Bass Anglers at Southeast hope to increase numbers out on the water

The Southeast Missouri State Bass Anglers Club is looking for fellow students to hit the water with them this year for there tournaments.

"A lot of people come to school and want to join a club and meet friends and do what they like to do and bass fishing is the way I do it," Southeast junior and Bass Anglers President Grant Hinton said.

He said the team focuses on bass fishing style tournaments, but the members on the team love to fish for all types of fish in different styles as well.

As the club's president, Hinton sets up where the team travels to for which tournaments and gets the overall consensus of what the team wants to do for the year.

"As the president I run all operations, organize meetings, tournaments that people fish and get a general sense of what the members on the team want to do during the year," Hinton said.

The team enters tournaments during the spring semester while the fall semester is used for practice.

"We go out to the lakes to figure out what our year is going to look like with the members that we have," Hinton said. "The spring is when it really picks up with the national tournaments that are on television."

In these televised tournaments, the team sees some of the biggest SEC schools in the country.

"We fish all over the United States against big schools -- Alabama and Auburn, we see them all the time," Hinton said.

Speaking of televised tournaments, that's where freshman and treasurer Andres Jackson found out about the Southeast Bass Anglers club.

"The way I figured it out was I saw it on the SOW Tour," Jackson said.

The team also fishes in states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois.

Prospective members don't have to be the biggest fan of fishing.

"You don't have to like fishing just to come to join," Hinton said. "We don't care if you have tournament experience or not were just hoping just to have as many guys and girls as we can in our group and go outdoors and have fun."

If fishing is something that has always been of interest to someone but never had the equipment or time to try it, Grant and the members of the club can help get set up with equipment and even help someone catch their first fish.

"We have had people come in that don't own a single rod and reel that have never caught their first fish," Hinton said.

If someone have been fishing since you could hold a rod and reel and looking for some tournament experience this would be a great club as well. "If you want to go anywhere with fishing you have to have tournament experience," Jackson said.

The club is free to join and has been around since 2006.

It meets about twice a month for meetings. The times and locations change.

For more information on the Bass Anglers club at Southeast you can contact Grant Hinton via email at gmhinton1s@semo.edu.

"We do not charge dues for the club all the money that we get to fund the club comes with fundraising," Hinton said.

Hinton has been fishing recreationally since he was in middle school and began fishing competitively since his junior year of high school. Fishing has always been an enjoyable hobby and sport for him.

"To me it's being out out on the water, the competitiveness me versus another of God's creatures out there one on one," Hinton said. "I have to try and figure it out. There is no cheat codes, nothing like that it's just me versus another animal."