That’s what happened to Kent Ware and his wife Shannon, fishing in the Toyota Bonus Bucks Bassmaster Team Championship on Lake Guntersville in early December. Momentum, or “Mo,” determines the outcome of ballgames and many other events in life. The Wares needed just one more ounce of “Mo” in the Toyota Team Championship earlier this month.

Kent and Shannon, who moved to Lake Guntersville from South Carolina a year ago, brought 26 pounds, 9 ounces, of bass to the scales to grab second place and position themselves just 13 ounces out of the lead in the first day of the championship.

All they had to do was stay in the top three for the first round in order to make the fish-off that would determine the individual champion who would earn a berth in the 2016 Bassmaster Classic. But then Mother Nature intervened. The second day of the team competition was wiped out by heavy fog in the Guntersville area.

“So, we fished on Friday rather than Thursday,” said Ware, who qualified with his wife through the Fishers of Men Tournament Trail. “We had momentum and then the delay kind of shot our momentum. We caught plenty of fish on Friday, but we just could not get the big ones.”

On Friday the Wares weighed in more than 18 pounds of Guntersville bass for a two-day total of 45 pounds, 3 ounces. They were one ounce behind the third place team of Nickolas LeBrun and Randy Deaver – one ounce away from the championship round.

“That’s all a part of it,” Ware said philosophically.

The march to the Toyota Team Championship started in earnest in October when Ware and his fishing partner from Sumter, S.C., Sean Skey won the SPRO Frog Tournament on Guntersville, but it actually began more than a year ago when Ware retired as manager of the Bears Bluff National Fish Hatchery on Wadmalaw Island just south of Charleston, S.C.

At the hatchery Ware worked with redfish, sturgeon, cobia, American shad and even oysters. But his passion is bass fishing, especially bass tournament fishing, so he and his wife made the decision to move to Lake Guntersville so he could follow his dream.

“Winning the SPRO tournament kind of got things going,” Ware said. “Then my wife and I started practicing for the Bassmaster tournament. Amazingly, the fish stayed super shallow for the most part so we were able to keep up with them. We had a big time and we both caught a lot of fish.”

Ware and Skey caught their fish on a frog, of course, in the SPRO tournament in October, but he and his wife were working homemade jigs on the same fish in the Toyota Team Tournament because the water had got colder, he said.

While Ware was considered an angler to beat in order to win a tournament on the Santee Cooper Lakes when he lived in South Carolina, he is definitely happy with his move to Guntersville.

“”I am learning the lake. It takes a long time. It took a long time for me to figure out Santee,” Ware said. “The fishing here has been incredible this winter. It’s hard not to like it here.”