The feeling of deja vu hit me the instant I stepped off the plane as the cold, crisp air filled my lungs and the chilled rain hit my sandaled feet. Once again I found myself in southeast Alaska for another summer (this is my sixth) of rewarding but often arduous work as a fishing guide at the Baranof Wilderness Lodge.

I wrote this from the company apartment on the outskirts of the town of Sitka. The next day I would hop on a float plane for the lodge, which lies on the opposite side of Baranof Island. The annual transition from following my passion of tournament bass fishing in muggy central Florida to the cold, drizzly Alaskan wilderness in order pay for that passion is always a hard one.

On one hand, I was relieved to leave my financial burdens behind and once again come to a place where my overhead is close to zero and I can actually come out on top. I'm also excited to reunite with old friends and co-workers, and enjoy some of the most majestic and virgin wilderness in the world.

On the other hand, I always find myself, at least briefly, frustrated nearly to tears. The reason for this frustration is that I am passionate about the sport of tournament bass fishing, and I'm only truly, completely happy when I'm working on becoming the best competitive bass angler I can be. And as we all know, there are no bass in Alaska – at least not the freshwater kind.

It seems that I always get the same reaction from people who don’t fish much: “Well, you are fishing up there! Fishing for salmon can’t be that different from fishing for bass.” Even my own girlfriend didn’t seem to understand, although, in her defense, she doesn’t fish much at all and wouldn’t know a bass from a salmon unless it was on a plate with a slice of lemon.

I find myself explaining to people that leaving bass fishing to go to work as a fishing guide in Alaska is akin to an aspiring professional basketball player going to baseball camp. It just isn’t the same.

Don’t get me wrong – I'm truly thankful for my situation and I know that some people would kill to be in my position. I mean, who wouldn’t like to travel to the most remote areas of the Alaskan wilderness during the summer and make a bunch of money, only to turn around and go tournament bass fishing the rest of the year in the “Sunshine State.”
So far this year I'm doing okay, considering I not only left my passion back in Florida, but also my new girlfriend, Gina.

Leaving a newly formed relationship in the dust is a dynamic I haven’t had to deal with in the past. However, time away from home is inevitable in professional angling, so it's something I and whoever I am with will have to endure.

No Excuses

I deal with this transition pretty similarly each year and one of my traditions is buying a self-improvement book from either the business or sports section at the Borders bookstore at Seattle International Airport and starting the first chapter with a tall, frosty glass of Alaskan Amber Ale. I do this because the second I step on that plane, I feel like my forward momentum toward a career as a successful tournament bass angler slips into neutral, and books I've bought at that store (like Denis Waitley’s “The Psychology of Winning” and Avery Johnson’s “Aspire Higher”) tend to keep my thoughts moving in a positive direction.

This year the winner was Brian Tracy’s book, "No Excuses: The Power of Self-Discipline.” Reading the cover, I wasn’t sure if this book was for me or for someone who couldn’t stop eating Krispy Kremes, but further inspection revealed it might be somewhat relevant to my aspirations.

I only got through 50 pages of the book during the flight, but it was a breath of fresh air while I was breathing the stuffy oxygen in the cabin of the 737. Only 10 pages into it, Tracy dives into the meat of what's gnawing at me.

He explains that the conclusion of a 50-year study by a sociologist at Harvard was that the most important attribute of people who achieve success was what he referred to as “long-term perspective.” He professes that sacrifice is synonymous with long-term perspective, and that making sacrifices is important.

I guess that point kind of put things in perspective for me. It wasn’t a huge revelation, since I've always known the sacrifices I make are what are going to get me what I want. I guess that Tracy really just made me realize that I’m not really leaving my passion, but rather I’m strengthening my determination and my resolve by sacrificing a couple months a year to be able to afford to throw money down the black hole we call competitive angling.

I don’t want to get too deep into the subject since the author can do a better job discussing it, but I will say that I think that even though we do things that we feel are actually holding us back in the short term, if we really take a long, hard look at those things we will see that they are actually sacrifices that will give us long-term success. I can even think of this as a necessary sacrifice when it comes to relationships too, since this represents how my life is going to be when I’m a full-time pro.

So it's off to the Baranof Wilderness Lodge and I’m actually looking forward to the sacrifice ... I mean, summer.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I'm now officially Capt. Miles “Sonar” Burghoff. Woohoo! I finally got my Coast Guard Captain’s license, which means I can start guiding down in central Florida, too.

Miles "Sonar" Burghoff is a student at the University of Central Florida and an aspiring professional angler. He writes a regular column for BassFan.