My earliest memories of time spent with my father revolve around time on the water. Live bait fishing on Irondequoit Bay, off of Lake Ontario, with my father and uncles in my dad’s 22’ inboard/outboard duo. Then venturing out into the Big Lake for brown trout and coho salmon, and fishing in the Big ESLO Derby on the lake. I am not even sure what “ESLO” stood for back then, maybe Empire State/Lake Ontario? In any event, it was a thing and I loved the competition.
Then one day, we ran the boat out in front of Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, where dad had built the sea wall, and started fishing the warm water discharge for these hard charging brown bass that would pull the scales off a Lake Trout – I was hooked, figurately and literally!
I took it from there, buying my first used bass boat at age 20, and then moved into my first new one three years later in Clayton, NY. I tell you that story to set up the story of the Nutt Brothers, Carter and Dylan. Twins born in this century, Carter won the College Classic in March, while Dylan, of course, won the biggie, the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armor. I recently had both young men on Bassmaster Radio and what I learned was both startling, and sometimes hilarious.
You see, these aren’t a couple of silver spoon guys that grew up running dad’s $100k bass boat. In fact, their father really didn’t fish at all. Grandpa did, and had a place in the country, near Lake Guntersville with a pond on it. He taught the boys to fish, and as Carter tells it, “Dylan would catch them, and I would play with them!” From there, they would return home to the Nashville area, and sneak onto golf courses and fish the ponds until they got run off.
By the time they were 12 or 13, they decided they wanted to compete in junior and high school events with Backwoods Bassin’, a community team in Nashville that no longer exists. There was one problem, they didn’t have a boat! Their father was commuting back and forth to Louisville for work in those days and one day, he showed up with a 12 year old Pro Craft bass boat with a 225 Optimax on the back, with no windshield and no electronics.
Pop and the prospective fisherman also lacked the knowledge of how one of these contraptions worked. The boat had died on them a few times before they realized that you have to actually CHARGE the batteries. And why does the engine keep bouncing off the ground? Oh, this switch here on the throttle will actually lift the motor up, they call that ‘Trim”! And for their fancy tow vehicle, they used the family minivan, but at least it was a Toyota! And Dylan’s first big catch? A hawk in the backyard, while learning how to throw a spook on a baitcaster!
The boys went on to win for the Sale Creek High School team and then dominate for the University of North Alabama college team, where they are currently seniors. Surely, they must’ve mastered all the modern electronics while coming up through the ranks? Well, no, they were sophomores in college before they got their first 12” screen on the bow of their boat.
The moral of this story is that coming up old school still works, and maybe, just maybe, us “seasoned” anglers can put a little more respect on these young guys names. And these are names that are going to be around for a long time!
