KISSIMMEE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2024--
The first time Abu Garcia pro Jordan Lee of Cullman, Alabama, ever tasted tournament victory, competing on Lake Guntersville at age 17, he earned the win throwing a topwater frog. Ever since, he’s continued to hone his skills with his favorite technique, waiting for a chance to show them off on the national stage.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240523156735/en/
When he finally got the chance at General Tire Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops on the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Lee made sure to take advantage.
Lee caught each of his seven scorable bass during Thursday’s Championship Round and nearly all his weight throughout the event walking a Berkley Swamp Lord over matted hydrilla on Lake Toho. His 27-pound, 14-ounce final-day total proved just enough to clinch a second Heavy Hitters championship belt.
Link to Hi-Res Photo of Championship Round Winner Jordan Lee
Link to Photo Gallery of Championship Round Highlights
Link to Video of Fish-Catch Highlights from Championship Round of Heavy Hitters on the Kissimmee Chain
Lee entered this week as the clear favorite thanks to his two prior wins on the Kissimmee Chain in Bass Pro Tour competition, including the inaugural Heavy Hitters event in June 2020. And for much of the event, he made it look easy. He led Group B through both days of qualifying, stacking more than 60 pounds on SCORETRACKER® during a Day 1 he called “insane,” then won the Knockout Round.
Come Championship Thursday, though, his fish proved far less cooperative. Whether due to five days of fishing pressure, the variable minimum weight increasing to 3 pounds or the calm, blue-sky conditions that greeted the Top 10, the entire field had to grind for bites, Lee included. It took him two hours to book his first scorable bass.
But, leaning on the hundreds of hours he’s spent frogging mats on Guntersville through the years, the Alabama native eventually figured out which tricks to try to generate just enough bites. He crawled his frog painfully slowly, especially when he knew he was around active fish. He also doctored one frog, removing the silicone strand legs and replacing them with super-glued jig rattles, saying the added noise helps attract bass through the thicker slop.
Most important was knowing where to look amid a sea of hydrilla. Lee learned during practice that he could get more bites through bigger mats than small, matted clumps. From there, he covered water to identify which areas were better than others, using the extra practice time he earned during the Qualifying Round to expand his list of waypoints. That proved vital, as Lee said certain mats stopped producing during the course of the event due to fishing pressure and boat traffic.
“They had to be hollow underneath, … and where you had that kind of cheese,” Lee explained. “They weren’t way out on the outside where there was isolated clumps. I was looking for the bigger mats in areas where they just looked fresh almost, and I was looking for blowholes, where fish come up, blowing through the mat.
“It’s Guntersville 101. I do this every fall since I was 16, the exact fishing that I did this week. It was no different. The grass was the same, and it was just awesome because of how identical it fishes to there.”
Lee used beefed-up tackle to throw his Swamp Lords, which he believes was key. He primarily wielded a Jordan Lee signature series 7-6 heavy rod from Abu Garcia — designed to be a flipping stick — instead of his usual, 7-3 frog rod. He also turned to a 7-9 punching rod in the thickest mats, spooling both with 50-pound Berkley X5 braid. The heavier rods gave him more power to winch bass out of the thick grass.
“I didn’t want to mess up the mats,” Lee said. “That’s kind of what I’ve learned about going in and getting them, you ruin a place, and then you’ve got to drag them out. You can catch a fish right there in the same hole that you’ve caught one before, and that happened a ton this week where you’d find them just packed in out of the same spot.”
Lee bounced from spot to spot Thursday morning before landing on a mat that produced a three-fish flurry in the final half four of Period 1, giving him the lead. He extended his advantage with two more scorable bass around noon.
Then, his bite went dormant. Lee went more than two hours without adding to his total. During that time, several anglers crept within one scorable bass of his lead, and Poche eventually passed him with a little more than 90 minutes left in the competition day.
Lee didn’t panic, though. He returned to one of the mats he’d fished early in the morning. While he didn’t get any bites there initially, he’d noticed that it didn’t show signs of fishing pressure. The decision proved to be worth $100,000.
“I thought there was some fish around there,” Lee said. “I had some bites throughout the week right there. But I just decided that was really my only other place I thought wasn’t getting a lot of fishing pressure.”
While Lee lifting a trophy (or, in this case, a belt) has become a common sight at the highest level of tournament fishing, he’ll remember this win for how he pulled it off.
“I’m really just blown away how good it was to me this week, catching them one of my favorite ways, fishing this heavy hydrilla,” Lee said. “I grew up fishing like this. I was really comfortable when I found this bite. And it was just a special bite. It got tougher as the week went on, but I stayed patient, and man, it was just awesome.”
