Story by Hunter Sales | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
With the start of the NPFL season only a week away, these columns will likely be soon filled with lessons learned, tips and tricks to help anglers of all skill levels, and fishing stories from the road. Before we get to that point, I want to talk about my personal story of how I fell in love with bass fishing as well as how rewarding it can be to watch others do the same. I hope that everyone reading this article gets the same nostalgia from reading it that I will from writing it.
The first step to falling in love, at least from my limited experience, seems to be “meeting someone new.” For me, I met bass fishing at a very young age, probably around 10 years old, fishing local tournaments with my dad out of his ProCraft bass boat. I was your stereotypical kid on the water, easily distracted, bored, and certainly a liability to my dad’s ability to be competitive in these events. Either way, I wasn’t happy when dad would go fishing without me. It was one of my favorite things to do as a kid.
However, as Love often has it, bass fishing and I drifted apart due to my focus on travel baseball in my teenage years. I was never able to walk away from bass fishing though, it was always in the back of my mind and the way that I filled my free time in-between baseball practices and games.
When I was 15, I recall a baseball teammate and I finding a busted-up Bass Pro Shops Pond Prowler on the banks of Cherokee Lake that would float for almost an hour before we had to drag it up on the shore to allow water to drain out of it so that we could fish a few spots again.
I wasn’t mature enough at this point to know that this was love, but it was evident to everyone around me. I couldn’t be more thankful for a family that recognized this. One summer day, my grandfather watched from our camper as my teammate and I would paddle out to some bushes, fish for an hour, drag the boat on the bank, let it drain, and go back out for another hour. He decided that he would buy me a brand new 8-foot Pond Prowler and a trolling motor for my 16th birthday and helped me to find a used flat-bed trailer to put behind the golf cart at our camper to launch the boat. I still don’t think my mom knows how many times I took that 8-foot plastic boat into the middle of Cherokee Lake to fish for hours on end.
Looking back, I have no idea why I fell so hard for bass fishing as it certainly didn’t show me the same affection that I had for it. I don’t recall ever catching many fish out of that plastic boat, but I can recall waking up each day before the sun countless days to go out on the water and fish. As my relationship with bass fishing continued to evolve, I knew that I needed to get a bigger boat with a real motor so that I could explore more areas to fish and maybe enter a few tournaments. I’ll spare the details, but I think I still have blisters on my hands from all the weed-eating that I did while saving up to buy a 16-foot flat bottom with a tiller outboard.
Those summers, I learned a ton about fishing but turning it into a career was never a serious thought. I knew I wanted to fish every day, but that’s about all I knew. I once again put bass fishing on ice to pursue a college career in baseball. My days were filled with workouts, practice, and everything else that came with college athletics. During my junior year, I once again felt that familiar itch to get back out on the water. I’m not sure if it was an escape from the stress that baseball had become or if it was God nudging me back towards my calling.
Truthfully, it was probably a little bit of both. I had bought, sold, and traded boats all throughout college even though I rarely was able to fish. During my junior year, I found myself going to baseball practice with a 19-foot Ranger in the parking lot more often than not. I didn’t know what was coming next, but I do believe I knew that bass fishing was my “true love” at this point. Fast-forward to May after that season when there was a major college event on Cherokee Lake. I got my butt kicked, but I couldn’t have been more certain that I was on the right path in life.
I’m still chasing that same feeling, that same fish, and scratching my competitive itch both as a college fishing coach and professional angler.
From time to time, through events like the Carson-Newman University Youth Angler Academy, I’m able to catch a glimpse of 15-year-old Hunter falling in love for the first time in the eyes of an eager angler. It’s really humbling to know that spending time with the next generation can help them fall in love with a sport that has taught me so much about life.
This season, I’m committed to remembering the reason why I fish and the love that I have for the sport. It is easy to get caught up in the stress of high-level bass fishing, but under the surface, I believe we are all the same kid that just wants to fish every day.
I thank God for allowing me an opportunity to walk this road.
Hunter Sales – Angler Profile
