Weekenders get up just as early for tournaments, and sometimes there's a drive involved, but there are no sponsors, no paid entry fees, and the tackle all comes at their own expense. If they happen to win place money, they "might" make enough to fill the gas tank on their boat or vehicle, but likely not both.
Once in a great while, they hit it bigger and actually end up with some leftover spending money in their pockets...but, by and large, that's the exception, not the rule.
Matt Myers of Greeneville, TN (population about 15,500, as recent as 2021) is one of us weekend warriors. Having played sports all his life, culminating in a baseball scholarship to college, he always has had a competitive edge. Today, he fishes anywhere from 20 to 30 bass tournaments each year. For the most part, these are local events, where the competition is tougher than some folks might think.
Some fishing contests take him out of state on occasion, but the vast majority of his tournament life occurs no farther west than Dale Hollow Lake and primarily in the rich waters of east Tennessee.
Myers' first big tournament win came in December 2006, when he and his partner, Kelley Ricker, took top honors at Dale Hollow Lake. It was only the duo's second Horse Creek Billy Westmoreland Memorial Smallmouth Invitational tournament. They had gotten their feet wet the previous year.
Their day-1 sack (the only four-fish limit of the event), which weighed in at 13.50 lbs., included two fish over the 21-inch mark and two smallmouth under 16 inches, the most allowed per day by the Dale Hollow slot limit for two fishermen. The heaviest of their two trophy fish weighed a whopping 5.39 lbs. and netted the team $580 for the first-day big fish.
Said Myers, "We caught the big fish and one of the smaller ones in the first 30 minutes Saturday morning. After that, we spent the rest of the day trying to cull the last small keeper."
Ricker explained that their team had targeted the fish with "a small jig" while fishing "main-lake points on the lower end" of the lake, adding that "it was tough out there."
Myers and Ricker finished the event with only one small fish on Sunday, but it was enough to hand them the $1,540 first-place purse, with a total of 14.77 lbs.
Most of the time that Myers puts in on lakes is spent either fishing a bass tournament or practicing for one. He primarily hits the water to keep on top of bass movements. Before a tournament, he'll make sure not to give too many of the fish a sore mouth, concentrating instead on eliminating as much water as possible.
"It's more important to pattern them than to catch them just before a tournament," he said.
Myers' usual game plan is to fish tournament waters the weekend before, then take a day off from work on Friday before it happens.
"If you put up your entry fee, you'd better be planning on winning the tournament," he explained. "Winning is what it's all about...even in the local rodeos or wildcats. The competitors are all good fishermen."
The competition in east Tennessee is stiff, mainly because the majority of anglers involved have grown up on the local waters.
"There's a passion at any level of tournament fishing," said Myers. "Many workplaces sponsor local tournaments and club events around most bodies of water anywhere in Tennessee. The small tournaments are where you'll find friends and buddies competing for pride."
He encourages anyone wanting to get into competitive bass fishing to get their feel wet at the local level.
"It's important to get started around friends because they'll help you out," he said. "They'll often bend over backwards on the front end to help you get started. At the big levels, everyone is tight-lipped (I got news for you: The same thing happens at the weekend-warrior level, too!). The most important factor is that buddy tournaments will make you a better bass fisherman in the long run because you learn so much with on-the-water experience.
"In fact," he added, "local tournaments or club events can lead to bigger events once you gain that experience. Everybody, from the big names on down, had to start somewhere. The small events sometimes can be the toughest, with only three- or four-hour time limits. That helps you build your confidence, and you just expand on it from there."
No comments:
Post a Comment