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Bainbridge BassCat Anglers Hayden Reynolds and Caleb Logue are going to the State fishing tournament. 

The two punched their ticket with a first-place 19 lbs-10 oz finish in a qualifier tournament on Lake Seminole over the weekend. 

“They’re really good fishermen,” said BassCats head coach Flint King. “If they keep it up, they’ll keep getting better and better.”

The top finish didn’t come easy. Temperatures were below freezing when Reynolds and Logue launched Saturday morning, and they were competing against 242 other teams.

“We just bundled up,” Reynolds said. “Wool gloves, buddy heater, and grinded it out.”

They put their boat in the water at 9:30 and spent more than an hour on the lake before catching their first fish. The first catch led to a “flurry” of more bites, leading to the two catching all their fish for the day in an hour and a half. 

Reynolds said the slow start made him slightly nervous, but he knew things would get better once they got their first catch.

“When you’ve been fishing for an hour or two,” Reynolds said. “And you ain’t got a fish in the box… you start to wonder, your mind gets to going, ‘Do I need to go here? Do I need to run here? Do I need to stay where I’m at? What do I need to change?’ You’ve just got to hunker down, and you’ve got to fish for them, and they’ll come out.”

It takes confidence to stay in a spot that isn’t producing a lot of bites, according to Reynolds. He said he developed the confidence to do so from his father, Lance Reynolds, and his uncle, Brad Reynolds. He has been fishing with his dad for as long as he can remember and started fishing with his uncle more frequently in the late 2010s. 

“Those two really have made the biggest impact on my fishing,” Reynolds said. “A lot of people only see the pictures of the fish that me and Caleb hold up, and they only see me and Caleb, I don’t think those two guys get enough recognition.”

Reynolds said he learns more than just fishing when he’s on the boat with his father and uncle.

“I hate to brag on them like this,” Reynolds said. “Those two people are the hardest working people I know on the face of this earth. They preach work ethic, and that’s something that I feel like makes somebody good at what they do.”

Reynolds gave a shout-out to Westside Bait and Tackle. He said his Uncle had just taken over at the shop and that Westside has been a part of his fishing journey his entire life. 

The weekend tournament wasn’t Reynolds and Logue’s only first-place finish this month. The pair came first in the senior division of the Florida Bass Nation Spring Trail tournament on Jan. 7, weighing in at 19.37lbs. Fisher Baty and Cole Henderson came first in the Junior Division with a weight of 14.10 lbs.