Why Have All The Ranger Pros Disappeared?

hey guys what's going on thanks for tuning back into the channel much appreciated and uh today we're gonna have a little bit of a conversation sort of a topic uh off the wall a little bit from from tips and lure modifications that and that is what has happened to ranger boats as far as their presence in the tournaments go and i've been wanting to do this a little bit because i've noticed uh you know the last you know year or so like that it's just the dramatic decrease of the amount of ranger boats that you see at the tournaments and uh sort of interested to have a discussion about this sort of get everybody else's feedback on it what's your what what's your guys's opinion about this too uh just sort of see what's going on because in the past they've had such a major impact on the sport and you know as everybody know uh you know i left my partnership with ranger boats i'd been with ranger boats for 35 years and this past summer summer long story that i don't really want to go into but you know ranger had some changes bass pro bottom out and uh i decided to uh to lead the company and pursue an opportunity i had with skeeter boats which i've never been more happy in my life absolutely love the boat i love the people the company to work with um love working with you know all the people at skeeter and boatworks here in springfield missouri that's a skeeter dealer so from my standpoint it's just been you know a great move for me but i really wanted to go back and give you guys a little bit of history about it sort of tell you my opinion a little bit where it's at sort of want to get your opinion um ranger goes way back with me i you know back when uh in 1984 i qualified for the for the it's now called the bfl all-american it was the red man all american back then and going into that tournament i had a little junkie uh champion boat of mean 15 you know beat up mean 15 champion and qualified for the all-american and after i qualified for that all-american um i had an opportunity to uh to get to go into ranger boats so i had what was called the delayed bill which is basically a ranger lets you use a boat for a year without paying for it and then you have to pay him back at the end of that year after you sell it and uh did that on my first year on the bassmaster circuit and my about midway on my first rookie season of bassmaster and and this was been in the spring of 1986 i got a phone call from forrest and nina wood and you can imagine me getting a phone call from forrest and nina wood and they were saying hey randy we just uh you know been following you a little bit seeing you're doing good in the tournaments and we would like to know if you'd be interested in becoming sponsored by ranger and you know we'll take care of your bassmaster entry fees and your megabacks and that type of stuff puts you on the pro staff and i was just ecstatic about it i mean you can imagine you know 22 years old you know having my first real sponsorship with ranger boats and this went on for for several years and it was like it was like being sponsored by grandma and grandpa i'd go down there you know to flip in arkansas down to ranger plan i'd hang out with forrest and nina got to go and force his office and talk with him and you know nina would share stories about you know she bowled in the bowling league and i was the big time bowler too so we talk about bowling all the time and it was just a great relationship and everything started to change a little bit in the early 90s forrest the nine of sold the company for the first time uh went to irwin jacobs he started the flw tour and that started a a change with ranger as far as it wasn't forced to nine anymore it wasn't the down-home range or started to get a different vibe to a little bit and ranger at that point their influence really took off because ranger was a sponsor of the flw tour and they had to deal what was called team boats so there was you know a lot of guys that were sponsored by ranger through flw uh and ranger made a huge impact and at the tournaments at the flw tournaments it was completely dominated by ranger i mean there was it was like 80 percent of the field was ranger boats that you saw out there and over the course of year things years things started changing a little bit you know the flw sort of started going downhill a little bit you know when walmart started pulling back the team deal started going down everything started changing a little bit with that and ranger start and ranger sold a couple more times to that and every single time they sold they got a little bit further away from the thing that attracted me to ranger to begin with which was forest and knight of wood the down home ranger we build them one at a time deal down and flip in arkansas the company started changing you know and i get that i mean you know things things change but what has happened um and we'll fast forward a little bit now to last year's when bass pro shops acquired ranger boats uh everything changed with it if you look myself and a large percentage of the pros that have been with ranger forever i'm talking about guys like you know bernie schultz and takahiro mori and jason christie and you know just i'll just i could just go down the line they are no longer with ranger and they've been with ranger forever and uh you know and as a result the last year rangers have basically disappeared from the scene on professional fishing the only guys that i'm see ranger there's a handful of guys that are still tour level pros that stayed with the company that you see them out there not very many there's just a handful but the biggest thing