“Isn’t he too young to be here?” I heard over and over again at day one check-in of the sixth annual semi-pro B.A.S.S tournament on Devils Lake in North Dakota, and instead of it getting on my nerves I let it fuel me. So me, being only eleven years old went into this tournament as proud and as prepared as could be, but yet I got lots of looks and secret talks of underestimations that I'm probably lucky I didn’t hear.

Day one really put a burden on my confidence. We had eight hours to catch a seven-fish limit and I was into my seventh hour without one fish, but I stuck with it and stayed confident and ended up catching two bass with a weight of six pounds-four ounces, which isn’t great by any means, but it kept me in the running and kept me out of last place. Day two was nothing different resulting in two bass and an eleven pound-fourteen ounce bag, which kept me sitting still on the leaderboard. I saw Davey Astar, the fisherman in first place look at me and started walking away with a chuckle-filled grin on his face.

Then came day three, still confident, but not as booming as day one. I was into hour five with once again, no fish. I started to lose my confidence and realized that maybe I am too young to be here. Maybe I should have heard the underestimations and just turned around and left. Then I felt it. A tug on my pole so hard it felt like I had accidentally hooked a freight train with no budge in its movements. The bass weighed five pounds on the dot, but still not enough to get me into the top ten, but this was just the beginning. From this fish to about middle of hour six I caught my seven fish limit with the smallest one weighing three and a half pounds. I then heard the bellowing horn from the timekeeper that symboled day three as a rap. My total day three weight was twenty-five pounds-one ounce, which is double my day one and day two combined. It changed my mood as if it was a whole new day. I was twice as proud of myself more now than I was day one, and Davey had lost his smirk on his face. Yet there was still one thing that kept me from getting too excited; I was weighed in first with a total of thirty-six pounds- thirteen ounces and there was still twenty-four men to be weighed in.

Once twenty-three of the men were weighed in I was in second place, which is a feeling that I can't really explain. We can just say I was happy. Yet there was still one more fisherman to be weighed in, and that person was Davey. Davey has had almost a fifteen pound lead on me up to this point, but who knows what he's at now. All he needs to do is have less weight than mine which is easy, right? He walked up on stage like he had the tournament win in his hands already, but his face said differently. When the weight showed up on the board I froze, thirty-six pounds- fifteen ounces it showed, which is only two ounces more than mine. Yet I wasn’t mad or sad in any way, I was just disappointed that I couldn't finish where I wanted to finish. After Davey and his team’s celebrations and everything was settled, he started walking my way. I was thinking he was coming over to laugh in my face and tell me how I'm too young to be here, but he actually told me the opposite. I can remember what he said as if it were yesterday, “ Bud, I'm not gonna lie, I labeled you as a one and done kid as soon as I saw you walk in with that yellow jersey of yours, but I was blatantly wrong with the label I stuck on you. You had me nervous coming into this weigh in with rumors about you catching a thirty pound plus bag. You showed us all this tournament and I’ll be waiting for you in the big leagues. Don’t let me down.”

With him saying that I realized something that has made me a better person. I learned to never underestimate people until you see what they can do no matter the age or build. With this, I also learned to never come into something to confident because it could rapidly affect your outcome in a negative way. Davey and I are now friends on social media and he also comes up to Minnesota twice a year to fish around southeastern Minnesota and talk with my family and I. The man who was once snickering at my failures is now mentoring and training me for the big leagues.