Three of us spent two years chasing trophies on the BFL trail. We learned a lot about ourselves, almost nothing about fishing, and finally sold the boat. Here's what happened.
In 2018, three of us — me, my brother-in-law Dale, and a friend named Howard — split the cost of a 2014 Ranger Z518 and entered the BFL series as a part-time team. We weren't trying to go pro. We had jobs, families, and zero illusions about our talent. We just wanted to see what the tournament side of bass fishing felt like up close, after twenty years of watching it on TV.
Two years later we sold the boat. Dale used his share to fix his roof. I used mine to build the porch this club now lives on. Howard, who is funnier than the two of us combined, bought his daughter a clarinet and the rest in season tickets for the Atlanta United. I think we all got the better end of the trade.
What tournament fishing teaches you
It teaches you a tremendous amount about logistics. Trailers, launch lines, weigh-ins, paperwork, time management on the water, how to organize a tackle bag so you can find a Senko in the dark. We got better at all of those things. Genuinely better.
It teaches you almost nothing about reading a body of water that you haven't already pre-fished for forty hours. The pros aren't winning because they're casting better than you. They're winning because they spent four days the week before driving every cove on Hartwell with side-scan sonar and a depth log. That's a job. It's a real job, and they're good at it. But it's not what most of us thought "fishing" meant when we were ten.
What it took away
The boat ate weekends. The tournament fee ate paychecks. The pre-fishing ate the actual fishing. By month eighteen, none of us had been bream fishing — bream fishing, the thing we'd all loved as kids — in over a year. We were on the water more than we'd ever been in our lives, and we were having less fun.
The porch decision
In November 2019 we finished a tournament on Lanier in 47th place out of 84 boats. We drove back to Duluth, ate barbecue at a place that doesn't exist anymore, and Howard said, "I think we're done." Nobody argued. We sold the Ranger in February. By March I'd started screwing decking down on the porch.
What we kept
A few things stuck. We're all better with electronics than we used to be, even though we mostly don't use them now. We all know how to organize tackle. And we all know — really know, in the bones — that there's a difference between fishing as a competition and fishing as a way of being outside. We needed two years and a boat payment to learn it. Maybe you can save yourself the trouble.