The top 10 pros at the General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024 Presented by Bass Pro Shops on the Kissimmee Chain finished:
1st: Jordan Lee, Cullman, Ala., seven bass, 27-14, $110,000
2nd: Keith Poche, Pike Road, Ala., five bass, 23-10, $25,000
3rd: Matt Becker, Ten Mile, Tenn., five bass, 19-4, $20,000
4th: Kevin VanDam, Kalamazoo, Mich., four bass, 18-14, $118,000
5th: Brandon Coulter, Knoxville, Tenn., three bass, 12-5, $20,000
6th: Bryan Thrift, Shelby, N.C., two bass, 8-7, $44,500
7th: Todd Faircloth, Jasper, Texas, two bass, 8-1, $13,500
8th: Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., one bass, 7-0, $17,500
9th: Dakota Ebare, Brookeland, Texas, two bass, 6-12, $11,000
10th: Alton Jones, Jr., Waco, Texas, zero bass, 0-0, $8,000
Full results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Overall, there were 31 scorable bass weighing 132 pounds, 3 ounces caught by the final 10 pros in Thursday’s Championship Round. A bass had to weigh at least 3 pounds to be deemed scorable in the Championship Round.
The six-day General Tire Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops at the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes was hosted by Experience Kissimmee and showcased the top 30 pros that qualified via the Bass Pro Tour competing in a no-entry fee tournament for massive daily Big Bass Bonuses and a payout of $100,000 to the winner.
The 15 Anglers in Group A competed in their two-day qualifying round on Saturday and Monday – the 15 anglers in Group B on Sunday and Tuesday. After each two-day qualifying round was complete, the top eight anglers from both groups advanced to Wednesday’s Knockout Round. In the Knockout Round weights were zeroed, and the remaining 16 anglers competed to finish in the top 10 to advance to the Championship Round. In Thursday’s final-day Championship Round, weights were zeroed, and the highest one-day total won the top prize of $100,000.
Television coverage of the General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024 Presented by Bass Pro Shops will be showcased across six two-hour episodes, premiering at 7 a.m. ET, Aug. 10 and running each Saturday through Sept. 14 on Discovery. New MLF episodes premiere each Saturday morning on Discovery, with re-airings on the Outdoor Channel.
Proud sponsors of General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024 Presented by Bass Pro Shops at the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes include: Abu Garcia, B&W Trailer Hitches, Barbasol, Bass Pro Shops, Berkley, BUBBA, Fishing Clash, General Tire, Kubota, Lowrance, Lucas Oil, Mercury, Mossy Oak Fishing, NITRO, Onyx, Plano, Power-Pole, REDCON1, Star brite, Toyota, U.S. Air Force and YETI.
For complete details and updated information on Major League Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets at Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.
About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 17 countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.
Pro Jordan Lee of Cullman, Alabama, won the General Tire Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops at the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Thursday - his third career victory on the fishery - and earned the $100,000 top prize. (Photo: Business Wire)
LaBELLE, Fla. (AP) — One of Florida’s poorest counties is preparing for the new “Airglades” airport, a $300 million cargo hub that could transform its economy.
Local leaders see the project as a generational opportunity, one that could bring more than 1,400 new, high-skilled jobs to their largely agricultural community at the edge of the Everglades. But to make good on its promise, the region’s educators will have to overcome some harsh realities.
A third of Hendry County’s working-age adults lack a high-school diploma, while almost half speak a language other than English at home, among the highest in Florida. Before local leaders can prepare residents for jobs in engineering and manufacturing, educators must first help them earn their GEDs and learn English.
“We have some of God’s most beautiful country that has never been touched by man,” said Michael Swindle, the county schools superintendent, and yet “by all the metrics you would judge a county on, we’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in the ugly categories.”
As the airport project pursues approval, community groups and schools are working to fill teacher shortages and make investments in adult education.
The challenges also include some political headwinds. Most of the county’s workforce is Black and Latino. Efforts to tailor education to serve those demographic groups have drawn scrutiny in Florida, where politicians have forbidden programs factoring race and national origin into people's treatment. Educators say the political context adds to the difficulties in recruiting teachers.
The plan to convert the small, county-owned airport to private ownership still has to win approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which will depend partly on solidifying contracts with vendors in Latin America to prove its potential as a hub for perishable goods.
Meanwhile, two adult education centers in the county expanded with support from the FutureMakers Coalition, a community organization that has spearheaded education retraining efforts across southwest Florida. It also is paying for a counselor to help adults looking to develop new skills and change careers.
Spanish-speaking students have filled the adult education center in LaBelle, the 5,000-person county seat.
Many are working jobs or have kids at home, which has forced their instructor, Silvia Gullett, to get creative to meet their needs. She started a WhatsApp group so students could organize carpooling or split childcare duties. If students don’t show up to class, Gullett texts them to figure out the problem. She doesn’t settle for easy excuses.
“In the beginning, I had some students who didn’t want to continue. I try to tell people that the only one who can stop them is themselves,” said Gullett, who was born in Peru before starting her teaching career in Florida two decades ago.
At the country's other adult education center, in Clewiston, sparks fly as dozens of students in thick gloves and respirator masks work toward industrial certifications needed to enter the workforce. One of them, Samantha Garza, 21, initially studied child care at a community college in Fort Myers but pivoted after watching YouTube videos about female welders.
