's where Katie and I met, in high school, Paradise High School. And so for both of us, it was a very hard time just seeing it from afar and not being able to be there to comfort our friends. And there was a point where we were just going to fly over while the chaos was still happening. But then we realized, this is just going to eat up resources, and we're not needed. There's nothing we can do for them that we can't do from here. So we did open a GoFundMe page, because there were... I think it was like 24,000 people who were displaced, or it was at least 18,000 homes or 18,000 families that were displaced. And it was 15,000 and change homes that were destroyed, as a matter of fact.

Tom Rowland: How many people lived there, do you think, before the fire?

Miles Burghoff: Total, I think there were 30,000.

Tom Rowland: So it's 50% of the houses gone?

Miles Burghoff: Oh, no. As far as houses, 90% of the houses are gone.

Tom Rowland: 90% of the houses?

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, around there. The businesses seem to do better because they have a lot more space in between the trees and things like that. Parking lots kind of were good buffer zones. But it was so crazy how unpredictable. Because we got to go there finally around New Year's, and it was almost therapeutic being there, number one. It was harder for me being over here and thinking about it. But when we went over there, it was a huge relief for all of us, I think, because we got to see it, and people adjusting to it, and you got to see the reality of it, which is complete destruction, but at the same time, you're seeing people kind of surviving. And that's kind of comforting. But when we went there and saw the destruction, I've never seen anything like it. Because we went there, and you would see a building that was perfectly fine, and then right next to it, a building that didn't even look like it existed. The vast majority of the town was completely gone, but those businesses were the ones that kind of remained a little bit.

Tom Rowland: What happens with the 90% destruction? So what happens to the 10% that are remaining, that one building that's sitting there next to total destruction?

Miles Burghoff: That's what I said. That was one of the things Katie and I would talk about. I'd be like, I feel bad for the people that didn't lose their homes too, because now the whole town is wrecked. Property values, that gray area that people fall in with insurance. So I know our neighbor... it's funny that we're talking about the people whose houses did survive. Our neighbor survived, next to our mom's place, and he's going to live there. He's all gung-ho about staying, but I'm not sure how it's going to work. I actually have one friend, out of all my friends, whose house actually survived, and it was out on the outskirts of the town up the mountain. So I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen with them, but hopefully it all works out in their favor in some way, because I would assume that for at least the next ten years or so, property values are going to be really, really bad, probably locked up. I don't understand the economics about it enough to be an expert at it. But it seems to me, seeing as all the toxicity levels in the area, because you're talking about a lot of homes that were made of asbestos and lead paint and all these different toxic things, that's one of the main things. We had to wear like major respirators and full painters suits.

Tom Rowland: Think about that.

Miles Burghoff: Oh yeah, our house is made of asbestos, from what I understand. And so a lot of houses that were made back in the sixties and seventies were destroyed. I mean, the air quality in Northern California was the worst in the world during that period of time.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Wow. So that's tough. Over the last few years, and even back in the nineties, there were so many hurricanes that came through Florida that it was just one after another. If it didn't hit the Keys, it hit somewhere else, and it was just a constant part of life. But the best thing, as you said, was that after one of these disasters, you would see the community come together like no other time ever. People would do so much for one another, and it was just amazing to see. But unfortunately, sometimes you have to go through some really bad things in order to see that.

Miles Burghoff: Yeah, that's a good point, because that's how I kind of feel about it. I'm kind of an optimist when it comes to that kind of stuff, because I see, under the greatest struggles and the biggest disasters, that it can be some of the best years of people's lives. And that may seem insensitive to say, but I think that people are going to look back and see how their community came together and people reacted so well as a whole to those things, that people's true colors kind of showed. And I think that as much as it was so destructive and deadly, because almost ninety people died in the fire, it happened so fast... I think that by and large, the community of Paradise is going to be a very strong, closely knit community because of it. Which is hopeful to me. There's obviously still a lot of struggle ahead. I just talked to my friend Kenny on the phone yesterday, and I asked him how he's doing. He's the one whose house is still standing. And he's just like, man, we're just trying to learn a new norm, as normal as it can be. Because every day he has to drive through the town that doesn't look at all like it used to. Nothing there. So it's definitely been disastrous, but I think that those types of events do have an upside to them.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, certainly, I've seen the upside many times with hurricanes, and you're right. It does bind the community like nothing else.

What's Next for Miles

Tom Rowland: So on a lighter note, you've got so many good things happening for you in your life outside of the fires of California. You've got, you know, you're about to buy a house. You've got the FLW tour going on. Sweetwater's proceeding on. What's next in your mind? What's next for you?

Miles Burghoff: Keep on learning and keep on getting better at the things I'm not so great at, and also the things that I'm pretty good at.

Tom Rowland: Both on and off the water?

Miles Burghoff: On and off the water, and just keep on evolving as a person, man. I think that's what it's all about. And so I'm really excited. I want to do some more... I'm definitely doing a lot more video content for the social media side, and really enjoying doing that. So it's a really exciting period of time. I'm really happy with the direction things are kind of trending for me, and I just don't want to rest on my laurels, man. I want to keep on going full bore.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. So where can people see all of the new stuff that you're producing?

Miles Burghoff: Number one, of course, you can watch Sweetwater. We've got three different platforms, I believe, and you can correct me. You're a little bit more in tune with the pulse of where we're being shown, but we're on NBC Sports, Sportsman's Channel, and then also Waypoint TV, which is outstanding. Anybody can watch it there and all our episodes. And then, yeah, Sweetwater Fishing TV. And then my own platforms. I'm really trying to push my YouTube quite a bit and putting a lot of energy into that. And Facebook and Instagram are my other two that I really concentrate on.

Tom Rowland: What are your handles?

Miles Burghoff: Sonar Fishing on Instagram and YouTube. And then Facebook, my professional page is Miles Sonar Burghoff.

Tom Rowland: Sonar, because you are the master of the sonar.

Miles Burghoff: And son of radar.

Tom Rowland: Son of radar. That's right. That's exactly right. And then you have Sonar because you do actually know your way around a depth finder pretty well. All right. Well, I think everybody will go and check you out, and I really appreciate you stopping by, because it's cool to hear this whole bass world, because it's a little different. I mean, really, for an outsider, you see these guys just showing up at these tournaments and everything, but I know that there's way more that goes into it.

Miles Burghoff: Oh, yeah. There's all the travel and the balancing of the family life and the balancing of the budget, and it's expensive and stressful at times, I'm sure.

Tom Rowland: But you seem to be handling it pretty well. And that first tournament went well.

Miles Burghoff: I love the process. That's what it's all about.

Tom Rowland: That's it. All right, Miles. Well, good luck to you, and we'll be watching. And hopefully this time, you're going to make it to the final day.

Miles Burghoff: Thanks, Tom. Really good to be here.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, man. See you, Miles.

Miles Burghoff: Thanks.