A Lady Angler Who Deserves a Boatload of Good Ol' R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Consider this: 34-year-old Mandy Uhrich works full-time for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; plays Monday-night softball; fishes a number of bass and multi-species tournaments; and increasingly appears in national TV commercials, national and regional TV shows, outdoor magazines, and on seminar stages. She also promotes and introduces women and kids to fishing in her spare time.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention that she also hunts and now hosts her own hunting show. To her credit, she has hunted wolves in Canada, alligators in South Carolina, pheasants in South Dakota, and wild turkeys, ducks, deer, and geese in many places.

"I don't fish and hunt as a marketing gig," she said during a fishing-trip interview with C. B. Bylander, a freelance writer from Baxter, MN. "It's who I am."

In her best angling year, Uhrich won nine of the 26 tournaments she entered, had 14 top-10 finishes, and three top-15 finishes. "It was crazy," she said.

This success aside, Uhrich enters tournaments for the fun and challenge, rather than the money. She pays her own entry fees and travel costs and considers it a "fantastic season" as long as she breaks even at the end of the year.

Uhrich owes her passion for fishing to her dad. A laborer who loved to fish rain or shine, he often took Mandy on trips to Devil's Lake, ND, and nearby Red River.

"Dad said I was a great fishing partner from the get-go," Uhrich recalled. "I'd bring crayons in the boat but usually didn't touch them because I was so serious about fishing."

When she wasn't fishing with her father, she often peddled her bike to the Red River, where she would roam the banks, applying what she had learned.

Today, Uhrich fishes three different bass and one multi-species tournament series. She is part of a micro-minority because, even thought many women fish, few toil the tournament trail. In that capacity, she has been embraced by most, ostracized by a few, and often considered a curiosity by many.

Uhrich remembered when another female, Michaela Anderson, and her teamed to represent Minnesota at a national bass-fishing tournament in Virginia.

"A competitor told our director that he must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to bring us," said Mandy. "The director was livid. He bet we'd finish 40 places higher than that competitor...and we did."

On another occasion, Uhrich was navigating her 19-foot Lund boat with a 225-hp Evinrude G2 outboard through a busy channel in the Whitefish Chain of Lakes when a man hollered, "Your husband must really love you, because, otherwise, he wouldn't let you use his boat."

The riled Uhrich, who admits to having a sometimes sharp-as-a-hook tongue, shot back, "This is my boat, and I'm single," which prompted men in yet another boat to yell, "Marry me. Marry me."

For the time being, though, wedding proposals from passing boaters and any other suitors likely will fall on deaf ears. Uhrich said her full-time job as an on-the-road wildlife depredation specialist and hectic non-work schedule make a yellow Labrador and a pair of purse dogs the perfect partners.

"It's probably a good thing I'm not married," she laughed. "All of my dogs' names--Revo, Cumara, Zander, and Lindy Rig--are related to fishing. If I had kids, they'd probably have funny names, too."

Though Uhrich thrives on the excitement of fishing competitions, she said her most rewarding experiences often come from mentoring others, especially women and girls.

"I donate time to a number of causes--among them, Keeping Kids In outDoors Sports (KKIDS), Becoming an Outdoors Woman, Women in Need of Kindness, and others--because the outdoors is so important to me. If people understand it, they'll protect it. If they don't, they won't."

And so, on a morning when the sky was blue and an east wind rippled the water, Uhrich did what her interviewer figured she would do: She out-fished him. "She had three bass in hand before I caught one," he said. "She landed the biggest, too. But more important, Uhrich did what I hoped--she reflected on a driven life."

"Do I feel like I've made it?" asked Mandy aloud. "The answer is: I don't know. I've accomplished a lot. I'm proud of what I've done. But I figure I have another 30 years ahead of me. The answer will come with time."

"Our fishing done," noted Bylander, "we stowed the rods (all 16 of them belonging to Mandy) and retreated to a log-cabin-style restaurant down the pike from Brainerd International Raceway. Uhrich wore a sporty shirt peppered with the logos of her many sponsors. A woman approached her and asked, 'Are you a race-car driver?'"

"No, ma'am," she replied proudly. "I'm a professional angler."

"And a woman who has come a long way from peddling her bike to the Red River," thought Bylander to himself.

Photos by Bill Lindner, Bret Amundson and courtesy of Mandy Uhrich.