Zach Engelmeyer is a highly imaginative, very expressive 8-year-old whose mother is a former Miss Missouri and whose father, a professional photographer, takes all the cool photos you see featured in Mossy Oak Camo and other outdoor brand advertising campaigns.
Collectively, it’s a family that lives and loves the outdoors. So much so, that in early 2013 the whole family drove three hours from their Southwest Missouri home to Tulsa, Oklahoma to enjoy the Bassmaster Classic together as fans of the sport.
While Zach’s bass-obsessed older brother, Sammy shopped for lures at the Classic Outdoor Expo like the ones KVD uses, the younger Zach was thrilled to carry home a free Cotton Cordell Big O squarebill with a Toyota logo stamped on it that Bonus Bucks pro staffer Darold Gleason of Toledo Bend gave him when the family visited the Toyota booth.
A little more than a year later, Zach’s free fishing lure paid big dividends – more than 7 pounds worth in fact. Still wearing safety glasses following a BB gun hunt, Zach insisted on using the free treble-hooked token he’d hauled home from Tulsa to take a shot at the big bass in a 7-acre lake on the family’s hunting land north of Stockton, MO.
“I was really reluctant to hand an 8-year-old a lure with six hook points on it, but that’s the one he insisted on using,” admitted his dad, Michael.
Using a spinning reel, the youngster hooked, fought, and landed the lunker all by himself while dad watched and held the tiny aluminum boat in position. “He’s still walking on cloud nine,” says his dad.
Safe to say, he’s also learned early, that indeed, the best things in life are free. Including crankbaits.
Amid a fishing trip on the bass-starved Ohio River in the summer of 1987, Alan McGuckin’s Dad told a then 16-year-old “Guck” — “I don’t care what you do for a living, just promise me you’ll do something you love.”
Originally from Pittsburgh, McGuckin considers himself a blue-collar kid, who has been richly blessed to live-out the best piece of advice his dad ever gave him for many years now in the Tulsa area.
After earning a degree in ecology at Juniata College in Pennsylvania, where he placed radio transmitters in largemouth bass to track their habitat preferences, he moved his life to Oklahoma in 1992, where he earned a Masters in Zoology and Fisheries under the direction of Gene Gilliland at the University of Oklahoma, before then embarking on what’s now a nearly three decade long career as a marketing and media veteran in the fishing industry.
His career spans 28 years of wisdom-rich marketing experience working to strengthen brands and increase sales for Lowrance, Terminator Lures, Toyota, Yamaha Outboards, Boat U.S., Carhartt, Costa, Quantum, Vexus Boats, and Zebco.
- Member of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame voting committee, as well as a Board of Directors member for Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
- Co-piloted the Terminator brand of premium lures from its birth to more than 10 Million pieces sold between 1997-2006.
- Has authored and published more than 800 stories on Bassmaster.com, along with several other popular bass fishing websites.
- He has generated $3 Million dollars’ worth of branded digital media since 2020, as a content creator.
- Serves as emcee for hundreds of guests at the annual Toyota Bonus Bucks Owners event.
- Avid angler, who fishes nearly every weekend when not on the road working.
- 13,000 followers on Instagram @GuckFishing.
“Guck” lives just north of Tulsa, OK at Lake Skiatook with wife Sherrie, an elementary school principal who also loves her job, and has a genuine passion for slinging a Rapala Brat crankbait on shallow points and habitat-laden flats.
