The Bass Anglers are one of Santa Fe’s newest clubs and have had an incredible two years.

Ethan Vaughn, the founder of the Bass Anglers, is a longtime angler and wanted to prove his worth against other people and schools.

“I just really wanted to fish and fish competitively because I think it’s fun,” Vaughn said.

Competitive fishing consists of 2 anglers and one coach on a boat trying to catch the most weight in a certain amount of time, usually 6 hours. The fish have to be a certain length to be counted, usually between 12-15 inches depending on the lake or state. These tournaments are all based on catching bass, but various types can be caught such as smallmouth, largemouth or spotted.

The Bass Anglers have gone to several tournaments throughout the last two years, they will go to 6 by the end of this school year, including 3 in and 3 out of state. They have seen some success in tournaments but missed going to Nationals by just 10 ounces.

The high school fishing tournaments have around 60 boats all competing on the same body of water. High school tournaments are one day and often take place after college tournaments, which is an unfortunate situation because the college boats have days to prepare before the start of the tournament, compared to high schoolers who just fish the day of, leaving high schoolers in a much tougher spot.

“There’s 260 college boats the day before,” Vaughn said. “Then you get 64 high school boats going out there basically picking up scraps.”
Vaughn believes this will be the last year for the Bass Anglers because he and so many members of the club are seniors. With the founder/president and all other members of leadership graduating, we will likely be seeing the end of the Bass Anglers, at least for some time.

With most of its members graduating, Vaughn believes that this is the last year of the Bass Anglers for some time. If you would like to carry on this tradition, contact K.C. Williams, the current Bass Anglers sponsor, at [email protected].