I was exposed to fishing at a very young age, honestly, before I even knew how to walk. My dad would bring me out with him almost every time he went fishing, and it’s no coincidence that I fell in love with the sport instantaneously. As a little kid, it didn’t matter what species I was after — it was fun to catch anything. And while I feel that way to an extent, I have certainly developed a strong passion for bass fishing in particular. My dad has been in the fishing industry as long as I have been alive, and even a little bit longer, so my entire fishing-oriented lifestyle was molded by shared experiences with him, and the people in the fishing world that he introduced me to.
I have other passions, of course, including baseball and photography, but no matter how much time I devoted to other interests, fishing was always at the forefront of my mind. I played baseball for years, but I could never shake the feeling that it took time away from fishing.
So, in high school, I shifted gears a bit and quit baseball to fish competitively.
While I was in high school in Minnesota, having a fishing team was not as mainstream as it seems to be nowadays, but a few friends and I decided to organize a team for our school. We became part of the Student Angler Tournament Trail (SATT), and began fishing in tournaments throughout Minnesota.
It started with six of us; by the time I graduated, the team had grown to more than 250 members. My fishing partner and I won three tournaments during our high school career, and these were not small tournament fields and not small lakes. Oftentimes, we were competing against 200+ other boats from different schools throughout the state. While winning a few derbies was great, my ultimate takeaways from high school tournament fishing were a bit more significant.
I made lifelong friends through this experience — people I probably would never have known if I didn’t decide to pursue this passion. I also got exposure to multiple different facets of the fishing industry and the chance to network with people who shared my interests.
One passion ends up transforming into another, and that is exactly what happened to me as a result of tournament bass fishing as a teenager. I may not have gone on to fish college tournaments or tried to make the Bassmaster Elite Series like some of my friends who have actually done extremely well (looking at you, Fothergill!), but I realized that I wanted to be a part of the fishing industry, and nothing else. So I picked up my camera again and looked to combine one hobby with another, one pursuit with another.
I hopped in the boat with my friends as much as I could, the friends I made through high school tournaments, and just began to document. I put up some of my work on an Instagram page, and some people began to notice. Fast-forward a couple of years and here I am, creating content for Wired2fish, and still fun-fishing in my free-time when I get some.
If I hadn’t taken a bit of a leap of faith and quit the baseball rat race to start up my high school’s fishing team, who knows what I would be doing right now. The passion for fishing would still be there, but all of the experiences and networking opportunities I had during my tournament fishing tenure probably wouldn’t. So with that, I am incredibly grateful for the memories I made and the people that I met through high school tournament bass fishing.
