In life there will be difficulties and there can be troubles. Turn on the news or open social media and it’s easy to find plenty of arguments, strong discussions and outright ugliness at times. In a world that is often dominated by the negative, it’s encouraging to have something that nourishes the soul to turn our focus onto the positive and uplifting.
Bassmaster Elite Series angler Carl Jocumsen felt the same, and during a conversation with a gentleman by the name of Stacy Harvey of Warrior Precast, the two of them came up with an idea to reward Elite Series anglers for positive gestures. Warrior Precast is a company that makes prefabricated walls in Tennessee for residential and commercial buildings, and they will also install them for customers. Harvey competes in tournaments throughout the region and has supported anglers with sponsorship agreements.
Jocumsen met the owner while adding a living quarter to the family’s shop in Tennessee. “I met Stacy when he came to do the work at our shop,” said Jocumsen. “He’s an angler himself and was feeling similarly about the ongoing negativity in the sport, and we came up with the idea for the Fear my Hear Incentive.”
The “Fear my Heart Incentive presented by Warrior Precast” program is a way for Jocumsen; his wife, Kayla; the fans; and Harvey to reward Elite Series anglers a $1,000 incentive for caring for others. Originally, the concept was to reward the angler who made the biggest comeback in an event. Once the discussion started, the consensus was to go in the direction of rewarding an act of kindness, sportsmanship, a story of inspiration or for performing some sort of civic duty — the types of stories that tend to get overshadowed by the competition.
The team receives nominations during events from fans who send in suggestions, or they hear a story moving through the field, media, B.A.S.S. staff and event attendees. The group confers and comes up with a nominee they can all agree on, and Warrior Precast then sends the angler involved a $1,000 incentive reward.
Jocumsen’s story in itself is as inspirational as any other. After a very successful fishing career in Australia, he came to the United States in 2010 to chase a dream of fishing professionally. He first competed in WON Bass U.S. Open, then the Bassmaster Opens qualifying for the Elite Series in 2015. Two years later, he was fishing the FLW Tour and rejoined the Elite Series in 2019 — winning his first big blue trophy at Lake Tenkiller later that year. He married Kayla in 2019, moved to Tennessee, had a daughter named Rivah in 2022 and could soon qualify for his third Bassmaster Classic.
Along the way, Jocumsen had help from people who fell in love with his namesake character feature — his heart. While there were many, none were more influential than Gene Eisenmann, a former commercial insurance executive turned fishing industry executive and business owner. He took Jocumsen in, helping him with his career and giving him a place to call home in his early days.
It was while the pair was sitting in Eisenmann’s shop in Frisco, Texas, that the Jocumsen Fear my Heart brand was born. Jocumsen had begun doing CrossFit for his training and decided to compete in the “Murph” WOD races. The “Murph” WODs are a workout that has participants open with a 1-mile run, do 100 pull ups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats and close with a second 1-mile run, all while wearing a weighted vest — Jocumsen has done two of them.
While preparing for them, Jocumsen and Eisenmann were watching a documentary about Michael Murphy, the Navy SEAL who the WODs were named after. In the video, the instructor talked about how he tried to kill the recruits. In the interview, he talked about how it wasn’t necessarily the individuals with the best skills who made it. It wasn’t the best swimmers, the strongest, the best runners or most athletic, it was the individuals with the most heart who became SEALS.
“I had been working for three years to qualify for the Elite Series, and it looked like I wasn’t going to get there,” Jocumsen said. “I told Gene, that’s what people need to fear, they need to fear my heart. Gene got excited and jumped up and said, ‘That’s your mantra, that’s what you need to brand.’ And Fear my Heart was born.”
To Jocumsen, the motto encompasses so much of what he believes it takes to compete on a national level, and to live his life. “Fear my Heart is something that has come to mean everything to me,” he said. “It means heart, grit, guts, effort, integrity, and it seems to resonate with people.”
Jocumsen said after he and Eisenmann had the first hat made with the words embroidered on it, he was wearing it somewhere in the middle of Texas when a woman stopped him to comment on it. “I was in a gas station and the worker said, ‘That’s me.’ So, I asked her what she meant,” he said. “She told me it was about my hat and how she lived her life for her grandkids. It means something different to everyone, but it seems to connect.”
So, when the conversation with Harvey revealed a kindred spirit, the Fear my Heart Incentive was born. The first award was made to Caleb Sumrall at Lake Murray when he invited a fellow competitor to move into the spot he was fishing to get enough fish to fill his limit. The second was awarded to Cliff Prince for his win at Wheeler Lake. To the Fear my Heart crew, Prince’s win after 14 years of trying and several near misses was inspirational to the sport.
The third was awarded to Gerald Swindle for bringing 12-year-old brain cancer patient Aiden Beck onstage at Smith Lake to let him experience an Elite Series weigh-in and share the moment with him. In Fear my Heart tradition, Swindle and his wife LeAnn chose to forward the cash award to Aiden and his family to help the Becks with some of their medical or living expenses during treatments.
To further the spirit of the program, the Becks encountered a family who were also in treatments, who hadn’t had as much community support as they had through their family at Whorton Bend Baptist Church in Rainbow City and the communities there. Tdhey passed the money on to that family.
John Soukup was awarded the incentive at Lake Champlain for his efforts in rescuing a pair of kids who had become distressed in their kayaks during windy conditions. Soukup took time during the first day of competition to help get the kids and their kayaks back to shore.
Brandon Palaniuk was named the recipient of the St. Lawrence River incentive, in small part because he took his boat to Jocumsen after a mechanical issue on the final day so he could finish the event. However, the main reason he was chosen is because of his commitment to stay until the final day of the event and take photos of and congratulate the winners, even if he was not competing. That show of sportsmanship was the primary reason he was selected.
As for the future of the program, Jocumsen feels like it is in its infancy. “This is just getting started,” he said. “From the beginning with Fear my Heart in general we’ve heard so many stories from fans on how the mantra has connected with them, and now, with Stacy and Warrior Precast, it’s starting to get legs and give back, and that just feels great.”
