Walker LaRue (left)and Joe Vaulton of the Alcoa Fishing Team.
BY DAVE LINK
Alcoa Fishing Team’s Joe Vaulton and Walker LaRue are fishing like seasoned veterans on the Major League Fishing and Bassmaster High School circuits.
And they’re just getting started.
Vaulton is a sophomore and LaRue is a freshman at Alcoa, and in two recent weekends, the team qualified for the MLF High School National Championships and the Bassmaster National High School Championships.
They’ve known each other for about four years, and this is their first year of fishing together for the Alcoa Fishing Team.
What makes them click?
“He’s right-handed and I’m left-handed,” Vaulton said, “so if we go down a bank, he sets the hook to the right, I set the hook to the left. Everything just works out perfectly. We hold each other accountable, and everything is perfect between me and him.”
It takes that kind of teamwork to qualify for nationals.
“It’s going to be fun (at nationals),” LaRue said. “I think that just showed how good me and Joe can fish together because we bond really good on the water.”
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The MLF nationals are on Pickwick Lake in Alabama and the Bassmaster nationals are on Hartwell Lake in South Carolina. Both are this summer.
“That’s what every high school angler is trying to accomplish,” said Alcoa Fishing Team coach J.J. LaRue, Walker’s father. “Some kids go through their entire high school careers and never qualify for nationals.”
Here’s how Vaulton and LaRue qualified:
THIRD IN CULLMAN, ALA.
LaRue and Vaulton finished third out of 196 teams last Sunday (March 13) in the Bassmaster High School Open on Smith Lake in Cullman, Ala., earning a spot in the nationals.
They were the only top-five team from not from Alabama.
LaRue and Vaulton had the five-fish limit weighing 11 pounds, 15 ounces.
First-place Will Haynes and Austin Thomas of Curry High in Jasper, Ala., had a five-fish limit weighing 13-8, ahead of second-place Benjamin Travis and Andrew Kunz of Spain Park High in Hoover, Ala., with five fish weighing 13-0.
Vaulton and LaRue earned $525 each for third place, which will go toward future tournament fees and travel costs.
Some crazy weather threw them a curve before the Sunday morning start.
With Vaulton’s father Barry as boat captain, Joe Vaulton and Walker LaRue practiced Thursday and Friday (March 10-11) in warm, sunny weather on Smith Lake.
They took a 45-minute run up the lake and found what they wanted.
“We practiced up there and were catching a bunch of fish shallow, but we had some points too,” Vaulton said. “We caught a bunch of fish. We’d catch a fish and just leave.”
Then came a cold front Friday night into Saturday morning. Temperatures plummeted and it snowed 3 to 4 inches in the Cullman area.
“It was 70 degrees and we were getting sunburned,” Vaulton said of the first two practice days, “and then it started snowing.”
They didn’t fish Saturday because it was so cold and windy. They took off Sunday morning under far different conditions from what they had practiced.
“We started fishing some places we hadn’t fished before to start the day,” Vaulton said, “and we were like, ‘We spent all this time practicing, we might as well run on up there.’ So we made that big long run, it was probably 45 to 50 minutes (up the lake).
“As soon as we got up there, I got on the first point and I caught our biggest fish of the day, a 3.5-pounder. We put the trolling motor on spot lock, and Walker caught three, back-to-back-to-back, on a shaky head. And then after that we kept going and I caught another 3-pounder, and after that we didn’t really cull that much. It all happened really quick.”
Vaulton caught the two biggest keepers on a crank bait, and LaRue landed the other three keepers on a shaky head jig.
And they didn’t care who caught what fish.
“As long as we get it in the net, we don’t care at all,” Vaulton said.
SECOND IN GUNTERSVILLE, ALA.
Two weeks ago, on Saturday, March 5, LaRue and Vaulton posted a second-place finish at the MLF High School Open on Lake Guntersville in Guntersville, Ala.
They were among eight teams punching their tickets to the MLF nationals at Pickwick Lake this summer.
The Wayne County (Ky.) team of Elijah Adkins and Austin Criswell won with a five-fish limit weighing 20 pounds, 12 ounces.
LaRue and Vaulton’s five-fish limit weighed 19-8.
Riley Faulkner and Blake Wheat, fishing for Rhea County Fishing, finished fifth (five bass, 18-2) and qualified for the MLF nationals.
Twin brothers Dylan and Carter Nutt of Sale Creek Fishing were 11th (15-7). They recently signed to fish for the University of North Alabama in Florence.
“Second-place in an Open event is huge,” said J.J. LaRue, who was boat captain in Guntersville. “There are teams from everywhere. Anytime you can finish in the top five against teams from all over the country it’s huge. You’re fishing against teams with juniors and seniors, and some have signed to fish in college.”
Walker LaRue and Joe Vaulton couldn’t go for a practice run on Guntersville because they were in school, but J.J. LaRue went on Friday, March 4, and scouted out the lake.
They took off Saturday morning and found a cove near the takeoff ramp. Vaulton caught two keepers on a chatter bait, and they moved to another point, where LaRue landed a bass that was barely a keeper.
“We knew we had to cull that one if we wanted to have a good bag,” Walker LaRue said. “We ended up going to that cove my dad said looked good on Google Earth. We went in there, and first cast, Joe caught a 5-pounder. And then Joe caught another one. Joe was catching them on that red chatter bait, and then he caught two more keepers. We needed a limit, and I caught a 4-pounder.”
By then, the mid-afternoon weigh-in was looming, and Vaulton and LaRue had a long ride back to the dock in choppy waters.
They decided to fish a little longer, and it paid off when Vaulton caught another big bass.
“It was probably only about a 20-minute run (back),” LaRue said, “but the waves were really bad, the wind on Guntersville gets really bad, so we knew we had to leave ourselves 40 minutes (to get back).
“We said we were going to fish till we had 40 minutes left, and Joe caught another 3.5-pounder and it culled out our small fish, and that’s what got us to the big bag. All of our fish were in the 3- to 5-pound range.”
After the two Alabama events, Vaulton and LaRue had two second-place finishes, a third place, a fifth, and a 10th during the season, which started in the fall. They also landed a lunker in major events and had three victories in team or other events.
They will fish Saturday at Fort Loudon Lake in a Bass Pro Shops high school event. And they’d like to keep their hot streak going.
“Everything’s just clicked really good,” Vaulton said. “We’ve lost some fish that would have put us at the top a couple of times, but other than that, everything’s gone really good.”