‘It’s A Completely Different World Out There’ – Kade Ruotolo On The Fishing Passion That Has Always Anchored Him

If it was not skateboarding or surfing, which provided them with the thrills athletes typically seek, fishing was their preferred activity. And once they reached their teenage years, the brothers were old enough to charter a boat and set sail with their fishing poles. To them, it was a sense of freedom.

Ruotolo told onefc.com:

“We’d go get on a boat in the ocean in the middle of nowhere and just go catch some fish when we wanted to get away from our parents. Sometimes, we’d bring them with us.

“So, that was probably the age when we started to get hooked on it, and ever since then, it’s always just been jiu-jitsu, surfing, and fishing. Skating a little bit too, but those have always been our biggest passions.”

For all the technical demands of fishing – the patience, the precision, the reading of the water – what keeps Ruotolo coming back has very little to do with the catch itself.

The lightweight submission grappling king is drawn to it due to the silence and space it provides him. Out on the water, the noise comes to a pause. The endless internal dialogue every fighter carries around with them stops.

And for the few hours he is out there, the man who has built a career around relentless forward motion gets to do the one thing his entire profession refuses to allow: absolutely nothing at all.

The 23-year-old explained:

“I think there’s just something about the ocean that we’ve always been drawn to. Being in the water feels very healing. The ocean is healing, and it’s a completely different world out there.

“There aren’t many places where I live where you can go get away from everybody, but you go get on a boat in the water, and you look around, and there’s no one around. It’s a pretty cool feeling.”

Out On The Water, Where The Best Stories Live

That love of the water eventually led to a purchase that has paid for itself many times over.

A few years ago, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champions and a close friend put down US$3,000 each and bought themselves a slice of independence on the open Pacific.

The vessel itself was never going to win any beauty contests. But for the Ruotolos, who have always preferred function over flash, that was exactly the point:

“The boat is one with a little center console. It has a little cabin, too, for a couple of people to crash overnight. Every time we get a free chance and the boat’s still running good, we’ll get out on the water and go catch some fish. It’s definitely one of our favorite ways to pass time.

“It’s nothing crazy, but it gets the job done. It’s plenty of fun. We’ve been to Catalina a couple of times, and man, that was a trip of a lifetime, just spending the night out there and fishing all night. So fun.”

Before the boat came along, the brothers leaned on the charter scene that runs up and down the Southern California coastline.

San Diego was always one of their favorite spots, and Davey’s Locker in Newport Beach offered day trips and three-quarter-day excursions for around US$100 a head. Every charter trip planted a little more conviction that one day, the twins would have a vessel of their own.

That day eventually arrived. And ever since then, the question has been how soon they could get time off from their careers to make it happen.

Sometimes, that means a quick hour off the jetties before sunset. Other times, it means a fully planned overnight run that turns into one of those trips you remember for the rest of your life.

Trips like that come with stories, and in fishing, these tales almost always come back to the same currency: the catch.

For every angler who has ever pushed off from shore with a rod in hand, the bigger the fish, the bigger the bragging rights, and the longer the story gets to live in the family group chat.

The Ruotolo brothers are no different. Years of trips, charters, and overnight runs have produced a small but growing highlight reel between them, and Kade is more than happy to give credit where it is due.

He said:

“My brother caught a big yellowtail. For me, it’d probably be either a smaller grade yellowtail or a tuna. I still haven’t caught too big of a fish, like maybe close to 20 pounds is my biggest fish. But my brother has definitely caught one probably closer to 30 pounds.”

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