By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Jamie Horton has now fished 4 seasons at the tour level, but in a lot of ways he's still a "weekend warrior" when it comes to catching bass for cash. His full-time job as a project manager for a fabrication company severely limits his ability to prepare for events during the week.
After 3 seasons on the Bassmaster Elite Series and a year away from top-level competition, the 49-year-old grandfather from Alabama joined the FLW Tour this year and put together his best pro campaign to date. In six regular-season events, he finished 18th or better three times (including a 3rd and a 4th) and ended up 16th in the Angler of the Year race.
The two-time Bassmaster Classic participant easily qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup, which will be held next month at Wheeler Lake in his home state. It marks the first time he's made it to a tour-level championship derby via the points list (both of his Classic invitations came through the B.A.S.S. Nation championship).
He was a serious contender for the AOY through the first two-thirds of the season, but fell out with placements of 73rd at Kentucky Lake and 82nd at Lake Champlain to conclude the schedule.
"It was a good year and I'm pretty happy," he said. "I had three really good tournaments and in a couple of the other ones I was closer (to notching a higher finish) than it appeared.
"At Champlain I chose to chase largemouths instead of smallmouths on the first day, and on the second day I had 16 pounds of smallmouth in the first hour. I kind of made a bad decision in that one."
More Time to Prepare
Horton said the logistics of the FLW Tour were more in tune with his divided existence than were those of the Elite Series. He particularly liked the less-compacted schedule, the full day off between the conclusion of the 3-day practice session and the start of the tournament and a no-info period that was only 15 days instead of 30.
"Having a little more time between the FLW events helps me get more prepared and it's really nice to come home in between," he said. "You can focus on that one event, get that event behind you and then focus on the next event.
"In my situation, trying to balance it all with working a full-time job, I've got to do what I need to do on the weekends and trying to do homework for multiple tournaments at the same time is hard."
He said that having Wednesdays off during tournament weeks was good for both his body and his mind.
"I could go from daylight to dark in practice and still have time to recover, and having that day to organize everything was a big help. Organization is such a big part of tournament fishing."
Ready for Cup Challenge
Horton's Classic appearances were nearly a decade apart – he finished 40th at Lay Lake in the summer of 2002 and 21st at the Red River in the winter of 2012. This will be his first crack at the Cup.
He has a modicum of experience at Wheeler, but not a tremendous amount. He competed in the B.A.S.S. Nation championship there in 2012 and has fished a handful of BFLs at the venue over the past two decades.
He's been getting in quite a bit of pre-practice lately.
"This past weekend I spent several days there, not really fishing but just getting familiar with it again," he said. "I haven't been there in about 4 years. I have this weekend coming up and the following weekend, so I should be able to see everything I need to before (official) practice starts.
"There's so many options and I'm just trying to weed some of them out. August is one of those months where it's not 100-percent written in stone how it's going to be won. Depending on how much rain comes and if there's any current, there could be fish on the deep ledges, there could be some at mid-range from 4 to 7 feet and there'll be some caught really shallow. I think any amount of rain will make all of them better."
He doubts it'll be a slugfest, but he says the weights should be decent.
"I think it'll be a tough tournament, but somebody will probably catch 20 pounds one day and that'll make the weights a little higher. It's certainly doable to catch 14 or 15 pounds a day, but somebody's going to have a really good day."
