My Fishing Journey

Growing up as a kid all I wanted to be was a professional baseball player. I spend every hour of the day perfecting my skills so one day I could make “The Show”. At 16 years old I moved to Arkansas from Florida and my life begin to change. Arkansas offers some of the best outdoor opportunities you can image. From hunting, fishing, hiking, recreational boating, kayaking, canoeing, you name it, Arkansas has got it. The Ozark mountains hold some of the best fishing lakes In the country to boot! When this ole boys parents said we were moving to Arkansas, I said “when we going? I’m ready!”….are we there yet…Haha! I started high school in Clinton, Arkansas and later graduated from Southside Bee Branch, just about 15 minutes south of Clinton. I then went on to play Division 1 Junior college baseball at Garden City Community College. Then transferred to Southern Arkansas University to finish my baseball career. My hopes of being in the show were fizzing away, and I had to “cowboy up” and get a real job. Well, I went back to school to try and pursue physical therapy. While going to school at UCA, through a friend of mine, I met a man named Larry Nixon. Now if you not familiar with that name, no worries I’ll give you four letters that describe who he is. G,O,A, and T. If your a sports fan you will know what that stand for. Larry Nixon is the most legendary fisherman in the world of Bass Fishing. He was the first man to earn 1,000,000 dollars in the sport. Let’s just say he dominated, and today he’s 70 years old and can still compete with the young sticks. So, me and Larry hit it off and before you know it I am traveling with him to my first tournament in Texas. There were three derby’s in this FLW Everstart Series , Toledo Bend Lake, Lake Sam Rayburn, then back to Lake Sam Rayburn in the Fall. Well long story short, I almost won co-angler of the year and I won the last event on Rayburn. I was like, pretty cool, I like it, I WANT More! So I did that and fished the FLW Tour as a co-angler with some stud co-anglers by the way, guys like Bryan New #dontsuck, Luke Dunkin #LBL, and one of my other good friends, John Hunter #Googansquad. Another long story short, I fished for 2 years, won another tournament on Beaver Lake in Rogers Arkansas, and qualified for the FLW tour as a professional! I continued fishing with FLW/MLF for 5 years. Meanwhile fishing the Bassmaster Opens with hope of qualifying to be on the Bassmaster Elite Series and here we are….waaaahoooooooo!