Aaron Weibe:

“Fishing is like a 10 hour full body massage.”

Different people have different ways of relaxing. Some folks like a full body massage. Twenty-year-old Aaron Weibe, who calls Winnipeg home, calls fishing a full body massage. “It’s like full time relaxing, spending all of my resources getting myself outside into nature, enjoying myself a lot. It’s like a 10-hour massage on my whole body. If I can work it, I am always doing what I want to do.

 

“I have a lot of trouble keeping a real job,” said a laughing Weibe. “If an employer doesn’t agree with my fishing schedule, I’m forced to quit the job.”

Weibe is not a fishing guide, although he has tried guiding as a profession on different bodies of water in Northwestern Ontario, northern Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. “Things weren’t going as well as I would like them to have in the guiding (business),” says Weibe. It could be that his clients didn’t have the dedication he has to the sport. He decided to try tournament fishing this summer.

Weibe earned the Ultimate Angler honors in the Bounty Fishing Tournament, pocketing almost $20,000, fishing almost full time for six weeks; he missed the first three weeks while making up his mind that guiding wasn’t his thing.

“I am always going, going, going. I rough it pretty hard. Sometimes when I am fishing pretty hard I am not thinking about eating, sleeping, that kind of thing.”

He describes a normal fishing day. “I come back home, enter my fish (in the tournament), go to the tackle store, stock up, and do whatever else I need to do.” Then it’s back out on the water. It might be 11:30 p.m., midnight, when he backs his boat into the water. “It doesn’t really matter what time it is. I throw my lines out and fish. If I fall asleep, I fall asleep and sleep for a few hours in my boat.” Once he hooks another good fish, he comes home, enters the new fish and starts the cycle all over again.

When not catching a few winks in his boat, he sleeps in his vehicle wherever he is fishing. “It’s not like I need a motel; it doesn’t matter to me. I finish where I want to finish on the lake after dark. I have a short sleep and start fishing wherever I want to be. I don’t have to drive all over the lake, go find a hotel.”

Weibe, who is not married, is also a solo angler most of the time. As he says it’s not that he doesn’t want to fish with friends, but they can’t keep up with him. “They slow me down. They couldn’t handle a whole day on the water, handle bad weather, not eating regular meals, not sleeping in normal places…that kind of thing. They are just not hard-core fishermen the way I am. It takes the focus off what’s going on. In a tournament you need to put in the time to get it done. I work hard and it pays off.”

The Bounty Tournament’s diverse fish categories are the exact fit for Weibe. “If I wasn’t fishing the tournament I would be fishing for something different on every single trip. I like to try different things on different bodies of water. It’s like I done it and now I want to try something else. It’s not like I’m bored with it, but I like to see new water, new species. In the tournament I have to get more focused, what’s makes the most sense to fish.”

 

http://www.bountyfishing.com/blog/2007/09/18/ultimate-angler-aaron-weibe/

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