Recently, I visited with the Central Alabama Community College Fishing Team. A few weeks later, I attended a fundraiser for the Auburn University Fishing Team. That’s right, college fishing exists, and there’s high school fishing as well. I’ve had the good fortune to watch this phenomenon develop during the course of my career as a professional angler. The first time I heard of college fishing was almost 15 years ago. It seems there were a few schools in Indiana or maybe Illinois that put together some college fishing teams and allowed them to compete against each other. As a bass club member, former college athlete and a growing tournament angler at the time, I remember thinking this could be big. Now several years later, it is very big.
College fishing grew through the two biggest tournament organizations that existed at the time, B.A.S.S. and FLW. FLW was recently purchased by Major League Fishing, which hopes to build on the successful grassroots programs of FLW to further pursue the vision of growing the sport of fishing. It started as a club, much like Kowaliga Bassmasters, through which I got started. The top performing teams got to compete on behalf of their schools in the larger events. B.A.S.S. and FLW began holding high profile, televised events in which the best college anglers in the country could earn scholarship money for their schools, as well provide their schools with valuable exposure.
