Lee qualifies for Elites

Ten years ago, Jordan Lee was just a middle schooler with a dream. Now, he is a young man with an Elite Series berth and a long career ahead of him.

AUBURN, Ala. — Ten years ago, Jordan Lee was just a middle schooler with a dream.

Now, he is a young man with an Elite Series berth and a long career ahead of him.

“I’m pretty pumped,” said Lee, whose performance at the 2014 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Central Open #3 presented by Allstate last weekend qualified him for the 2015 Bassmaster Elite Series.

“It’s a dream come true for me,” said Lee, a graduate of the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series. He decided he wanted to be a pro angler when he was in eighth grade, and he fished his first tournament in ninth grade. Wasting no time, Lee competed in every tournament series he could — junior club, Weekend Series and BFLs — by the time he was a junior in high school.

Lee attended Auburn University in Alabama and joined the bass fishing team there, where he and his brother, Matt Lee, made names for themselves in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series. Matt beat Jordan in head-to-head competition in 2012 and qualified for the 2013 Bassmaster Classic. Then Jordan beat his best friend, Shane Powell, the very next year and qualified for the 2014 Bassmaster Classic.

Jordan Lee put up good numbers in the Classic, finishing in sixth place among a field of the world’s best bass anglers. Since then, he’s competed in all the Opens, a series in which the Top 5 anglers in points for each division qualify for the Elite Series. That’s exactly where Lee wanted to be, and this weekend, Lee completed the Central Division of the Opens in second place.

“Fishing all three divisions was a smart idea for me,” said Lee, 23. “I knew I’d have a couple bad days throughout the year. You have to expect that. So by fishing all nine tournaments, I was able to make it through the Centrals, even when I couldn’t make up ground in the other two divisions.”

For the Opens, eight out of the nine lakes he visited were ones he’d never been to before.

“That’s where the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series really prepared me,” said Lee. “Going to different bodies of water, putting a game plan together and learning how to roll with it is something I learned how to do in the college program, and it paid off this year in the Opens.”

The Classic helped prep him, too.

“It really gave me the confidence that I could do it,” said Lee. “Fishing against the 50 best guys in the world and doing well really gave me that boost I needed. Obviously, sometimes you have your doubts fishing against these guys, but that experience helped.”

But now that he’s completed the fishing part that will get his pro bass career started, there’s another piece to the puzzle Lee has to add in — and that’s how to afford entry fees, travel expenses and equipment while he’s competing on the Elite Series.

“That’s something I’ll have to work on,” he said. “That’s going to be my job for the next several months, getting enough people to support me. It’s going to be a pretty expensive year.”

But Lee has a head start. Winning the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Classic Bracket got him set up with Dynamic Sponsorships, which helped him work with sponsors Carhartt and Toyota.

“They have supported me all year and will support me in the future,” said Lee. “The folks at Dynamic are willing to help me out.”

Lee has also developed mentors on the trail, such as Justin Lucas, who will be invaluable as Lee embarks on this next level of his career.

“It’s great to have friends who actually have been through the process,” he said. “If I have questions, they’ll be there.”

Lee gets to compete on some of the best fisheries in the coming year, including the California Delta and Kentucky Lake. But most notable is his home water, Lake Guntersville, where he got that Top 10 Classic finish and where he watched in person as his now-colleague Mike Iaconelli won a 2006 Elite Series event — when Lee was just a teenager.

“I’m excited about fishing Guntersville,” he said. “It should be a pretty even playing field in April. Everybody will be catching them at that time of year.”

Lee’s advice to anyone who’s in high school or college and wants to go pro is, “Stay in school.”

“It’s definitely an attainable goal,” said Lee. “Don’t try to become a pro while you’re in college. Go to school and fish all the college events. That was definitely the right decision for me.”

“Jordan is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Hank Weldon, director of the College B.A.S.S. program. “We’ll see several anglers for many years to come advance to this level from the college series.”

Brandon Card and Chip Porché both made it to the Elite Series after coming through the college program, back when the college program was a lone championship. Now, it’s a fully involved series, and Lee is the first to make the Elite Series since the change.

“As a series, you have to do well across several tournaments to advance,” explained Weldon. “It’s a high level of competition, and it also teaches the anglers how to compete in multi-day tournaments.

“At the college level, we set you up for success, whether that’s to compete in the Elite Series, to work inside the fishing industry or to advance a career in a whole other realm. That’s what our hope in creating the series was, and Lee shows you can make it happen.”