New Hall of Famer Joe Thomas looks back on famous draft-day fishing trip

Joe Thomas didn't love the idea of having a camera on the boat, but the NFL sold it as a possible artifact for his kids years later. Sure enough, the famous footage from the 2007 NFL draft now serves as a perfect bookend to his Hall of Fame induction, coming up Aug. 5.

As the 2023 draft closes in, Thomas will be part of the NFL Network coverage of the occasion, and perhaps that means some glimpses from his own draft day 16 years ago, when the star offensive lineman from the University of Wisconsin eschewed a trip to New York for a fishing trip with his father on Lake Michigan north of Milwaukee.

By now, the story has been told many times over – heck, he even had his own fishing show at one point. But the Brookfield native said his renown has increased since February, when he was revealed as a member of the 2023 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction class, but not necessarily for his iron-man career as an offensive tackle with the Cleveland Browns.

"A lot of non-Browns and non-Badgers fans will say to me, 'You're the guy that went fishing on draft day,'" Thomas said with a laugh.

"So many people follow that up with, it's a special story for me because it reminds me of my dad, we used to go fishing together and have these father-son moments. Maybe it was in a deer blind, or a baseball game, but there's a connection. It's really special to me, and now I think about the relationship I have with my son and taking him fishing."

Before he became the third pick of that 2007 draft, before he played 10,363 consecutive snaps with the Browns, before he made 10 straight Pro Bowls or netted six first-team All-Pro selections, Thomas was the top football prospect who went fishing on draft day.

Thomas set sail from Port Washington on board a chartered fishing boat

The oft-aired clips show Thomas, his father, Eric, and others on board a chartered vessel called Foxy Lady 3 off the coast of Port Washington, catching trout instead of taking up a seat at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

The NFL certainly preferred his attendance closer to, say, the Atlantic Ocean as part of the New York broadcast, but Thomas wanted to steer clear of the draft craziness and celebrate the big day with his dad on the water.

"I didn't dream of going to the NFL draft, I dreamed of playing in the NFL," Thomas said. "(The draft) is just an entertainment event, and for me it didn't even make a blip on my radar as exciting. Kids today ... they've been watching the draft on TV since they were kids, so maybe they did dream of the draft and that was their entry point in the NFL. When I was kid, there was nothing in my mind that said it was a dream come true (to be at the draft). Being drafted was just part of the process."

Thomas said once the league accepted he simply wasn't going to attend the draft, the NFL asked for a live camera on the fishing trip. Thomas didn't like that idea, either, but the league convinced him to at least let a crew tag along to capture the occasion for a video package after the fact.

"Especially now with the Hall of Fame enshrinement pending, my kids are really getting into the football side of stuff, learning about my career," Thomas said.

Thomas still lives in Madison, while parents Eric and Sally still live in the Brookfield house where Thomas grew up and became a standout two-way player for Brookfield Central High School.

Eric co-owned a smaller boat with his uncle that used to take the family out on fishing trips on Lake Michigan, though Thomas said they needed to tag along with a family friend on a different, more sturdy boat if they wanted to get far from shore.

He still loves fishing. In 2021, he went on a fishing trip out of the harbor in Milwaukee with his Madison friend Mark Hering, the captain of King of Kings Charger Service. Along for the ride were high-school kids Thomas had hired to work on his southwestern Wisconsin farm. One of those kids, Muscoda native Sawyer Conner, caught a king salmon that weighed nearly 40 pounds, potentially the largest king salmon caught in Milwaukee.

His draft day voyage wasn't as fruitful, though there was some serendipity with the fishing party catching brown trout in the hours before the Browns made a life-changing phone call.

Thomas's agent insisted the boat had to stay close enough to shore for quality cell phone service, so the boat moved to an area where the fishing wasn't nearly as good.

"The bite was not happening," Thomas said. "Then when we got drafted, they were like, 'You've got to come to Cleveland like five minutes ago,' and they made me get off the water, and the Browns sent a plane and picked me up and took me to Cleveland."

It was already a final destination for his NFL career; he spent all 11 years with the Browns. He'll be enshrined in Canton just about an hour south, but while a massive part of his legacy will live on in Ohio, home remains the waters of Wisconsin.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: New Hall of Famer Joe Thomas looks back at draft-day fishing trip