Not a fish story: Winning state title an unreal feeling for West Laurens anglers still making sense of remarkable first-place finish at GHSA bass tournament

Despite some dreary, miserable conditions that only cleared up toward the very end, West Laurens High School’s J.T. Brooks and Ryan Soles wrapped up their day of fishing on a rainy Clarks Hill Lake with a great feeling.  

They’d reeled in some whoppers that were among the five they brought to shore in the GHSA state bass fishing championship tournament Saturday, and posted a top score as one of the earliest teams in the 126-boat field to weigh in. 

Both knew they’d be in the mix to finish high. The only question was, how many of their fellow anglers who’d yet to cross the stage had had similar luck? 

“There was a good bit of suspense, seeing what the other kids brought in and waiting for them to announce who the official winner was,” Soles said. “We knew what we had, and we were just hoping for the best.” 

When all the names and numbers had been called, their catch was not just high on the leaderboard. It was at the very top. 

The 20-pound, 12-ounce haul not only placed the team first in the running for the state’s top high school fishing prize, but also broke – by four ounces – a record from previous GHSA events on the body of water. 

Having their names called as 2024 state champions, and being presented the bright silver trophy at the close of the awards ceremony, was a feeling all too surreal for both. 

“It was awesome in the moment, but I really don’t think it was something (that I realized) immediately,” Soles said. “Driving home that night, it started to sink in, the magnitude of what we had done. But it was still really cool in the moment for me.” 

“I didn’t really understand it at the moment,” Brooks said. “I knew we were state champs, but same as with Ryan, it didn’t really hit till a while after that, knowing what we did.” 

Individually, finishing as the best among Georgia’s top high school fishermen was a feat outstanding in itself. 

This state title will go down as even more improbable for a first-year West Laurens program that started 2024 as a small fish in the big lake of schools who were already well-established in bass fishing, now in its fourth year as a GHSA-sanctioned sport. 

Brooks and Soles, making up one of just two teams competing for the Raiders in their inaugural season, earned a spot in the final tournament with a top finish at the third of four comparatively massive regular-season events at other lakes across the state. 

The state championship may have carried a smaller field of competition, but featured the cream of the crop, with over 200 anglers representing a total of 61 schools, and only a small portion of those in their first rodeo. 

“It’s unprecedented,” said West Laurens head coach Justin Marsh. “This is an astronomical feat that you don’t see in a first-year program. Honestly, just getting a team qualified for state was our goal for the year. For them to go and win the state championship was absolutely blowing that goal out of the water, and going leaps and bounds beyond that.” 

In competitive fishing, success is usually a product of both luck and skill, though finding the right angle of attack on a given day is often a key factor in how well you fare. 

“I think we found something different than everybody else found, and got a few bigger bites, and that’s really what set us apart,” Soles said. 

Complicating that puzzle on Saturday was the predicted, but decidedly worst-case weather conditions that had the lake under a fairly steady downpour from morning all the way through lunchtime. 

But rather than treating the situation as a headache or obstacle, Brooks and Soles chose to look at it as an opportunity. 

“It was raining from the time we woke up at 4:45, and it didn’t stop,” Soles said. “We really felt like it would affect some of the other kids, but we’ve been fishing for a while, and we tried to stay focused and try to power through it, knowing it would get others off their game. I think it helped us in the long run.” 

Taking to the water in full rain gear, the duo was forced to scrap a majority of what they’d sketched out in advance, and draw some new things up on the fly. 

“Going in, they had a strong plan, but it just wasn’t the plan for a rainout,” Marsh said. “They switched up and scratched the entire plan and went off instinct fishing a jig. Ryan and J.T. compiled a pattern in the first couple locations to secure their bag.” 

They drew a launch time a couple slots behind the first wave of boats, and had their first lines in the water at roughly 8 a.m. They’d begun to bring in some big ones about midday. 

“Around 11 o’clock, we knew we had a good bag, but we were going on, catching some good fish,” Brooks said. 

Boats were due back in to begin weighing in at around 3, when the clouds began to finally give way to some sunshine, both in the sky and on the faces of Brooks, Soles and their boat captain, Ryan’s dad Rodney. 

Marsh, who was waiting along with family and other supporters ashore, could read in the expressions of all three that they’d gotten some exciting results. 

“They were smiling, and Mr. Rodney, he was groovin’. He was in a good mood,” Marsh said. “They were really in a positive mindset.” 

Still, neither angler let on just how special a performance this had the potential to be. 

“As we moved to the weigh-in, they remained quiet, and didn’t really spill any information,” Marsh said. “They let the suspense build, because they knew what they had.” 

In the end, their margin of victory would prove to be substantial, with a full three-pound gap between Brooks and Soles and the next-best boat in the competition. 

