Dr. Terri Elkins, M.D.
“The Fishing Doc”
Terri is a former Ob/Gyn physician (lady-doc) retired due to medical disability, now pursuing her love of bass fishing. For the complete story on how she went from being a physician to a professional angler, see her story “Fishing for Therapy”.
Terri was taught to fish by her husband Rod Baker. Shortly afterward, she had an accident which left her in chronic pain, and with numb hands and feet. Unable to do much more than lie in bed on her back, Terri spent five years in daily rehab, learning to use her numb hands again. She now jokes that her hands and feet are still numb, but she has learned to use them well enough to grip plastic. All of her glass dishes and glasses had fallen victim to the learning process! The outdoors and fishing became her therapy, and kept her from the depression common in chronic pain sufferers.
She still does her physical therapy every day, in order to be able to get out of bed the next! She has found that if she convinces herself that she’s just feeling too bad to get up and force herself through the therapy, that it’s even worse the next day. Even on the road with the WBT, she and Rod always stay in a hotel with an exercise facility. People have told her that they admire her for her discipline in sticking with daily exercise for over six years now, but she insists that she’s no hero. She admires people who work out because they are motivated by a desire to either get fit or lose weight, not because they have to work out in order to move.
The goal that kept her going over the years was to fish with the ladies of the WBT. With her faithful “Bass Caddy” Rod, Terri happily participated in the sport she loved with the women with whom she felt comfort, kinship and camaraderie. Fishing with other women was a goal that was short-lived, as she only got to fish the 2009 WBT season. All set to fish again in 2010, she was extremely disappointed when they announced the discontinuation of the tour. 
Enter husband Rod Baker to the rescue again. He wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of his honey’s happiness – not when she had worked so hard and through both enormous odds and great physical pain to do what she loved. Having 25 years’ experience with organizing and fishing tournaments, Rod and friend Lee White formed the American Lady Anglers (ALA). White, a guide at Lake Fork with as much tournament experience as Baker, have thrown themselves whole-heartedly into making the ALA into something great for ALL ladies that want to fish.
To learn more about “The Fishing Doc”, you may read her blogs “Terri Talks” at her website www.BassFancy.com. Husband Rod Baker has his own “Bass Caddy Blog” at the site, which readers have really enjoyed, due to his original brand of humor. White and Baker’s website, www.AmericanLadyAnglers.com, has been up and running starting just two weeks after the discontinuation of the WBT was announced. The three of them together have set themselves a formidable goal – to have a venue that can serve all women, so that they can have fun and compete on a level playing field with other women.