Dylan Hays was about to call it a day. The professional angler from El Dorado was on the third day of the Costa FLW Series at Lake of the Ozarks. He’d had a solid tournament so far, but he hadn't caught the 15 pounds or so of bass that he thought he needed in order to record his first series victory.
He was ready to go back to his first stretch to see if he could improve on his total before he needed to weigh in, but it was 10 miles away, and a friend asked if they had enough time to get out there and catch something.
“We decided to just hang around where we were. If he hadn’t asked me that, it could have changed the outcome of the tournament,” Hays said.
With only a few moments left, the football jig he was using broke. He swapped it out and, on his final cast, brought in a 5-pound bass.
“That was pretty special,” he said. “At that point, my co-angler said ‘You just won.’ I thought there was no way. There were three guys ahead of me, and these guys are studs. I thought it would keep me in the top five.”
Sure enough, Hays’ three-day, 15 bass total of 43 pounds, 14 ounces gave him a 7-ounce margin over Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour’s James Watson to earn him more than $37,000 in prize money. All thanks to a friend’s questions and a last-minute cast. Dylan had three other top three finishes on the FLW tour in the three years he’s competed professionally, chances to win that he couldn’t finish. He thought he’d wasted his chances for a tournament win.
“I had the fish to win on two of those three times and I messed it up,” he said. “I really thought my time had already happened and I kept screwing it up. But you can’t screw it up when it’s your time.”
The Parkers Chapel graduate has one more tournament this year, a championship in Lake Cumberland, Kentucky against 199 other anglers. Then he’ll take a break until 2020. The victory is the culmination of Hays’ transition from a corporate day job to embracing his passion: fishing.
“I had some buddies take me fishing a couple of times when I was a kid, and I just enjoyed it,” he said. “We had a pond at our house and I started fishing that little pond every day. I’d beg my parents to take me, and they would take me fishing whenever I’d ask them. I just like being out there; I get a lot of satisfaction out of catching a fish.”
The competitive Hays was hooked when he began participating in tournaments.
“It takes a lot of things to line up to fish professionally,” he said. “I had a four-year business degree that I walked out on to fish professionally. You get a lot of funny looks when you do something like that, but this by far has been my best year yet. I like traveling the country, I like the competitive nature. There’s some stress, but it’s different than being cooped up in an office every day. It’s much like owning your own business.”
Hays, who started working as a fishing guide as well this year, said he gets to spend a lot of time at home, despite the fact that most weekends he’s fishing competitively. His daughters Henley (5) and Harbor (3) love being outdoors with him.
“I was out 30 weekends, but just gone 15 weeks, so the rest of the time I’m home,” he said. “My daughters love everything about fishing. They go all the time.”