Georgia pro Micah Frazier burst onto the scene as a young phenom when he won a BFL at the tender age of 16. And the rest, as they say, is history.
About that history, let’s start at the beginning. Frazier caught his first fish when he was 3 years old – a bluegill that he vividly remembers, which he caught in a Panama City, Fla., canal while on vacation. From that moment on, Frazier says, he became “obsessed with fishing.” And he still displays the fish’s photo in his home.
A bit later, when Frazier reached middle school, his grandfather gifted him a small johnboat. Frazier wasn’t heavy into sports, but he played a bit of baseball. Mostly he just fished, and that johnboat became his second home.
When he was 15, Frazier’s father bought the family a bass boat, and Frazier had full use of this fishing machine. Pretty soon, he sat his parents down and told them he wanted to quit baseball and focus exclusively on fishing. His parents agreed, and a year later Frazier won the West Point BFL, which launched his career.
“That win was a big deal at the time,” he says. “I didn’t do very well for the next few years, but I was only 16 and that win gave me the confidence to keep with it. West Point is my home lake, and I won it on a bank I’d never fished before, and to this day, I’ve never caught a fish on it since. It was just a blessing in disguise. I don’t really know what happened, but I caught 20 pounds on a random mud bank on West Point.”
From the BFLs, he ascended to the next level of semi-pro competition, then joined the FLW Tour at age 20. But he punched his ticket to the Bassmaster Elite Series in 2014 and never looked back. What’s especially interesting is how he earned that ticket. He signed up for the 2014 Northern Opens because he wanted to fish Champlain. He finished 22nd at the first Open at Douglas Lake, then fifth at Champlain. The final event was held at Lake St. Clair and he finished 44th. Good enough to get in.
“It’s one of the greatest fishing memories I have – qualifying for the Elite Series at St. Clair,” Frazier notes. “It was my first year in the Opens and when I entered, I didn’t think about qualifying for the Elite Series . Maybe I did a little after the first tournament, but then I definitely did after Champlain. I was fortunate to qualify in my first year.”
He made the 2016 Bassmaster Classic in his rookie year – no small task – and qualified for two other Classics in 2018 and 2019. He fished the final day in 2018 and was in contention to win, but he struggled a bit and finished 14th.
“I really like offshore fishing – especially Tennessee River offshore fishing, and smallmouth fishing up north,” Frazier says. “I tend to do better when I’m out and able to use my graphs and stuff like that.
“I also tend to do pretty well in shallow, prespawn tournaments in the South. I don’t really know why, but I have several solid finishes in the first week of March when the fish are on the move to where I can get on a pattern and run that.”
Want solid evidence of how savvy and highly regarded Frazier is? Look no further than his title sponsor Coca Cola. Sometimes anglers land soda brands through a local or regional bottling agency. But Frazier’s is a national deal, and it’s one of the most visible and powerful sponsorships among Elite Series anglers today.
A big part of that is his consistency. Dating to the start of 2019, Frazier fished 39 B.A.S.S. events and finished in the top 20 an impressive 30 percent of the time.
Some of his other sponsors include Ranger, Mercury, Power-Pole, Lowrance, PRADCO Outdoor Brands (Yum, War Eagle, Bandit), Abu Garcia, Sunline, AFTCO, T-H Marine, Bass Boat Technologies and Owner Hooks.
