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Practice makes perfect
T.L. Hanna High School anglers Lindsay Johnson (right) and Kami Carr hone their bass-fishing skills in frequent practice sessions on the lake, under the guidance of coach Drew Ray.
Photo by Milton Morris
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Catch of the day
Anglers gather for a day of fishing in a high school tournament sponsored by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
Photo by Milton Morris
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Prize winner
Olivia Neal and Christian Brackett of Chapman High School show off their prize-winning catch—a 7.24-pound bass caught during a 2016 tournament for school-sponsored fishing clubs.
Photo by Milton Morris
As the sun creeps over the horizon of Lake Hartwell in Anderson, the low rumble of outboard motors drifts over the dark, still water.
It’s just a little past 7:30 on a Saturday morning in January; the temperature hovers around 45 degrees. Kami Carr and Lindsay Johnson bundle up in coats and gloves and step off the dock and into a boat.
The 17-year-old girls take their seats as Johnson’s dad, Jeff, powers up the engine and eases away from the dock. Light filters through the clouds as the purple sky starts to open up.
Dad hits the throttle, and the bow of the boat rises out of the lake. Both girls duck their heads to avoid the rush of wind and spray hitting them as they fly across the water.
As members of the T.L. Hanna High School fishing team, the two girls will be at fishing practice for the better part of the next eight hours—picking a spot, casting out, reeling in—trying to hook a bass large enough to beat the dozen or so other teens in boats on the water today.
It’s a chilly way to spend a Saturday. But, as part of one of the fastest-growing high-school competitive sports in the country, the girls know practice helps them hone their skills, their strategy and their knowledge, so when competition time comes around, they’re ready to compete.
Coaches say the team members are learning skills that will help them after high school. Parents say the fishing teams build their kids’ sense of responsibility and sacrifice. State officials say the teams help turn these kids into lifelong lovers of outdoor sports.
But the kids say it’s simply a sport they love.
Lifelong anglers
The boat slows as they come closer to their first fishing spot of the morning, and Johnson reaches for her gear. As the boat floats to a stop, she takes up a position in a chair—no more than a tall stool, really—near the bow. She casts out into the deep, greenish water, her figure silhouetted against the pinkening sky.
“Top water is my specialty,” she says. “The lure sits on top of the water and mimics a wounded fish, only a lot louder. I’ve literally caught fish when they’ve come up to knock the ‘wounded fish’ to get it to be quiet.”
Both girls have been angling with their dads as long as they can remember, and their love of fishing lured them to join the fishing team their freshman year at Hanna. In a sport dominated by boys, they were pleasantly surprised to be welcomed and supported by their male teammates.
“There’s a lot of pressure, if not to do as well as the boys, to do better,” Carr says. “But once Lindsay won a tournament, all of that changed. They saw us differently. They kind of saw us as anglers.”
Devotion to fishing also drew Jackson Salley, an angler with Southside Middle School in Florence, to his school’s team.
“I just love the sport and the chance to get out on the water,” says Salley, 13. “It’s the wildlife and being out on the lake and having the possibility of catching a fish. It just makes your heart start pumping.”
Salley’s dad says his son has always wanted to be a fisherman.
“What I like is that he’s learning skills that he can carry with him for the rest of his life,” Fred Salley says. “He’s learning responsibility. It teaches him about teamwork and communication. Those are things that he will be able to use later on in life.”
Research shows that fishing helps students focus better and succeed in school, says Sarah Chabaane, aquatic education coordinator for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. But DNR hopes these anglers’ experiences will also help the state.
“One of the things we want to achieve is to help these kids gain an appreciation for our natural resources in South Carolina,” Chabaane says. “We’re getting them outside and getting them out on the water. We know that if we catch kids in middle school, they’re more likely to be a lifelong outdoorsman, and that’s what we want to create.”
Reeling them in
From September through May, students on teams across the state compete in high school fishing tournaments sponsored by DNR, culminating in the Youth Bass Fishing State Championship. On the line are prizes, trophies, bragging rights and college scholarships.
Andrew Ray, a former math teacher who started T.L. Hanna’s fishing team in 2011 and coached it through the 2016 Youth Bass Fishing season, says the number of teams competing is increasing, as are the rewards.
“When I first started this, we’d get probably 45 boats at a tournament,” Ray says. “Now, we’ll have 120 to 160 boats show up.”
More than 40 schools in South Carolina have active Youth Bass Fishing teams—a number that has exploded in the past few years. In 2012, when DNR started its state championship, there were 11 fishing teams across the state. Now there are 50.
Technically, the teams are more like clubs in most schools. Each high school team is composed of smaller, two person fishing teams who, with their coach, go out on the lake to fish. Practice days are spent angling, trying honey holes here and there, hoping for the big one, but aiming for their five best fish.
At tournaments, winners are determined by the weight of their catch. Competitors reel in as many fish as they can, keeping the five largest. The fish are stored in onboard freshwater tanks to keep them alive. When each boat’s weigh-in time comes up, they pull into dock, gather up their fish in large, breathable catch bags and take their fish up for weighing. After weighing, the fish are released back into the lake. The team with the heaviest catch wins. Prizes are also given for biggest individual fish and largest catch per individual fisherman.
