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My first win at the Guaranteed Rate Bassmaster Elite Series at Santee Cooper Lakes means everything. But it’s not just me. My whole family won two weeks ago. It is something we have all sacrificed for, worked for and tried to accomplish over the last 20 years. For it to finally happen, it is still surreal almost. It is still hard to believe it actually happened.
It is one of those things that is so hard to do. Other people just see the win, but they don’t see the last six or seven years of work and sacrifice that not only I have put into it, and not just my wife, but my dad and everyone else. We have all had to give things up and do some things differently for this dream.
I’d like to thank my core group of sponsors who have been with me since day one: Big Bite Baits, Skeeter, Yamaha, AFTCO, Sunline, Dobyns, Spro, Gamakatsu, Battle Born, Sonar Pros and Nichols. They are more like family than sponsors. They all reached out throughout the event. It was more like friends talking to friends, and that is what I love about my group of sponsors. It is super easy to promote my sponsors when they treat me like family.
My love for hunting and my love for fishing combined together is sight fishing. It is one of my favorite ways to catch them. When I was a little kid, the first couple fish I caught off a bed were a challenge. You had to figure out what the deal was and where you needed to put the bait and move it to get the fish to bite. It was like a game that made me fall in love with sight fishing. To be able to win my first blue trophy doing that, it is cool for it to come full circle.
From the day they announced the schedule, my plan was to sight fish when I arrived at the Santee Cooper Lakes. When that cold front came through during practice, it was kind of concerning. It could have knocked them back far enough to where only a few would have come up and you end up only catching 16 pounds, which isn’t going to work on Santee Cooper Lakes.
Drew Benton and I had talked about it, and we had a gauge that if the water temperature got below 55, it would hurt the bite. The first day of practice fortunately it was 56 degrees, and then we knew it was still going to happen.
On the final day, if you watched Bassmaster LIVE when I landed the big bass, I think I said I needed one more, but I also said I have a shot. I really don’t know why I said I needed one more. Maybe just based on what I had drawn up in my head before the final day. When I caught that bass, it was pretty unexplainable, but I felt an overwhelming feeling of relaxation. It had to have been because I did my job and got it done.
When I got to hoist that trophy, I had every emotion going through me at the same time. I rehearsed my winning speech for 15 years, and when I got up there, I couldn’t tell you one word of what I was going to say. I couldn’t think of anything I had dreamed about saying since I was a kid. To be able to hold that trophy up, it is something I really wish every competitive angler could experience once in their lives.
When my wife was pregnant with our child, everyone told me it was going to be life changing. You hear it over and over again. But until it happens to you, when you finally get that feeling, it really does change your life in an instant. Only then will you know what those people are talking about.
That’s the same way winning one of these events was. I have heard so many people say it, but now I know exactly what they are talking about.
Now, after feeling that once, it makes you want another one even more.