FLW Tour rookie was ready to pack it in before Lake Murray
When Chris Elliott put his boat in the water for the first day of practice at the Wal-Mart FLW Tour event on Lake Murray, in his mind, it was the last professional event of his career.
After a five-year run at the professional fishing game, Elliott was at the end of his rope. The financial insecurity of tournament bass fishing had taken it’s toll on the 27-year-old bass pro from Gloucester, N.C. Deep down he knew his window of opportunity to make his mark on the sport was closing.
“You are not going to believe this, probably no one will believe it, but Lake Murray was to be my last tournament,” Elliott revealed after winning the Lake Murray event. “It had come to the point where I had to be honest with myself – my fishing performance was not to the level it needed to be to survive in this sport. My wife and I had many long talks about it recently. We decided that if nothing big happened before Beaver Lake, I simply could not afford to go to Arkansas.”
For Elliott, the hardest part was the thought of making calls to his sponsors and telling them that he was laying down the sticks. “That was the part that bothered me most,” Elliott admitted. “Calling companies like Ranger Boats who have supported me – invested in me – and telling them that I was not going to be able to deliver on their investment. The thought of that made me sick. But I had conceded to do it.”
In fact, Elliott had set the date: Monday, March 17 would be the day he would call his sponsors and deliver the bad news. “I had already practiced what I was going to tell them,” he said.
Instead, Chris Elliott spent March 17 getting congratulatory calls from his sponsors and fielding questions from outdoor writers on how he managed to reel in 67 pounds of bass over four days from Lake Murray to claim his first national victory.
Just wanted to fish
Like many aspiring bass pros, Chris Elliott grew up with fishing fever. His mom had his first fish mounted when he was just 2 years old.
“That’s all I ever wanted to do was fish – for anything. We would go on family vacations and I would fish. During spring break I would fish. There was something about catching fish that just intrigued me.”
Elliott did not get focused specifically on bass until he discovered bass-fishing tournaments at the age of 13.
In high school, Elliott and his friend Dustin Wilks won a team tournament and split $1,000. “I can remember getting $500 and thinking, `Wow, I just got paid to go fishing.’ Dustin and I always spent our winnings on rods, reels and more tackle.”
When Elliott turned 17, he joined a bass club and began to compete in club-level events.
After high school, Elliott’s primary focus became college. “Both of my parents were educators at universities, so it was automatically assumed that I would get a college degree,” he said.
Then the bass-fishing college student did the unthinkable – he qualified for 1999 Bassmasters Classic through the BASS Federation. His Classic berth put him on professional bass fishing’s fast track.
After his Classic appearance, Elliott began fishing BASS invitationals. With only four invitationals per year, Elliott had the time to continue his collegiate studies. He earned an Associate of Arts degree from Wake Technical College and then enrolled in North Carolina State to finish a four-year degree in recreation and tourism management.
Then fishing interrupted again. “In 2000, I qualified for the BASS Tour,” said Elliott. “I could not fish the tour and continue to go to school – one had to give, and it was college. I had a lot of momentum in the fishing industry and I just couldn’t abandon it. When you are a 21-year-old kid winning club tournaments and qualifying for the Classic, and at the same time your best buddy (Wilks) qualifies for the Classic in his first year on the invitational circuit, it makes this whole professional fishing thing look real easy. Well, looking back on it, we should have been slapped. And eventually we were.”
Reality checks
Elliott took his BASS Tour ticket and headed out in search of more bass-fishing fame and glory. He made checks, but the checks he made were not enough to keep him going.
“I was getting checks consistently, but one check every other tournament was not enough to pay expenses and call this a living. Money trickled in one end, but it poured out the other.”
Reality began to set in on Elliott after he got married last July. “When you are single with no obligations, fishing for a living is great. But after Rhonda and I got married and bought a house, and then my friends started having kids, I realized that I needed to plan for the future – bass fishing doesn’t exactly have a retirement program. I don’t won’t to be 40 years old, owe $60,000 on credit cards, and never come home to see my wife and family. At that point, I started to seriously question my future in this sport. I began to wonder, `At what point do you throw in the towel?'”
Last year Elliott started his own guide business on the North Carolina coast for additional income and switched to the FLW Tour for one last chance at bass-fishing fortune. He could not afford to fish both tours, so he put the last of his bass-fishing eggs in the FLW Tour. “It was FLW or bust,” he commented.
He had a poor tournament at Okeechobee, claimed a 45th-place check at Atchafalaya and planned to fish Murray only because it was close to his house. If there was no top finish at Murray, Beaver Lake was out of the question.
A feeling of peace
Oddly enough, Elliott says that after he conceded to “retire” his fishing career before shoving off for Murray, he was overcome with a peaceful feeling. “For the first time in a long time, fishing was fun again,” he said. “I had come to terms with my decision. I figured if this was going to be my last tournament, I might as well have fun. The pressure was off, and my mind was free and clear.”
During the practice rounds, Elliott did not find what he considered to be winning fish. “I was not blistering them at all,” he said. “I had found a few fish in two places, but I have had much better practices.”
During the first two days of the tournament, Elliott cranked a Bandit Series 100 crankbait around the Shull Island area to qualify for the top ten. On day three, wind forced him out of his primary area.
He dropped back to his secondary area: a calm cove across from Shull Island. The cove featured several acres of milfoil, an aquatic plant different from hydrilla.
Elliott threw a spinner bait in the milfoil during the finals. After day three, he was in third place but still had no idea he would win. “Everybody was watching Nixon and Clunn,” he said. “I was just another name on the sheet at that point.”
On the final day, Elliott’s fate came down to the help of a large bass that anchored his three-fish stringer and pushed him into the winner’s circle.
Elliott tells of the strange encounter with the 7-pound bass that helped him win:
“It was weird. I was at the end of a cast and reeling in fast to make another cast. As I was lifting the bait out of the water, there was this huge explosion at the surface. It scared me so bad, I jerked out of reflex. Then I realized I had hooked a giant bass – barely hooked a giant bass. My little Eagle Claw trailer hook had hooked him in the skin in the corner of his mouth, and I only had out 5 feet of line. A thousand things went through my mind as I anticipated him jumping or surging down in the grass. But the fish never fought. After exploding on the bait, it just laid on the surface barely hooked. I slipped the net under him and it was over.”
Happiness is bass fishing
Elliott is quick to point out that just because he won $100,000 does not mean he is on easy street for the rest of his life. He plans to invest some of the money in his guide business so he can develop a stable stream of income.
The young angler says he will continue to fish professional-level tournaments as long as he is happy doing it. He knows firsthand how the pressures of tournament fishing can rob an angler of his passion for the sport.
“We all fish because we love it,” he surmised. “But when your financial future becomes dependent on your tournament performance, that extreme pressure can make fishing pure misery, and I never want it to be like that. I don’t want to step into a bass boat every morning and be so worried about my performance that I take for granted how fortunate I am just to be able to go fishing. If it ever gets to that bad, I’ll find something else to do.”