“Nobody on their deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”
Jason Williamson lives by that axiom. Now, he does his best competing on the Bassmaster Elite Series, but he gladly trades potentially higher tournament finishes to be with his wife and children.
Maybe he’d have qualified for more than three Classics, earned a skoosh more than $1.01 million in B.A.S.S., and won more than two Elite tournaments. But to Williamson, 38, family comes first.
“I feel like I’ve succeeded at both, at being a dad and being a fisherman,” Williamson said. “I don’t have any regrets because I couldn’t consistently stay on the road.”
Pretty much a self-taught bass angler, Williamson has competed on the Elite Series since its second season in 2007. He came on like gangbusters in B.A.S.S., posting some tops 10s on tour events before cashing checks in six of his first 11 Elites. He slipped a notch in 2008 but had two top 10s in Texas. Williamson broke through with an Elite title in each of the next two years, but he’s only had five top 10s since.
“(Bassmaster TV host Mark) Zona asked a few years ago, ‘What’s the deal?’ Dude, there’s no deal with me,” Williamson said. “I’m totally content with who I am as an angler and what I’ve accomplished. Over the years, I’m totally content with the success that I’ve had. I’ve raised two fine boys who want to be in this sport.”
That’s not making any excuses, Williamson said. He’s just telling it like it is. When he began on tour, his children were young and he spent more traveling to pre-fish, visiting the far-flung fisheries on which the Elites compete. But as his boys got older, he wanted to be more a part of their lives.
When he won his first event on Lake Amistad in 2009, Williamson was 28, the second youngest to win an Elite event at the time. His oldest son, Brycen was 7, and Landon was 4. Like sands through an hourglass, he wasn’t going to let the days of their lives slip through his hands with dad not being there.
“My kids were still really young,” he said. “I was putting a lot of time in. As my boys got older and before Addy was born, I wasn’t as willing to sacrifice as much time. I wanted to be at their baseball and football games.
“When you’re on tour and catching them and doing well, that is the dream that people talk about – you’re living the dream as a professional fisherman. But when you’re on tour, you’re getting your rear kicked, you haven’t seen your family in three weeks, I don’t know that it gets any worse than that. I wasn’t going to go from one lake to the next and pre-practice. I was going to be home with my family.”
Williamson said young anglers with no home-front responsibilities are dangerous. They get in an RV or camper and hit the road for months at time, learning the lakes during prepractice then keeping lines in the water at nearby lakes to pick up any clues they can. Knowledge as well as experience can be picked up quickly today. That helps the new guys compete at a high level earlier. Williamson said it’s the rare angler who can maintain that while being heavily involved in a family.
“I’ve seen guys who have done well, done well, then all of the sudden they got married and started having kids. It’s not that they suck, it’s just that there’s a balance,” he said, noting he returned home between the January Harris Chain Open and the next week’s Elite opener on the St. Johns River. “I can’t spend that amount of time away from them. It’s not in my blood.
“Since I’ve been home, I’ve had two meetings at school for my kids, and now two baby doctor appointments. I understand why guys are still down in Florida and fishing every day, just waiting to go to St. Johns in a few days, but I’m here taking care of family and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Yet as time passes, circumstances do change, and Williamson said this season might be one where he will be able to focus a touch more on fishing. Brycen is now 17, Landon is 14 and Adalyn, 6. He expects his oldest to be able to help drive to the close events as his wife, Macie, is due with a daughter.
“I feel like going into 2019, I’m starting to get back to that because my boys are growing up a lot,” he said. “They are into bass fishing. They lead their high school in fishing points. They want to be there with me. They just want to be fishing. They’re old enough to fix themselves something to eat, they can drive. I have a little bit less responsibilities and I can put a little more time in.”
Growing up in Aiken, S.C., Williamson was afforded the opportunity to fish a lot. His parents divorced when he was 2, and while fishing was always there, the first sport he competed in was racing. His grandfather owned an automotive business, and Williamson drove go-carts up to cars on dirt ovals until he literally grew out of it.
“I just got too tall,” said the 6-5 Tower of Power, as emcee Dave Mercer calls him. “Size is really important. I definitely seen a lot of racetracks before I ever went fishing.
“I grew up fishing both sides of my family. Mom remarried and her family had a lake house on Lake Murray, and my dad always had a lake house on Clarks Hill. When I wasn’t at a racetrack, I was at one of their lake houses fishing.”
His father, Ronnie, enjoyed using live bait for bream or crappie to fry up. Nobody in his family fished for bass, but he was shown the basics by his father’s friend, Tommy Walker. So after the morning trips and before the evening excursions, Williamson would empty the 16-foot fiberglass boat with a 35-hp Johnson of the live bait tackle, take his “couple three bass rods and run around bass fishing during the middle of the day. So I was kind of self-taught.
