IRON RIVER—“Gone fishin’”

That’s pretty much the norm around the local area as seasoned and beginners load up their gear and head out for their favorite area to get in some serious fishin’ time.

For local walleye ace John Hohensee, the start of the fishing season here at home will have to wait until he returns from a combined family visit/fishing trip to Louisiana.

“I’ll be there for 10 days; I’ll fish for nine,” said John, last week and he was getting ready to close up the River City Lanes for the summer. The next day, May 8, he was leaving for a small tournament in Green Bay before taking the southern route for some red fish and sea trout in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Out in the Bayou, chasing alligators, and there’s a lot of them, and red fish.”

John got into professional walleye fishing “by accident,” he said.

“I always fished a little and then started fishing in a small tournament in 1994.”

In 1995, he and his wife boat a boat and, along with his fishing buddy, Dick Stoychoff, the two decided to go fishing in a master walleye circuit.

“It’s four, five tournaments a year and then they have a championship at the end of it,” said John. “So, we did that in 1995, and we sucked. We were the worse team out there, but we had the most fun. It was the best year of my life.”

It also made him realize that he could do what these pros were doing.

At the end of ’95, said John, Dick didn’t want to fish on the circuit anymore.

“So I fished to learn to do it properly, and I went as an amateur in the professional/amateur division. I learned a lot, fishing with three different pros in every tournament, and you learn. It’s five days of practice, fishing with different pros, and I actually learned to fish properly.”

In 1996 and 1997, John was invited to fish on the professional side, he said.

“I had six tackle companies offering me sponsorships, so I took the tour and went out on the pro side. At the end of the ’97 season, I was in the top 50 in the country.”

That got him an automatic invitation the following year, he said.

Although he earned about $800 per tournament, the expenses were easily piling up to about $2,000 per tournament, he said.

There was a lot of media attention at these tournaments along the circuit, he noted. The local media came out and the pro fishermen were giving interviews, or talking to local clubs and organizations, and taking the local media out for a boat ride.

As John began his pro fishing career, he said it was a little intimidating to be fishing along side such pros as Gary Roach and Mark Martin, two top pros who have visited in Iron River a couple of times, he said.

“After a while, though, they’re just like your next door neighbors.”

Being on the pro circuit got to be quite an involved process, he noted.

“There was a day of travel there, five practice days, three tournament days and a day of travel home. I went from Dunkirk, N.Y. to Fort Peck, Mont.; every year was different… South Dakota, Lake Winnebago, the Soo, the Detroit area, lots of Minnesota trips, a Mississippi trip, Saginaw Bay several times.”

When he first started, there were four tournaments a year. That later changed to two divisions, eastern and western, he said.

“The guys who fished all six tournaments were in one bracket; the guys who fished in one or the other divisions, in another bracket, and the cost was increasing. The entry fees are now $1,600 per tournament. With the entry fee, there’s also gas and lodging and if you don’t do well in all three, you don’t get the sponsorships.”

The last year John fished pro was in 2001. He had landed a sponsorship with Warrior Boats in 1999 and that took him along until about the middle of the 2001 season when back problems put a stop to his tournament days.

Does he miss it?

“Oh, yes. It kills me. I don’t even turn on my computer anymore. I don’t miss the actual practice, though. It’s 12 hours a day, no matter how cold. It’s a lot of work.”

He misses the fishing, of course, and also the camaraderie developed among all the fishermen he’s met and fished with in those tournaments.

One year, he went out just for the practice session, he said.

“The bodies of water there are so big, not like here, and what they’ll do, you have a network of guys, four to six pros in a group, and they’ll divide up the lake and go out and look for fish. They all take notes… if it’s sunny or cloudy, windy, what the water temp is, the air temp, moon phases… everyone takes the information in the network and that’s used for the tournament,” he said.

“All of these guys I’ve met, they’re all really nice people and they’ll quick to help you out, if you have problems with your equipment, boat.”

Although he’s not out on the pro circuit anymore, John enjoys fishing the local waters for his walleyes, here and also in Minnesota several times a year, he said.

“Walleyes are hard to catch, more of a challenge, and it’s a good-eating fish,” he said.

“When I was in the eighth, ninth grade, we’d go camping in the summer. All my friends would go to the beach and I’d go out and fish,” he noted.

“I’ve been lucky. I’ve been all over the country fishing… Maui, Louisiana; next year, I’m making a trip to the Florida Keys,” he said.

But although he’s seen quite a bit of the country during his fishing travels, there’s still no place like home, he said.

“That’s the one thing nice about living here. You’re within minutes from a good place to fish.”