COLUMN
FOR THE RECORD
COLIN
MOORE
S
14
Frank Owens Calls it Quits
ervice aside, friendships made
over the years are the main reason
Ranger Boats service technician
Frank Owens will be missed. Owens
ended his career at the Costa FLW
Series Championship. After thousands
of miles on the road, after helping hun-
dreds of anglers pursue their dreams,
after seeing tournament fishing blos-
som into full flower, Owens is finally
closing up shop. His 34 years of watch-
ful service were acknowledged during
the banquet that preceded the Forrest
Wood Cup in August.
When the Arkansas native started
working for Ranger Boats, terms such
as “GPS,” “touch pad,” “onboard com-
puter” and “waypoints” weren’t part of
the fishing lexicon. Many of the bells
and whistles that characterize today’s
high-performance fishing platforms
were somewhere in the future.
At the time the 63-year-old Owens
arrived on the scene in the ’80s, bass
tournaments were solidifying their posi-
tion as America’s favorite fishing sport. As
a result of their growing popularity, major
players in the fishing industry began to
flood the market with upgraded versions
of what came before. Their latest and
greatest usually were just that, but even
the best equipment had its oops!
moments. Tournaments were the prov-
ing grounds for innovation, and if a bug
appeared in a product, generally it
popped up before or during an event
when it was being put through its paces.
Service Goes on the road
In those days, anglers had two
choices for quick fixes: repair stuff
themselves, or take it to a local dealer.
As equipment became more useful, it
also became more complicated, and
anglers became less competent when it
came to basic repairs.
Coincidentally, the tournament
scene also fostered a service lag.
Business was good and getting busier
for boat dealers, to the point they
couldn’t drop everything at a moment’s
notice to work on a small flood of tour-
nament boats and risk alienating some
of their loyal and local customers.
Guys like Owens came along to fill
the service vacuum. Various manufac-
turers with a lot at stake began staffing
major tournaments with road teams
whose technicians could repair even the
most complicated products. Call them
the pit crews of the tournament world;
the people who made sure that the fish-
ing stars would never fall from their lofty
perches because something crapped
out at the most critical moment.
Without naming names, Owens has
helped stave off disaster for a number of
successful bass and walleye pros through
the years, and witnessed some major
events in competitive fishing. One major
observation on his part relates to the dif-
ference between the anglers of yester-
year and today.
“For one thing, back when I started
the pros that had the most and biggest
sponsors were the ones that won or
placed high in tournaments a lot,” he
observes. “Nowadays, it’s not so much
the guys that win as the guys that work
hard to promote products and do the
best job at it. Winning is a bonus, but not
absolutely necessary. Also, today’s tour-
nament fishermen are a lot more pol-
ished when they speak on stage; they’re
very organized and businesslike.”
ranger tough
Maytag used to run a TV ad depicting
one of its washer and dryer repairmen
as being “the loneliest guy in town”
because of the dependability of its prod-
ucts. When it comes to repairs on
Ranger’s bass boats, the same could be
said of Owens. As a serviceman for
Ranger, Owens hasn’t exactly been cov-
ered up with work at any of the bass and
walleye tournaments he’s attended.
Time-wise, Owens has averaged about
25 to 30 weeks a year on the highway,
covering events for Ranger. A battery
gone bad here, a livewell aerator pump
conked out there is about all he sees at
the Ranger service trailer. Since the days
when hot rods such as Hank Parker and
Jimmy Houston ran Rangers through
stickups like they were Sherman tanks,
the company has improve its gel-coated
hulls to make them virtually bulletproof.
The rigging and the Ranger Trail trailers
likewise have been beefed up to take a
pounding and still perform.
Every Ranger fan has his favorite
hull. Owens’ is the 360 Comanche of the
late ’80s, followed closely by the current
Z521L. His preference relates more to
looks and performance rather than to
how easy they are to work on. Down
through the years, Rangers simply
haven’t needed a lot of maintenance.
FLWFISHING.COM I FALL 2018