Todd Perkins

Growing up in Skiatook, Todd would spend the hot summers with his father Ellison cutting hay in the hay fields of what is now Skiatook Lake. They knew the basin of the lake like the back of their hands and I believe that attributed to a lot of the successes Todd and his father had in the tournaments. Over the years, Todd strongly believed that his success in tournaments was largely due to the support of his father. Todd worked at Nordam during the day and as soon as he clocked out, he would head home, hook up to the boat, and head out to the lake. While Todd had been at work all day, Ellison would head out to the lake to fish or to do “homework” aka brush pile. When Ellison would get home, he would write in a journal about what he caught, where he caught it, the weather conditions, the lake level, the water clarity, the water temp, etc. When Todd would come in from the lake he would call Ellison (on a land line) and they would compare notes. Keep in mind, this is all before cell phones and GPS mapping. As the technology improved over the years, Todd would take pictures and videos with his phone and mark locations with GPS and satellite imaging, but he also enjoyed just marking maps and reading through his fathers journals. When Todds older children Bethany and Paul were big enough to hold a fishing pole, they started going to the lake with him. During the summer, Bethany and Paul would head out fishing every day with Ellison and come home by noon with a mess of crappie and hot and sweaty from putting in some brush piles. By the time they were 8 or 9 years old, they started fishing Wednesday night jackpots with Todd and Ellison. Bethany usually fished with Ellison and Paul would fish with Todd. There was so much pride on Todd and Ellison’s faces when they would place in a tournament with the kids. After Ellison passed away, Todd started fishing with his son in law Jeremy and that took his fishing to a completely different level. Jeremy played football, baseball and wrestling in high school. In college he was on the OSU fishing team and worked out a couple of hours every day. Jeremy worked hard at being in good physical shape. Todd would tell me that Jeremy had the stamina to cast over and over for 12 hours straight – like he had never seen before! Todd was at the age where he was starting to slow down in the boat, but with Jeremy by his side they were really good. Besides fishing with his family, fishing with lifelong friends was important to Todd. A lot of the fisherman that Todd fished against over the years were people that he went to school with like Billy Basore, Darrin Willhite, Scott Hilton and Doug Juby. Some of their kids grew up fishing with their dads and are now part of the circuit. I know that Todd would be proud of the legacy he passed down to Bethany and Jeremy and how they are friends with the people that meant so much to him during his lifetime.