a team tournament on Crab Orchard,” recalls
Hawk. “My dad and I were supposed to fish it
out of a canoe with an electric trolling motor,
but the weather turned crappy, and it was really
rough. My dad backed out, so I fished with a
family friend who had a bass boat. We finished
third in the tournament, and I caught the
biggest bass. I thought to myself, ‘I like this
tournament fishing, and I’m going to do a lot
more of it.’”
Discovering that he had a natural affinity for
bass fishing and encouraged by tournament
results, Hawk went back to Utah, joined the
Northern Utah Bass Anglers and fished as
many events as he could – out of the back of
somebody else’s boat.
“Utah is where I really cranked it up,” says
Hawk. “As I progressed and got better – fishing
club tournaments and small, local small-pot
derbies – I set my sights on some of the bigger
tournaments in the West. I didn’t have a boat,
but I had friends who did, and usually they
would let me sort of run the boat as far as where
and how we fished.”
Win Some, Lose Some
32
Hawk’s first big break came in a U.S. OPEN
bass tournament where he won a big bass award
that carried with it a certificate for a Ranger boat. Hawk used
the certificate as a down payment on a big-water Ranger – his
first – in 2003.
From there on his tournament career took a mostly
upward path. Along the way, Hawk and his family – wife
Kristina, sons Skyler, Sonny and Austin, and daughter
Kaitlyn – made their home in Lake Havasu City, and Lake
Havasu became a training ground of sorts where Hawk
refined his technique and, in essence, learned what his fishing
strengths are and how best to utilize them.
Roy qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup in 2015 and fin-
ished 37th. More important to him, Sonny won the co-angler
championship in the same event. That was a high point, but
not surprisingly, there are also some lows in the record. Roy
finished 101st in the 2015 Costa FLW Series Championship
last fall on the Ohio River with a two-day sack of three bass
that weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces. Though meager by his stan-
dards, the catch illustrated Roy’s go-for-broke approach to
competitive fishing.
“I’m definitely a quality guy. It’s there or it’s not, and
sometimes I bomb,” he confesses. “That’s one of the reasons
I’ve never won Angler of the Year before [2016]. Heck, in 2009
I won two events out of four and didn’t get Angler of the Year.
“I make all my money from how I fish. So I have to win,
and the way to win is to catch the five biggest fish a day for
however many days the tournament lasts. Sometimes that
means you’re going to blank or come in with only two or three
fish. That’s been why I’ve won so much and why I’ve finished
so low sometimes. I’d rather blank in two tournaments and
win one than finish in the top 20 in three tournaments.”
The 2015 FLW Series Champion ship last year is illustrative
of Roy’s approach. He was one of the anglers who locked up
to the Ohio River’s Smithland Pool. In practice, he had
enough good bites to conclude that the area held promise, but
conditions there worsened as the tournament got underway.
“I thought I was in some big-fish water, but it couldn’t com-
pete with what was going on in the Kentucky Lake [dam] tail-
race [where Texan Ray Hanselman won the tournament]. The
conditions changed in the river from practice to the first day of
the tournament, and I just couldn’t figure it out – no excuses.”
The Road Ahead
Hawk expects better results this year in the FLW Series
Championship and entertains the notion that it will be a path-
way to a Tour campaign in 2017. Outside of Lake Havasu, his
home lake, he rates Table Rock as one of his favorite fisheries.
“A lot of people don’t realize it, but Havasu has just about
everything a bass fisherman is likely to encounter wherever
he fishes. It’s really taught me a lot,” he says. “There are so
many different patterns and techniques in play all the time:
vertical rock walls, brush piles, grass, ledges, reeds. You can
tell yourself, ‘Today, I’m going out and learning how to flip
tules, matted grass and wood,’ and you can do it because it’s
right there. Of course, Table Rock isn’t a whole lot like
Havasu, but if you can get locked in to the right pattern there,
you can do all right. I’ve had a couple of good tournaments
on Table Rock.”
Springboard to the FLW Tour or a trail leading back to the
Costa FLW Series Western Division? How Table Rock sets up
for him in the championship will have a major bearing on
Hawk’s future, but in the larger scheme of things, he’s pre-
pared for whatever comes his way.
“I focus on being a better fisherman wherever I’m fishing.
By doing that and developing consistency I’ll win tourna-
ments and keep making a living,” notes Hawk. “Then, too,
sometimes when I’m not doing so good I pray, ‘Hey Lord,
should I keep going, keep fishing?’ He always says the same
thing: ‘Do your best and keep fishing.’ It has never not
worked out, so I’m just going to leave it up to Him and keep
doing my best.”
FLWFISHING.COM I OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2016