Everything that goes along with competitive fishing is much more active than people think, Ray says.
“A lot of people think it’s easy, but it’s not,” he says. “These kids are out on a boat, standing up, all day. And they’re not on solid ground—they’re always moving. They’re constantly casting and reeling in. It wears you out.”
On tournament days, students get up hours before dawn to get themselves and their gear ready and packed, before driving two or three hours to a lake. They’ll put in their boats in the dark and head out at the first safe light. They’re responsible for not only fishing, but also keeping track of their team numbers and weigh-in time.
Rewards are waiting for top performers. The popularity of the sport has led to colleges starting fishing teams and offering fishing scholarships. Even at the state championship level, DNR gives out two $500 scholarships to the winning angler team, but money for college isn’t what draws Troy Brown, a senior on T.L. Hanna’s club, to the sport.
“I just like the adrenaline rush you get from catching a fish,” Brown says. “It’s a lot of hard work, and when you feel the fish on your hook, it’s just exciting.”
Tournament time
The culmination of a year of practices and club-level tournaments is DNR’s state tournament in Columbia each spring, where teams that have scored well at tournaments through the year compete for the championship. Held at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds, the DNR’s tournament looks like a professional fishing tournament. The weigh-in attracts a stadium-filling crowd at the Palmetto Sportsmen’s Classic, and trucks hauling boats line up to bring in their catch. Teams jump off their boats and put their catch bags into holding tanks, then wait their turn in line.
One at a time, each team walks up to watch their catch get weighed. Competitors tell stories about what lures they used, where they found their fish and when the fish started biting. For Cody Christiansen of Crescent High School, his moment was also a chance to explain his damp appearance.
“I was pulling one in, and the rod broke,” he says a little sheepishly. “When it jumped out of the boat, I just jumped in to get it.”
Crowds in the stands cheer for their school’s teams as they walk across the stage to hold up their fish. Moms and friends in team jerseys stand up to clap, while dads lean against the fence between the stands and stage.
One dad watches as a team hauls its catch bag on stage. The judges pull out the fish, one at a time, to show the crowd, then weigh them on a digital scale.
“Did you see the haul in that bag?” one dad asks two high-school anglers as they walk past him. “Do you know where they grabbed that?”
“Yeah,” the young fisherman replies, smiling from behind his cowboy hat and sunglasses. “Where we wasn’t.”
Sometimes, it all comes down to just that. Despite hours of practice and miles of traveling to tournaments, none of the T.L. Hanna anglers placed during the 2016 state tournament. The fish were just where they weren’t. But, even when they don’t win, it’s a sport they love.
“On a good day, you get to go fishing and maybe win a trophy,” Brown says. “On a bad day, you still get to go fishing. Where’s the downside to that?”
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Get More
In addition to the Youth Bass League tournaments sponsored by DNR, high-school and junior-high fishing teams may compete in The Bass Federation/Fishing League Worldwide (TBF/FLW) or the B.A.S.S. Junior Bassmaster programs. Both series include team and individual tournaments that give students opportunities to compete nationally and earn scholarships up to $5,000. For more information on tournaments and starting a bassfishing team at your school, visit dnr.sc.gov/aquaticed/youthbass or contact Sarah Chabaane at (803) 737-8483, chabaanes@dnr.sc.gov.
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2016 Youth Bass Fishing State Championship
High school overall
- Dixie High School (36.77 pounds)
- Broome High School (31.92 pounds)
- Mid-Carolina High School (31.65 pounds)
High school two-man pairs
- Bailey Cobb and Alex Maddox -- Ninety Six High School (21.2 pounds)
- Bryson Glenn and Laython McLean -- Dixie High School (21.03 pounds)
- Hunter Weber and Jacob Dover -- Broome High School (18.06 pounds)
Middle school overall
- Dixie Middle School (26.25 pounds)
- Southside Middle School (18.64 pounds)
- Conway Middle School (16.87 pounds)
Middle school two-man pairs
- Noah Jones and Manning Felder -- Conway Middle School (16.87 pounds)
- Hudson Dix and Thomas Stanton -- Greer Middle School (16.15 pounds)
- Jacob Butts and Torry Kelley -- Crescent Middle School (13.69 pounds)
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2016 TBF/FLW High School Fishing State Championship
- Oakley Connor and Gantt Connor -- Travelers Rest High School (25 pounds, 6 ounces)
- Nate Burkett and Brandon Jones -- Stratford High School (16 pounds, 5 ounces)
- Jacob Forrester and Wilson Rickenbaker -- Travelers Rest High School (15 pounds, 13 ounces)
- Cole Drummond and Piercen Lynch -- South Florence High School (15 pounds, 5 ounces)
All four teams will advance to the TBF/FLW High School Fishing Southeastern Conference championship on Lake Cumberland in Somerset, Kentucky, in September.