Young Pro Wants To Use Everstart Texas Division Final At Sam Rayburn As A Learning Experience
In June 2000, 9-year-old Austin Terry of San Angelo, Texas, was fishing in Lake O.H. Ivie when something ate his Carolina-rigged worm. When he finally wrestled it in, he took it to the scales where a local tournament was being weighed in and found himself the hero of the day with an 11-pound largemouth.
Seven years later, Austin won the Texas State Junior Bassmasters Championship at Amistad Reservoir, arriving there after driving with his dad all night from Amarillo, where he played in a football game for San Angelo’s Central High School. In 2008 he finished 10th at the World Junior Bass Masters at Syracuse, N.Y.
An avid fisherman since he was 4 or 5 years old, Terry, now 22, notched an incredible series of finishes in 2012, including a 6th-, 8th-, and 9th-place in the Texas EverStart Division. This was his best season to date and it gave him the confidence to move up to the next level of FLW fishing. Last October he qualified for the FLW Tour and he raised a great deal of the money he needed to fish the trail this year by winning the first tournament of the Texas EverStart Division’s year in January on Lake Amistad, earning a $35,000 paycheck. His best finishes on the Tour this year was 11th place on Beaver Lake in April and 14th place a month earlier on Lewis Smith Lake.
Terry slipped to 83rd in EverStart competition at Toledo Bend in February, but bounced back to a 22nd place finish at Texoma in April and he is ranked 16th in the standings heading into the Texas Division Final next week on Sam Rayburn Reservoir.
“I’ve only fished one other tournament at San Rayburn, but I got an 8th place there last year,” said Terry who also sandwiches in some time as a student at Angelo State University where he is majoring in marketing. “Last year I was mostly fishing structure and I had a couple of key spots where I caught some good fish.”
Terry said he will check out the deep structure again when he starts practice at Sam Rayburn this weekend because he believes the tournament will be won deep.
“I want to find out where several schools with some good fish are and focus on fishing for big fish,” he said. “I really want to have a deep structure tournament to gain some experience for what is coming up next year. I like fishing that way, but I’ve never really had a tournament where I found them good enough and had the confidence to stay on the deep schools all day.”
He will also check out some key shallow water areas because the deep fish may be too elusive, he said.
“From what I’ve heard it sounds like the schools that people are winning off of are on needle-in-the-haystack spots. They are hard to find right now.”
As soon as tournament fishing slacks off Terry will jump right into his other love, guiding deer hunts until the FLW season cranks up again.
“This will be my third full year of guiding,” he said. “The last two years I was in school full time so I did not get to guide as much as I wanted to.”
This year he is taking fewer courses, mostly on-line, so he can spend as much time as possible fishing and hunting.
At Sam Rayburn next week pros will fish for a top award of $40,000 plus a Ranger Z518 with a 200-horsepower Evinrude or Mercury outboard if Ranger Cup guidelines are met. Co-anglers will cast for a top award consisting of a Ranger Z117 with 90-horsepower Evinrude or Mercury outboard and $5,000 if Ranger Cup guidelines are met.
The EverStart Series consists of five divisions – Central, Northern, Southeast, Texas and Western. Each division consists of four tournaments and competitors are fishing for valuable points in each division that could earn them the Strike King Angler of the Year title, which allows them to fish the 2014 Forrest Wood Cup.
FLW EverStart Series Texas Division
Oct 3-5, 2013
Sam Rayburn Reservoir
The Umphrey Family Pavilion
