College teammates, roommates and now working professionals in the fishing industry are just a few ways to describe Candler McCollum and Will Bates’ ever-changing relationship.
The Auburn University graduates have landed many fish together during their time as teammates, and now both have landed at successful marine electronics companies; McCollum with Lowrance and Bates with Humminbird.
McCollum is a business acquisition manager at Navico and helps consumers successfully use the new digital software that complements the hardware units that Lowrance offers. Bates, meanwhile, helps design software and updates for Humminbird’s brand of electronics.
Through the Insight Genesis college program, McCollum made his first connection with Lowrance’s associates. The Insight Genesis program, known as the College Cup, enables collegiate anglers to graph acreage on any given body of water and receive credit monthly when they upload their data to the website database. At the end of each graphing period, anglers with the most acreage win prizes.
McCollum cashed in with the first ever College Cup victory shortly after the program’s inception and was able to meet Lowrance associates and build a strong connection from his first encounter.
“Through college fishing, I won the first Lowrance Insight Genesis College Cup,” McCollum said. “They wanted to present my prize, a Lowrance HDS 12, in person at the Lake Guntersville Classic.”
Bates, who graduated from Auburn in 2014 with a degree in computer engineering, also entered the fishing industry as he garnered a position with Johnson Outdoors, Humminbird specifically.
“It wasn’t quite on my radar initially. I talked to Candler and my other roommates about how cool it would be to work in the fishing industry,” Bates said. “I was looking at the Johnson Outdoors website and saw they were looking for a software engineer, and I thought it would be great to work for a company in the industry.”
Bates paired the leadership skills he attained as former president of the Auburn Bass Fishing Team with his love for math and computers and found a perfect opportunity to mesh everything within the fishing industry.
At Humminbird, he helps develop new features for the unit software and works to increase the speed of the electronics.
Whereas Bates uses his degree to create software for the respective units, McCollum uses his skill to reach consumers and help them better use the products and technology.
“In the fishing industry as technology grows and changes, these college anglers have a major leg up,” said Matt Johnson, director of business management with Navico. “With Candler’s job, we weren’t trying to fill a position. We created a position for him because we saw him as a valuable asset.”
With the new changes in technology, Johnson said he believes it is crucial for companies to find college anglers who can help bridge the gap between the technology and the consumer.
“As these college anglers show they are savvy with the technology, companies won’t consider them for just certain positions,” Johnson said. “They will actually create job positions that fit these anglers within these companies.”
McCollum and Bates said college fishing helped them in more ways than one. Not only did they travel the country fishing the collegiate tours, but they also met many influential people in the fishing industry. Those are connections and opportunities that they may not have experienced if they weren’t exposed to the sport like college fishing allows.
For these roommates and fishing partners, college fishing changed the landscape of their careers and enabled them to find their intended career field swiftly after graduating from Auburn.
