We caught up with Jason Christie to talk about his life before he became a professional angler.
I had a lot of good teams where a fourth grader could have coached them and they would have been good. But my favorite part of coaching was taking teams who could have won six or seven games and getting them to win 13 or 14 games. Over-achieving players and teams.
My favorite kind of player was one who was not a die-hard basketball player, who didn’t live to play every day of the week, but he could become a player that could help the team. That improvement was my favorite part of coaching.
My first job ever that I got paid for was working on a marina. I remember I was under-age, like 13 or 14. The same day I got hired, they hired a kid that was 16 or 17. The owner offered to pay me $2/hour, and he paid the older kid the minimum wage of $4 at the time. The first day, I worked my tail off. I worked circles around the older kid.
I believe I’m one of the few people who got a raise at the end of his first day of work. That stuck with me. I don’t believe a person should ask for raises; you get one if you deserve one. The sponsors I’ve had have followed that. I don’t have to ask, they offer. I learned that if you work hard, work circles around others, you’ll be rewarded.
We had a week off between events. At the time, I couldn’t afford to fly home. I decided to stay up north, outside of Cayuga. We didn’t get a good hotel because it was move-in week or something. We pulled into a hotel that was like $27/night. That should have been the first clue that it would not be a good night.
It didn’t feel safe. Every five minutes, I would walk outside to see if my stuff was still there. It was uncomfortable, it was nasty. It was like a little pocket of bad in a generally good area.
Now, thankfully, I don’t have to stay in places where I worry about my boat, or my tackle, or my life.
