25-year-old Jordan Lee is your 2017 Bassmaster Classic champion!
It’s the stuff movies are made of — a slow start out of the gate had put Jordan well behind most the competitors and seemingly out of contention half way through the Classic. Jordan had caught just three fish on Friday weighing a pedestrian 8 pounds 6 ounces (8-6), and followed that up with zero fish in the boat half way through Saturday.
That’s when things started to turn.
Congratulations on winning the 2017 @GEICO #bassmasterclassic presented by @DICKS, @JLeefishing! pic.twitter.com/y1PpkLwY1d
— Bassmaster (@BASS_nation) March 27, 2017
After a frustrating start, Lee headed back to a hard-bottom point he found during practice he believed would hold some nice fish and might be overlooked by other anglers. His prediction was affirmed on the very first cast, where he landed a lunker, 7 ½ pounder that was followed in by a school of other big bass.
When talking about the point, Jordan said, “I never caught any shells or anything, so I think it was a gravel or a rock bottom. It was really subtle. There was no brush. It was just kind of a flat point, and I was fishing probably 100 yards offshore.”
He caught the majority of the bass on a football jig with a Rage Craw and a Space Monkey by casting and working it perpendicular to the point.
Jordan finished the day one fish short of the 5-bass limit, but that didn’t matter because the one’s he did catch were big. In the Bassmaster Classic, weight is all that matters and Jordan Lee was now sitting in 15th place with a two-day total of 29-6 heading into the final day. The current leader was Brent Ehrler who had led the tournament from the start and was nearly 14 pounds ahead (43-4) of the eventual Bassmaster Champion at the start of Sunday.
It came as no surprise that Lee would head back to his hotspot to get things started on the final day. He made it to the point, but engine troubles on his boat meant he was stuck there for the day – unable to bounce around if the fishing was slow.
As you could probably guess, it wasn’t. Lee had a career day and landed 27 pounds worth of bass before getting towed back to the dock by a spectator for the final weigh-in. The monstrous day was enough to bump Lee into first place as he waited out the final weigh-ins. His total catch of 56 pounds 10 ounces (56-10) was just 1 pound 9 ounces ahead of second place finisher Steve Kennedy.
Just a couple years ago Jordan Lee was in college and part of the Auburn University Fishing Team, now he’s taking home a $300,000 check and is on top of the fishing world and forever cemented as a Legendary Angler.
To see the final standings check out the 2017 Bassmaster Classic Results.
