This year, six De Soto High School freshmen have started a bass fishing club. The members include Connor Nimrod, Brayden Brummer, Kyle Bell, Cole Zade, Garret Stonestreet and Trevor Watts.

President Connor Nimrod got the idea for the team while he was fishing for a different club.

“I was fishing on a team that I wasn’t very happy with, so I decided to start my own club and run it with the principles that I thought were important,” Nimrod said.

The club is coached by Nimrod’s father, with additional coaches helping on the individual boats.After Nimrod decided to start the club, he took the idea to some of his friends.

“Connor organized it with his dad, and we liked the idea since we were already a close group that knew we liked to fish together,” Bell said.

The club also hung up flyers around DHS to recruit new members.

The team had originally hoped to be a school club, but it was unable to.

“We presented it to the school, but they denied it and wrote us a letter saying that they wouldn’t accept the club because of the expenses and liability,” Nimrod said.

Then team sent the refusal letter into the Bass Angler Sportsman Society, and the organization entered them into the tournaments that it hosts.

“We are fishing five high school tournaments, and after those are finished we actually get to fish nine youth tournaments,” Nimrod said.

Although the club is not a school-sponsored team, it still fishes against some teams from schools in the district, like Louisburg, at the tournaments it attends.

The team members often do not have as much time to practice for tournaments as they would like according to Bell.

“Since most of us are involved in different spring sports at DHS, we usually only have time to practice about a week before a tournament,” Bell said.

To prepare for a tournament, the team visits the lake where the tournament will be held to practice.

“We usually pre-fish the lake about a week or two before the tournament to pick the spots we’ll fish and get used to the surroundings,” Brummer said.

At tournaments, the teams keep the five largest fish they catch. At the end of the competition, the fish are weighed and the team with the heaviest weighted fish wins.

The team has already competed in two tournaments this year and is looking to continue the club next year.

“So far we have six people but hopefully over time we will continue to grow in numbers,” Brummer said.