It’s a dewy Saturday morning, still pitch black outside. Juniors Will Weller and Ty Perthuis get their boat ready and running by 5 a.m. This fishing tournament is at Toledo Bend, a lake with so many stumps that can easily get in the way of the boats.
The two juniors only have their running lights in the back of their boat to guide them.
“There’s stumps everywhere, and we drove in the pitch black running 55 miles an hour,” Weller said.
That is just one of the highlights of an average fishing tournament experience for Weller and Perthuis.
The two have been each other’s fishing partners for two years now, and have loved every minute of it. Weller and Perthuis grew up surrounded by fishing, so it was a no-brainer to join the district’s fishing team as soon as they heard about it.
“My dad took me fishing when I was like 5 years old, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Perthuis said.
Weller and Perthuis met freshman year because both of them were on the baseball team. After freshman year, they didn’t continue on with baseball, so Perthuis invited Weller to become his new fishing partner. Perthuis had fished alone in tournaments his freshman year.
“Ty got me into bass fishing and more like serious fishing,” Weller said.
Weller and Perthuis aren’t the only students who find fishing to be a perfect escape. There are a total of seven students from Kingwood Park who are part of the fishing team.
On April 5, all of the members of the team competed on Lake Limestone to try to qualify for regionals. After the tournament they posted the results, and four Kingwood Park students qualified: sophomore Austin Carter, Perthuis, Weller and senior Richard Beal.
On April 26, the four members competed at regionals on Lake LBJ. While none advanced to State, Beal and his partner Perry Campbell from Summer Creek High School placed the highest for Kingwood teams by finishing 71st out of 166 competitors.
The only requirements to be part of the team is that you need to own a boat and attend the school meetings that usually happen right before an upcoming tournament. Members have the option to fish alone or with a partner, and the tournaments tend to go from early in the morning to later in the afternoon.
“Whenever I’m fishing, like my phone and everything just kinda goes away, and everything just doesn’t really matter. It’s a really good feeling,” Beal said.