Shane Wilson has been fishing every time he had the chance since he was 5 years old. Maybe even younger.
This month, that dedication paid off when he and a fishing buddy, Chuck Gardner, qualified for a national bass fishing tournament sponsored by the Fishers of Men circuit and came home with second place and approximately $10,000 in prize money.
Gardner, like Wilson, fishes at every opportunity.
The pair placed first in their division on the Kansas Fishers of Men circuit. They fished in six tournaments in the state and won two of them, Wilson said. Their overall success won them the right to take part in the national competition, where more than 4,000 teams had vied for 141 spots open for the championship tournament at Red River near Shreveport, La.
For a time, Gardner said, Wilson was not sure he should go.
“I said, ‘Shane, this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Let’s make this happen,’” Gardner said.
So, without sponsors to absorb travel and fishing expenses, the pair set off for Louisiana.
They arrived in Shreveport in time to take part in three days of practice, which allowed them opportunities to fish multiple spots in the area and choose which ones would work best for them.
“The first day we caught a bunch of fish and kind of saved that spot and went to try to find some other places. We just found a few.”
Then fishing for the championship title began, about the same time as the torrential rains.
“Our spot got ruined by high water the first day,” Wilson said, “so we pretty much kind of winged it from there. We kind of went the opposite direction from all the other boats and we didn’t have any competition up there, and that helped us, too.”
Gardner and Wilson were in third place at the end of the first day and in sixth by the end of the second.
They were “thrilled to be in the top 28 going back for the final day of fishing,” Gardner said. A cold front and high winds that came through helped the pair, though the weather did hurt others’ fishing results.
“We were five pounds behind the leader,” Wilson said going into the third and final day of the tournament. “We knew if we had a good day and they had a bad day, we could win it.”
That extreme situation did not happen, but there was enough gain on the Emporia team’s part that they managed to close the gap and jump into second place by the time the tournament ended, despite being limited to about 130 feet of bank they hadn’t expected to be fishing.
Gardner said the tournament apparently was televised on a sports channel, because friends soon started calling the apir.
“When we left, I had probably 15 calls from people ... from this area and across Kansas,” he said. “They were so happy for us. That was the best part, to know that everyone was watching us.
“We fished against pretty good fishermen. It was quite exhilarating.”