September 27, 2024  |  By Charlotte Oliver  |  Community News Service

Paige Blaker of the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife pours a net of fish caught by school teams into a specialized truck to be released back into Lake Champlain Sept. 21. Photo by Catherine Morrissey

SOUTH HERO — Ethan Wagner has been fishing as long as he can remember, mostly as a hobby. So when the Essex High School senior injured his knee playing football, he joined the school’s varsity bass fishing team. And among his teammates, who all call him Wags, he’s found a new bond.

“When you’re on the boat together all day, you find something in common,” he said.

Wagner competed on one of 19 varsity high school teams at the Vermont Principals’ Association’s seventh annual Open Classic tournament last Saturday, hosted at the John Guilmette Access Area in South Hero. The tournament was the most competitive yet, said Jeff Goodrich, chair of the association’s fishing committee — with more “‘full bags’ and competitive weights” than ever before.

It’s part of a trend in a new co-ed sport that’s only seen growth since it was trialed in Vermont in 2018, inspired by New Hampshire high schools, and made official in 2019.

Kids go out on the water in the early morning, then parade back mid-afternoon. Boats are pulled out of the water and teams go up to weigh in the six best bass, smallmouth or large, they caught that day.

*Parents, coaches and Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife staff take photos of students’ successful catches. Photo by Catherine Morrissey*

On Saturday, 34 boats went out on Lake Champlain, with 19 varsity and 15 junior varsity teams making up two divisions. Each school can have one team in each division, four kids to a team. The teens took shifts, allowing two in the boat at a time while a coach or volunteer captain maneuvered it.

Milton High School came out on top that day, weighing six bass at 24.33 total pounds. Burlington High came in second with a weight of 20.97 pounds, and Champlain Valley Union High came in third with 18.28 pounds.

The teams spent the day fishing on the Inland Sea of Lake Champlain, a stretch protected from wind and weather by the Champlain Islands and the causeway between Milton and South Hero.

In Vermont varsity fishing, anglers must weigh in live fish — so all boats are required to have live wells that maintain temperature and oxygen levels to sustain the bass while on board. Teams get point deductions for any dead fish.

At every tourney, employees from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife collect the fish in larger live tanks to release them after they’re weighed. The state workers make sure the fish are healthy and redistribute them, said Paige Blaker, one of three state employees working last weekend’s event. That afternoon, the crew released fish across three to four locations along the Inland Sea, Blaker said.

*Proud high schoolers pose with their catches for photos before handing them over to Vermont Fish and Wildlife to release. Photo by Catherine Morrissey*

Part of the sport is “being a steward of the environment and taking care of the water,” Goodrich said, hence the partnership with the fish and wildlife department, which doesn’t exist in adult tournament leagues.

Anglers master a tactic called culling: They weigh their fish as they go, dumping the lightest overboard and constantly replacing the ones in their on-board well until they’re left with the biggest six they can find.

“You can control a lot of things — but the one thing you can’t control is if the fish is gonna bite,” said Scott Green, the coach at Harwood Union High School. The team at Harwood, last year’s state champs, has 18 anglers, the most ever.

How do they prepare for tournaments?

“We make sure there’s no frays in our line,” said team captain Nathanael Conyers.

At the Duxbury school’s last practice ahead of the Open Classic, Green set up cornhole boards and cut-up recycling bins on the lawn in front of the school — targets for the athletes to try to land their hooks on. The team was working on their line-casting skills in preparation for the tournament in a few days.

The rod is an “extension of your hand,” and “your wrist dictates where it goes,” Green said.

The team gets in two practices on the lawn during the week — due to the long drive to the lake — and one on the water every weekend. Like all school teams in the state, Harwood Union relies on local anglers and coaches to volunteer personal boats, paying for insurance and fuel.

*Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife employees hand off the fish net to retrieve more fish to release back into Lake Champlain. Photo by Catherine Morrissey*

Other schools far from the lake, like Middlebury Union High School, practice on the water only a couple times a year, said John Fitzgerald, that team’s coach. Other than with those sporadic sessions, he helps his anglers by directing them to YouTube and online resources to learn about “different setups,” he said.

Although the sport is co-ed in Vermont schools, girls are far outnumbered. Hailey Isham, a sophomore at Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol, said she’s the only girl on her school’s team. She’s been doing the sport since she was a freshman and plans to participate all four years.

The Harwood team has only had a few girls over the years, Green said. The Middlebury team had a girl on the team last year, though none this year, Fitzgerald said.

But Green said he’s happy to have girls on the team, and leaders in the sport emphasize it’s for everyone.

“It gets students an opportunity to be a part of their school community, wear the uniform and represent their school in a nontraditional fashion,” Goodrich said.

Wagner from Essex High said he’s excited for the VPA State Championship on Oct. 5 and hopes his team will do better there than at the South Hero tournament.

“I don’t do anything in my life to lose,” he said.