When kids grow up in central Alabama, many of them dream of becoming legendary professional fishermen — not Major League Baseball stars or football heroes. Take it from Dustin Connell, one of those dreamers who went on to become a legendary pro. He grew up in Clanton, Alabama, just minutes from the Coosa River and not far from other famous fisheries such as Guntersville, Lay and Eufaula lakes, and he just finished racking up his third Major League Fishing Redcrest Championship win.
“Bass fishing is king here,” Connell told Wired2Fish. “On a Saturday morning, you’ll see bass boats everywhere—being towed down the interstate, at gas stations, in parking lots at boat ramps, all over. Especially in the spring, it’s THE thing to do.”
Back to Connell’s dream: He grew up bass fishing with his older brother, James, and quickly became good at it. By the time he was 12, he had teamed with his brother to win his first bass tournament. The bug bit so hard that the Connells started fishing in four tournaments a week. And Dustin knew what he wanted to do for a living when he grew up: become a pro fisherman.
That goal even influenced his choice of college. He went to the University of Alabama and majored in marketing. But his real reason for enrolling? To join the college fishing team.
“We traveled everywhere: Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and I learned so much,” Connell said. “It really prepared me for becoming a pro.”
There were valleys to go along with those peaks. Connell felt he was prepared for the competitive aspects of the sport, but not the financial realities.
“I was a broke college kid,” he said. “I fished a couple of Bassmaster Opens, then I was broke. I took off for a year to work construction and build up some money. At the time, I didn’t know if professional fishing was for me.”
Then he won a Bassmaster Southern Open and earned enough to restart his career, and he never looked back.
Today, at age 35, he is already considered one of the best pros on Major League Fishing’s Bass Pro Tour, with seven tournament wins and more than $2 million in earnings.
Three of those titles have come in the Major League Fishing Redcrest Championship tournament, the star-studded championship event of the national circuit. After taking his third win this year during the event from April 3 – 6, Connell is the only angler to accomplish that feat, and he is already being compared to the likes of Rick Clunn and Kevin VanDam, who each won four Bassmaster Classics. He reacts modestly to those comparisons.
“I never think about my legacy in the sport,” he told Wired2Fish. “Guys like VanDam and Clunn are my heroes. I’m not in a race with them. My only goal right now is to get more people into fishing and to promote how much fun it can be.”
His most recent Redcrest championship, a four-day tournament on Lake Guntersville in Alabama that wrapped up April 6, typifies why Connell is so good at what he does.
The 69,199-acre reservoir, which Connell considers his home lake, is known for its big largemouth bass. But Connell knew it would take something special to stand out from the crowd.
“I knew everybody was going to be fishing the flats, sight fishing, flipping to those light-colored areas that bass had fanned out to nest, because it’s that time of the year. The bass are spawning,” Connell said. “But you can’t set yourself apart by doing that. I decided to make the 70-mile run to Nickajack Dam to get away from the crowd and fish in my comfort zone.”
That strategy worked to perfection. With water being released into Guntersville, the water below the dam attracted an assortment of big largemouth, spotted and smallmouth bass. Connell used a spinning rod and Rapala’s CrushCity Mayor and Mooch Minnow swimbaits on a 3/16-ounce jighead to lure the suspended fish.
On the final day, he caught and released 27 scorable bass (minimum of 2 pounds) weighing 87 pounds, 11 ounces, and ran away with the Redcrest title and $300,000. Wesley Strader was second with 29 bass totaling 79 pounds, 6 ounces.
It was the second consecutive year Connell won the Redcrest championship and further cemented his reputation as one of the era’s greatest anglers. Perhaps even more satisfying for Connell is that he didn’t have to use his forward-facing sonar to catch his bass.
Lately, fishermen have used social media to criticize young anglers for relying on high-priced electronics to zero in on bass. Connell is a master at using forward-facing sonar, but he is proud of the fact that he can fish old-school, too.
“It’s so easy to fall into that negative mindset in the world of social media,” he said. “Everyone is so polarized about how people catch fish these days. I want to keep everything positive. There are a lot of good people out there in the fishing world, and those are the people I want to surround myself with.
“Let’s make fishing fun again.”
