If you’re a high school student looking for a passion that offers competition, deep friendship, and real-world career doors, look no further than high school fishing. It wouldn’t hurt for parents to suggest it to their high school age kids as well. Competitive fishing is more than just a sport; it’s a transformative experience rooted in a lifelong connection to the outdoors.
The Itch Starts Young
For many of us, the love for fishing is deeply ingrained, honestly, before we 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. This early exposure is the foundation, and while you may initially just enjoy passing time on the water fishing, that interest can quickly blossom into a strong passion for competition, particularly bass fishing.
Choosing the Right Competition
I know what it’s like to have other passions, including baseball and photography. I played baseball for years, but I could never shake the feeling that it took time away from fishing. That urge is the key: when you find the right passion, you have to pursue it.
In high school, that meant shifting gears. While having a fishing team was not as mainstream as it is nowadays, a few friends and I decided to take a leap of faith and organize a team for our school. We became part of the Student Angler Tournament Trail (SATT), fishing in tournaments throughout Minnesota. More options exist today for high school bass fishing than ever before, including the Student Anglers Federation, Bassmaster High School Series, MLF High School Fishing, plus others.
What began with six of us exploded; by the time I graduated, the team had grown to more than 250 members. That growth demonstrates the massive, often untapped, interest in competitive fishing among high school students.
The Real Rewards of Tournament Angling
The competition itself is intense. 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-plus other boats from different schools throughout the state. While winning a few events was great, my ultimate takeaways from high school tournament fishing were a bit more significant:
- Lifelong Friendships: I made friends through this experience—people I probably would never have known if I didn’t decide to pursue this passion.
- Industry Exposure: I got exposure to multiple different facets of the fishing industry and the chance to network with people who shared my interests.
From the Boat to the Camera
This is where fishing becomes a launchpad. One passion often 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, but I realized that I wanted to be a part of the fishing industry. So I picked up my camera again and looked to combine one hobby with another. I hopped in the boat with my friends and just began to document. Fast-forward a couple of years, and the networking and experiences from that tournament tenure resulted in a career path—like creating content for Wired2fish.
If I hadn’t quit baseball 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 networking opportunities I had probably wouldn’t. High school fishing is the perfect environment to make memories, build a community, and find a professional path you didn’t even know existed.
