Our Fishing Story

Both of us share a lifelong passion for fishing. Our late fathers were responsible for passing this passion on to us. We started out fishing ponds and reservoirs, together, from shore. We bought some waders and started river fishing as well.

Next a tandem Nucanoe hybrid kayak. It was in that kayak that we fished our first few tournaments and got our first taste of competitive angling. Our local tackle store, Angling Sports, hosted tournaments on local reservoirs and we would enter with a cooler and bubbler for a live well. Since we don’t have kids, we decided to spend as much time learning about fishing and spending as much time as we could on the water.

Fast forward to 2015, with some money saved up, we purchased our first boat. A brand new Lund Rebel 1650 with a 60hp Mercury outboard. We definitely got a lot of use out of that boat. That boat saw the waters of the French River, Lake Champlain, Lake Erie, Lake Simcoe, Lake St Clair, Georgian, Long Point and Rondeau Bays. 

In 2016, we took our next step to becoming serious tournament anglers by joining the Forest City Bassmasters Club. Our 2016 season saw us paired together for our first two tournaments. We brought in a 15lbs 3 oz bag of largemouth bass on Rondeau Bay for a third place finish.  The next one was an evening 3 fish limit tournament on Wildwood reservoir in St. Mary’s that saw us bring in 7lbs 5oz with three fish to the scale for a 1st place finish. By the end of that season, Alicia was in 5th place for Angler of the Year, and T.J. was 8th, out of 26 club members. 

2017 had us continuing to fish our club tournaments and we also decided to step up our game and try our luck at fishing the Tri-Bay Bass Association’s qualifying tournament circuit. It is a much larger,  more challenging and competitive series than we had fished previously.  We fished three out of the four qualifier tournaments and  we learned a lot that season. We continued to experience success at the club level with our Bassmasters Club. By the end of the 2017 season, T.J. was tied for 3rd and Alicia right behind in 4th out of 30 members. Later that year, we joined the Pure Fishing Team. 

Our 2018 fishing season started with the arrival of our new boat. In order to be more competitive in our tournaments, we upgraded our ride to a 2018 Lund Pro V Bass 2075 boat. We made a substantial upgrade to a 250 hp Envirude G2 ETec engine. We got to test the new boat out on a new body of water, Lake Chickamauga in March 2018 where T.J. was able to catch a new personal best bass at 9 lbs. We continued fishing our club tournaments (3rd season) and  TBBA qualifying tournaments  (2nd season) in 2018. We fished all three TBBA qualifiers and successfully advanced on to the Classic with a 17th place finish overall, out of 92 teams. In the second qualifier we brought in an 18.37lbs bag of smallmouth bass to win 2nd place at on Long Point Bay. We were 0.20 lbs short of a first place finish.  We unfortunately had to miss the TBBA classic in order to participate in the Hank Gibson Provincial Qualifier on Lake Nipissing. Our 2018 Bassmaster club season saw T. J. take Angler of the Year with Alicia placing 3rd, out of a growing field of 38. In 2019 Alicia took home Angler of the Year for our Bassmaster club season and T.J. placed fourth overall. In 2021 Alicia made B.A.S.S Nation Team Ontario and fished the TNT Fireworks BASS Nation Northeast Regional in New York on the St. Lawrence River in June 2022 finishing 53rd out of 120 anglers. In 2023 Alicia fished three of the Bassmaster opens at Buggs Island, Virginia finishing 66th, Waddington, New York finishing 116th and Watts Bar finishing 57th. 

Along with fishing in tournaments for largemouth and smallmouth bass, we have also targeted Florida strain largemouth bass, northern pike, walleye, perch, crappie, panfish, catfish, musky, steelhead/trout, sucker, carp, peacock bass, cichlid, redfish, snook and sea trout.  We love to learn new techniques and apply our new found knowledge on the water. We have done salt water fishing and we also fly fish!

In 2024 we will continue to fish the TBBA qualifying tournament trail. We will also be fishing some much larger tournaments such as the Smallmouth Bass Open on the St. John river in New Brunswick in May,  Vexus Open on Lake St. Clair for bass opener in June, the Mitchell's Bay Open on Lake St. Clair in July as well as the Canadian Tire Erie Open in October.