Editor’s note: Author Eric Kaffka has worked as a cameraman for Bassmaster TV productions since 2015.
The 10 anglers featured on Bassmaster LIVE for Day 1 of the 2020 Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk were selected by committee, one that operates in a different tax bracket than yours truly. But JM Associates and B.A.S.S. coordinating producer Tim Schick sent me the list and asked, “Who do you want to cover on Day 1?” With a brief glance at the list, I immediately zeroed in on one name.
Brandon Lester is currently one of the most dangerous anglers on planet Earth, but you wouldn’t know it if you met him at the grocery store or his church. The Fayetteville, Tenn., Elite Series pro is one of the most laid-back people I’ve ever met. I’ve covered Lester dozens of times over the last six seasons, and I’ve never witnessed him — to use an over-used term in our sport — “spin out.” He stayed calm even when “spinning out” would have been the absolute proper reaction to the situation.
Take the Elite Series tournament at the St. Lawrence River in 2016. Lester had moved to the top of the leaderboard early on Championship Sunday. He didn’t know it for sure, but I did. He was working on a mega-bag, so he had a good idea he was going to be near the lead. And with a sharp crack of a hook set, Lester leaned into one the biggest smallmouth bass of his life. A game-changer, the winning fish, and he knew it.
“It’s a big one. And I mean a great big one,” he said. After a long battle on light line, this 6-pound-plus smallmouth was probably going to make Lester an Elite Series Champion. Then it happened.
Just as the bass touched Brandon’s hand, the little drop-shot hook came loose. A desperate swipe at the water … and nothing. We would learn later that was probably an $80,000 fish that slipped through Lester’s hands.
It is at that particular moment that most Elite pros would utter a few choice words not entirely suitable for broadcast. Perhaps he may attempt some sort of “percussive recalibration” on the particular rod and reel that had just betrayed him. Or perhaps he would do both. But not Lester. In the immediate aftermath, the man said only these seven words quietly, “I feel like I may throw up.”
Nothing, and I mean nothing, rattles this dude.
And at the 50th Bassmaster Classic, his cool-under-pressure demeanor was on display yet again. With 20-pound sacks on Day 1 and Day 2, Lester was near the top of the leaderboard heading into the third and final day. Hank Cherry still had the lead, primarily on the back of his massive 29-pound Day 1 sack.
It was just midmorning when Brandon pulled up on a bridge to try his luck. Already there at this small, two-lane bridge were competitors Chris Zaldain and Jake Whittaker. Also fishing the same bridge was every single crappie fisherman in the state of Alabama. Toss in a few determined folks fishing from the bank, and what you have here is a bona-fide circus.
Think about it … you are competing at the highest level of your sport, on your sport’s biggest day. A win today will literally change your life — $300,000 goes to the winner. You are in contention. The stakes simply do not get higher in all of professional bass fishing. One would think Lester would be laser-focused on the task at hand, wound up tight with pressure, silent.
That’s not how he rolls. With so much at stake, a career-making moment on the line, and so much commotion going on around this bridge, these are the profound thoughts and words of Lester at that exact moment in time: “Hey … the cork went down. Hey! The cork went down lady — jerk! Look, EK … ole girl got her one over there under the bridge.”
That’s right. The biggest day of his fishing career thus far, and he’s focused on some lady crappie fishing. And he was genuinely happy for her when she reeled it in. He marches to the beat of his own drum and does it very well.
In the end, Hank Cherry was able to close the deal and win, and indeed, his life has changed. Lester finished a respectable seventh. It’s not what he wanted, but you will never hear him complain about it. Not his style.
He congratulated Cherry and delivered the requisite lines to the media in his understated way. But go ahead and mistake Lester’s quiet demeanor as a weakness. He wants you to. He’s made a lucrative career out of it. Because underneath the “aw-shucks, golly bum” exterior is a man who is now single-mindedly obsessed with one thing and one thing only — winning the 51st Bassmaster Classic.