“I did that from 10 to 15, almost every weekend we weren’t racing. At 15 years old, dad bought a little bit bigger boat, and I talked him into letting me fish one of the big open team tournaments on Clarks Hill.”
Bassmaster Magazine was another way he gained knowledge, as well as picking the brains of the guys at the tackle store who he thought knew how to bass fish. But what set him on his way was a huge windfall in that first tournament. With his friend, Williamson finished second in the 200-boat event and weighed in the second largest bass.
“That’s what hooked me,” he said. “My part was 1,500 bucks. I was in 10th grade and walking around high school with that kind of money in my pocket.”
But he didn’t blow; he invested it back into fishing. While working part-time at the Chik-fil-A, Williamson had his grandmother co-sign for his first bass boat and it was “kind of off to the races I went.”
First he joined a local club and started fishing weekend tournaments, although he didn’t fare too well at first.
“I got my ass kicked, but I always had the passion,” he said. “It’s always been intriguing to me to make a fish bite something that’s not real, but because of what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, they think it’s real and they eat it.”
In his third year on the Elites, Williamson made the call.
During practice at Lake Amistad, he found a ditch running to a flat where the fish were stacked up, including some nearing 10 pounds, and he located another similar spot. He not only thought he had enough to win the anticipated big fish event, but he wondered if he might break some records.
It was the only time he ever called back to South Carolina to tell his dad he might want to fly down to watch the fireworks.
“I called him and said this is going to be one you don’t want to miss. I normally don’t do that even if I feel like I’m going to do really well,” he said. “I’d just rather my fishing do my talking.”
That confidence almost turned into bad karma, as a big storm hit on the eve of Day 1. His areas turned chalky, and he couldn’t find anything they would bite. Williamson scrounged up 17 pounds but stood 22nd. With the runoff worse, he fell to 39th and barely made the cut.
“Funny thing was, my dad got there after the first day complaining,” he said. “He flew in a little bitty plane and it was rough, he was hitting his head, and I come in with 17 pounds.”
On Day 3, Williamson was hitting some points nearby trying to rally. He had nearly given up those spots but, noticing the lake had gone down, told his co-angler he was just going to run in and check them. Lo and behold, the water had cleared.
“I said, ‘Oh my gosh, please still be here.’ That’s when it all began,” he said. “I train-wrecked them for three hours. I left there with 30 pounds and I went to my other area and it had cleaned up, and I caught several big ones and culled up. They bit the same swimbait they bit in practice, and they were in the exact same places.”
With 33-12 to get back in the game and 34-12 on Championship Sunday, Williamson totaled 96-6 and won by more than 8 pounds. Although Scott Campbell had the biggest bass at 12-7, Williamson scored his personal best 11-pounder and no one else eclipsed a 30-pound bag. His dad knew it went down when he came in and asked for two weigh-in bags.
“My dad and I, both of just really couldn’t believe what happened,” Williamson said. “He was just super proud. He ran up there on stage. It was a pretty special moment for the whole team. Laughing, crying, we didn’t know how to take it. I was just super glad he was able to get there, that it worked out. That’s the only time I told him to buy a plane ticket.”
Williamson’s other victory came at a lake he grew up on, Clarks Hill. It was the third Elite visit there in four years, and he said the key to managing fish was his ability to figure out how to use each section of the lake. He won by 2 ounces, and explained why a victory, rare for most, can draw up great emotion.
“You just put so much time,” he said. “Bass fishing at this level is an emotional roller coaster. You have a good tournament, you have a bad tournament. It’s so frustrating. You have ups and down. If you look back and go a year or two or three without winning, it’s like it’s building and building, and if you finally do win again, that’s all released.”
Williamson would like to be able to bring the family up on stage this season, and he’s hopeful. He said he’s familiar with a number of the fisheries on the schedule, namely Lake Lanier, Lake Hartwell and Winyah Bay, all not far from his home.
“That’s a great head start,” he said. “I feel like my opportunities this year are better than years past. The way the schedule is set up is very fitting for me. I feel like I’ve got some pressure relieved on the personal side of things, with Brycen driving, and he’s going to be able to drive the kids to several events because they’re close. I’ve got some great partners.
“When you talk about 2019, this is a big year for bass fishing. What a lot of us have learned over time, loyalty don’t mean near as much as it used to. I’m very optimistic. I’m ready to prove I’ve still got what it takes. My boys will be there. I got a baby on the way and a pregnant wife who’s mean as hell, so I’ll be fishing mad.”
Just kidding, honey, he added.