Finishing runner-up, with a catch of 17 lbs., 12 oz., were 2023 state champions Angel Cornejo and Bryson Dover, of Lanier High. 

Rounding out the top four were Roper Putnam and Andrew Higgins of Lakeside (Evans), with a catch of 16 lbs., 3 oz., and Reese Mutter and Charles Roberts of South Forsyth, whose fish weighed in at 15 lbs., 14 oz. 

In addition to its relative inexperience, West Laurens was  an outlier among other top-placing programs in the tournament as the lone school without a large body of bass-fishing water close by. 

Besides the advantage of having more overall students with a fishing background to draw from, the state’s heavyweights – and each of the other schools with teams placing in the top four – tend to fall within a close radius of major lakes, if not one of the five that regularly host GHSA tournaments. 

For the Raiders, who are a minimum two-hour drive from the nearest competition waters of Lake Oconee, it’s a much bigger undertaking to get team members out to fish the actual tournament waters on practice runs during the season. 

Add that to the sheer number of anglers in a given tournament, putting a high premium on early launch times and desired fishing locations that go quickly, and even holding your own as a young program at this stage in the game is a tall task. 

“The odds in general are just crazy against us,” Marsh said. 

Smarts and savvy go a long way. 

Both Brooks and Soles, before this season, have fished in private tournaments similar to these on their own. And that valuable experience has reinforced just how tough it is to measure up with the best anglers out there.

“Fishing for the years I fished, doing something like that is extremely hard and difficult,” Soles said. “That’s something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” 

Marsh credits their accomplishment to dedication and buy-in over the process of improving their craft, and also not neglecting the extensive homework that goes into being prepared to respond to and make the best of different factors around a lake on a tournament day. 

“It gives you a sense of pride,” he said. “Those kids are hard-working. Their hard work culminated in that moment, and it’s really come together for them. It’s a pleasure to be able to coach kids like these guys. They make it a lot easier than what it should be.” 

Patience, for both, paid off after learning from and improving on some decent early-season results. 

Their boat finished in the top 100 at both of the first regular-season tournaments, but couldn’t quite make the qualifying cut. A closest brush out of the two was their 34th-place finish out of 243 in a season debut at Lake Seminole. 

“It has really been a perseverance mindset type of thing,” Marsh said. “These two kids really kept that mindset that we can do this, and we’re better than what we’re showing and we’re proving.” 

The breakthrough came in March at Lake West Point, where a catch of over nine pounds placed the two 25th of 269 to clinch a spot at state. 

It wasn’t just a gratifying feeling, but also a weight off the shoulders of each going forward that likely helped them perform their best in the final two tournaments. 

“Qualifying in March, it really took a lot off of them,” Marsh said. “They started fishing a lot cleaner and a lot freer. They weren’t pressured to perform in that situation anymore. It set them up to peak at the right time.” 

Despite having reached the pinnacle of GHSA competition, the bass fishing season is not over yet for Brooks and Soles, who will join others in the state tournament’s top five in competing at the Student Angler Federation’s High School Fishing World Finals and National Championship June 19-22. 

The four-day event will take both back to Lake Hartwell, where they rounded out regular-season competition in April with a catch of 8 lbs., 36 oz. to finish 36th, though this time they’ll launch from the South Carolina side at Green Pond Landing in Anderson. 

“That tournament will actually hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 450-plus folks,” Marsh said. “People from all across the country, as well as from around the world, will come in to compete together. As a total, the vendors and sponsors of that tournament will be giving out somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million in scholarships to anglers competing there. Hopefully, these kids will be able to get in there and perform where maybe they’ll be able to secure a college scholarship as they continue fishing.” 

Finishing it up with a state title will make this first bass fishing season all the more memorable, though both Brooks and Soles already counted the experience unforgettable, and rewarding, for the relationships they got to build with each other, and teammates Avery Dobbins and Kannon Dykes, who manned West Laurens’ other boat in the regular season, and made some strong showings as well. 

“I think we really grew as teammates a lot,” Soles said. “At the beginning of the season, we had some good finishes, but didn’t have the ones we wanted. We knew we were capable of more, until it started clicking. 

“We went into state with a good mindset, ready to work as a team and hope for the best.” 

Both also agree that their fearless leader, Marsh, killed it in his first year as head coach. 

“He made it awesome for all of us, and made it something we really enjoyed,” Soles said. 

It still may be a few more days, or weeks, before the dream-like feeling from the past weekend fully wears off. 

West Laurens classmates, this week, probably won’t be surprised to catch either of the two pinching themselves once or twice during the school day, just to make sure the unforgettable past week was indeed real life. 

As each have replayed Saturday’s events in their mind, the ending to it all, with both as state champions, still feels a little too good to be true. 

“The whole thing is just crazy,” Brooks said. “Winning state is a really big thing in general. Catching that much and winning state, that’ll stand out for a while.”