PART IV: HATS OFF TO ELITES
This is Part 4 of a five-part series on Elite Series anglers and their relationship with hats.
Legendary angler Rick Clunn thrilled young and old alike in 2016 when he won his first tournament title in 14 years. His fellow Elites rallied around him during the event and celebrated when he won.
Clunn was gracious afterward, but wished Tim Horton’s thoughtful gesture didn’t come into fruition.
“He said since Rick won, I want everybody to sign and give him a hat,” Clunn said. “But I hope they forget. I’m sure every fisherman’s wife, that’s one of the least favorite things of ours.”
That would be hats. Lots of hats.
It’s not like Clunn needed, or wanted, another 107 hats. He gets plenty from his sponsors, so many he has difficulties using or dispersing all of them.
“Sponsors send boxes and you slowly weed through them and give ‘em away, but you can only give so many hats,” he said. (Rick, we know tons of folks who would accept one of your signed hats in a heartbeat) “Then all your friends don’t want to see you coming with a box of hats.”
Most anglers like a nice hat, but having too many can pose problems, a consensus shows. For anglers, hats tend to turn up everywhere, seemingly breeding like rabbits and at times causing consternation.
“I’ve got so many hats my wife goes behind me and tries to throw them away,” Jeff Kriet said.
“I have way too many hats,” Brandon Palaniuk said. “If you ask my girlfriend, that’d probably be the one thing she’d get rid of out of the back of the truck.”
And it’s not always just because of the clutter. Chad Morgenthaler admits his all-time favorite hat isn’t fit for mixed company, or any company.
“It’s just roached,” he said. “It just smells so horrible the wife don’t even want it in the house.”
OK. Now let’s look into the harried hat situation of Mike and Stacy McClelland, a typical couple on the Elite Series. Some time back, she took a box of about 100 or so of his hats, dumped them on the floor, took a photo and posted it with these words: “And he says I have a shoe problem.”
That Facebook post spawned some thought about Elites and their hats, which turned into these stupidly in-depth looks. (Thanks again, Stacy)
She also had the hashtag #timetopurge, along with one that might have made for a really bad deal, #gladhesontheroad. Both Mike and Stacy were contacted to discover what how that all ended. They both admit there was a hat overload.
“He’s a packrat,” she said. “He should be on one of those shows.”
“I’m nowhere near those hoarders on TV,” he responded, “but I have to do better. Even if she does own too many shoes, it’s pretty rough for me to give her any grief about them when I have as many hats in the closet.”
That’s taking it like a man, or wanting to have the upper hand like a man.
Several years back, Stacy organized Mike’s messy man-cave of tackle in the garage. She purchased a bunch of those plastic drawers and stowed away things, which actually didn’t go so well as the piles here and there were actually Mike’s “organized chaos.”
“I could see steam coming out of him,” she said. “I haven’t cleaned it since. He was very stressed about it. I don’t think I even got a thank you.”
Maybe purging his pile of hats would go better. Stacy said it was time. It had gotten ridiculous as she was pulling hats from everywhere.
“Oh no, this is not going to work,” she said after finding hats (and taking a photo) in the wine rack of their new camper. “(Elite wives) all seem to have the same issue. People have little hat trees, various ways of storing them.”
So she was set on thinning them out and organizing. First she threw them down on the floor and went through them. She had a pretty good idea which hats meant something and which were expendable.
“He wasn’t there, and I didn’t ask,” she said. “If he’s there, he will go through the trash, and either put it back up or hide it some place.”
C’mon, admit it. Who hasn’t snuck an item out of the trash or donation bag at some point and stashed it away in the ole garage?
“I didn’t give him a chance,” Stacy said, who did thoughtful sorting. “I kept the ones he had signed, or from the first Classic, ones that were sentimental. We had some friends and let them come over and get what they wanted, and took the rest to donate.”
She had bought some “nice, little decorative girlie boxes” and put all his keepers in them and then back on the closet shelf.
“I hauled off the others before he got home,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s looked at those containers since he got home. There’s so many. He asked me about them, but he dropped it after that.”
(There are several web sites that give some guidance on ball cap storage, such as Pinterest, and products to help with storage on Amazon and eBay.)
Mike said he was actually kind of glad he wasn’t there when the great hat purge of 2016 went down. He said he’s pretty confident she kept all the good ones, and seeing the others go might have just been too painful to experience. He added it’s nice to know some of those hats went to friends who would appreciate them, kind of like vetting a potential owner of your dog’s puppies.
“As bad as I hate to admit it, the best thing for me to do is turn my back and let her purge,” he said. “She knows which ones I really like.”
Stacy also knew Mike has always favored hats from Cabelas, his main sponsor, because they fit his head so well. And he’s pretty hard on hats, so it’s good she had several to keep, she said.
“Of all of the various sponsor hats I have, a Falcon hat with just the falcon bird on it is probably my all-time favorite,” Mike said. “There are hats throughout the course of my career that have special meaning.”
And Mike said it’s important to have a nice mix of his old lids, his winners and his favorites on hand for some day.
“When you retire, you can pull out the ones you kept and show the grandkids,” he said.
Click links for photo galleries on “Brief history of fishing hats,” and Hat Couture
Part I: Elites hold on to their hats | Part II: Elites keep memories under hat
Part III: Hats fill bill as No. 1 ad space | Part V: ‘Catching hats’ and wrong ones