that i've noticed at the tournaments is you just don't see any ranger boats out there in the tournaments anymore there's a few of them out there mainly you know like on the bassmaster opens and the toyota series they're guys that are fishing out of boats that are eight or ten years old rangers but you just don't see any of the new rangers rap rangers that type of stuff they've just gone by the wayside and you see now just a good mix of everything but rangers out there you know skeeter's making a big you know push phoenix boats is making a big push bass cat caymus a lot of the aluminum boat lines you just there's a lot of different companies out there and it's really odd to see that because i was so used to range for just dominating the tournament scene for so many years so my opinion on it i was going to give you my opinion and i'll get i'd love to get your guys's opinion on to it is what happens in these companies when companies sell and companies are bought out or things to happen within the company you have changes in the marketing division of the company i understand the marketing company because i've worked in the marketing co i've worked for marketing in several companies to help their marketing so i understand how it works but what you have is when these marketing positions switch over you may have one person that had one agenda in the past and when somebody else takes over they they have a completely different agenda one of the things that i found out in the fishing industry and i'm not point i'm not pointing this comment towards ranger or any company specifically but one of the things i've noticed about in the fishing industry is a lot of companies tend to hire people in the marketing division that really don't know much about fishing they don't understand much about the traditions of fishing or much about the history of fishing or much about the reputation of the people that came before them and to me this is a sad thing about fishing because if you got some you know 26 year old kid that just got out of college and has been hired by a fishing company uh in the marketing department that doesn't know anything about fishing they don't really understand the value of certain anglers they don't understand how many you know sales that those anglers have made for the company over decades that sort of gets washed out the window they have a specific agenda their bean counters a lot of them it's all about numbers and the that individualistic uh personal impressions that certain people that work pros that work for the company are not taken in consideration and i've seen this over and over and over again and i've never seen it really work out very well for those companies that do that most every company that i've seen that has a you know some type of distinct sustainability and success ratio you know they have people within that marketing division that work for them that are anglers they're anglers that understand tradition and history and the value that certain people bring to certain demographics because every pro out there has something to offer you know their own demographic and they have abilities unique to themselves to draw in potential customers so you know i'm like i'm not going to sit here and speculate on rangers motives to do that but obviously you know when ranger bought out or when bass pro bought out ranger boats there was obviously a tremendous uh switch in the marketing push that they had for the last 50 years with the company you can see that by so many of the top pros that were with ranger forever no longer with the company and i'd be curious to see everybody's opinion on this i mean a lot of people that watch this channel they're really into the sport into the industry and they're sort of in the know with that let me know what you guys think about this i mean let me know what you guys think about the fact of ranger not having the influence they have now if it was a good move or it's not or what the deal was but i just wanted to do a quick video on that because you know it's something that you just can't deny i mean i i see these top pros that have been with ranger for decades and decades they're always popping up into new boats now i mean every week i see somebody that has been with ranger forever in another bow company now and you know i don't think you can just sweep that under the cover you know back 15 or 20 years ago when a pro when a when a marquee top pro made a switch in boats it was big news man it was all over every social media bass fan whatever and now you don't hear anything about it i i i just see pictures of these guys that have been with ranger forever that are all of a sudden in another boat and i just find that you know extremely odd compared to the way it was in the past but anyway bass pro shops they bought out ranger they have every right in the world to you know it's their business you know to if they want to however they want to run it is completely their right to do that they don't they don't they're not obligated they don't know anybody anything but i just find it strikingly uh amazing the fact that there's just such a complete absence of ranger boats in these tournaments i've been fishing compared to what they were in the past and uh anyway curious to hear you guys opinion let me know shoot me some comments here get a conversation going and uh we'll have a little discussion on this so anyway i hope you guys are doing good and we'll talk soon

Channel: Intuitive Angling With Randy Blaukat

Views: 89,148

Rating: 4.9179287 out of 5

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Id: 2_MokurZOCk

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021