“I’m an artsy person, so I have more of a steady hand already, and I love to be down and dirty doing physical things, so I felt like this would be a career for me,” she said.
Even before the airport arrives, there are still plenty of local employers waiting to hire the students. As current employees near retirement age, U.S. Sugar, the Clewiston-based farming giant, has such urgent needs it started an in-house welding program.
“We’re trying to close that generation gap between mechanics and welders,” said Nathan Hollis, an industrial skills trainer at the company.
Finding enough instructors to offer the training has been a challenge. Swindle had to recruit a U.S. Sugar worker to teach welding and coax a school bus mechanic out of retirement to lead the diesel mechanics program.
Still, the program has been so successful the county is using tuition revenue and donations to open another training facility in LaBelle focused on HVAC and plumbing.
There has been controversy around some efforts, including a slide on the topic of “white privilege” shown during a teacher training event led by FutureMakers. It sparked an outcry from conservative activists who accused organizers of racism, and a Republican city commissioner in LaBelle suggested it violated the “ Stop WOKE Act ” signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
The political climate in Florida has made it difficult to attract K-12 teachers, according to Swindle. In a state where DeSantis has harnessed culture war passions in his education policies, Swindle said many of his teachers feel unsupported.
“The rhetoric around public education is horrible. It absolutely does hurt us,” Swindle said.
Teacher shortages threaten local schools’ ability to teach not just welders and mechanics, but also construction workers, nurses and other professionals to support the influx of people the airport could bring.
“We don’t have a chemistry or physics teacher in high school. We’ve left the job openings up for three years, and we can’t even get someone to apply,” Swindle said.
The county has been running more marketing campaigns to recruit educators and paying paraprofessionals to secure licenses so they can become teachers with help from a $23 million Good Jobs Challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
There is a lot at stake for Swindle's long-time home.
The superintendent knows where the alligators lie, sunbathing along the acres of canals that irrigate fields of sugarcane. He knows which sabal palms make the best swamp cabbage, teaching his sons how to cut palm hearts out with his knife, like their ancestors did to survive leaner times.
Yet there is no way to know if all his retraining efforts will be successful. The airport still might not come, especially if the county can’t prove it will have the workers ready to support it.
For now, officials are trying to fill current workforce needs while test-driving their ability to spin up new training programs. Once construction begins on the airport, they know they will have about two years to teach a wave of logistics operators, agricultural customs inspectors and other aviation-specific professionals.
“We’re not just talking about an airport,” Swindle said. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity to move the needle on unemployment, on poverty, to a better place.”
Nick Fouriezos covers the role of college in rural America for Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Sign up for his newsletter, Mile Markers.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Airplanes parked on the tarmac Thursday, March 14 ,2024 at the Airglades Airport in Hendry County, Fla. One of Florida’s poorest counties is preparing for the new “Airglades” airport, a $300 million cargo hub that could transform its economy. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Joel Conner, Grant Manager & Supervisor of Hendry County Adult Learning, in the auto shop on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. Students get hands on education in the Automotive Mechanics Program that is offered as an alternative for adult education where students gain the necessary experience to receive certification and enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Lead Mechanic Instructor Albert Williams helps Carlos Flores with a piece of equipment that will not start during The Hendry County Adult Learning Automative Skills Lab on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Students gather around a piece of equipment in the Hendry County Adult Automative Skills Lab on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. Student gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Joel Conner, Grand manager & Supervisor with Hendry County Adult Learning, looks at the success of past students on a wall of photos in the classroom of the Auto Mechanic Program on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The center offers an alternative to adult education where students gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Joel Conner, Grant Manager & Supervisor of Hendry County Adult Learning, talking with Lead Welding Instructor Travis Hall on Thursday, March 14 ,2024 concerning topics of their welding program in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
K'Jan Mason, a student of Hendry County Adult Learning participating in the welding program, continues to perfect his skills during his class project on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Eric Madrid, a student of Hendry County Adult Learning participating in the welding program, using a bandsaw to cut a plate before he starts his welding assignment on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Joel Conner, Grant Manager & Supervisor of Hendry County Adult Learning, talking about the welding program they offer as a another alternative to adult education where students gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. Thursday, March 14 ,2024 (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Airplanes parked on the tarmac Thursday, March 14 ,2024 at the Airglades Airport in Hendry County, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Cruze Ponce, a student of Hendry County Adult Learning participating in the welding program, continues to perfect his skills during his class project on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion. Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
Cruze Ponce, a student of Hendry County Adult Learning participating in the welding program, meticulously welds during his class project on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion. Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
K'Jan Mason, a student of Hendry County Adult Learning participating in the welding program checks the torch prior to a welding project on Thursday, March 14 ,2024. The program helps adults gain the necessary experience to receive certification and immediately enter the local workforce after completion in Clewiston, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris Tilley)
