By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor


Davy Hite had a lot on his mind when he walked up on stage after the second day of the Mississippi River Elite Series last month.

He’d struggled on day 1 of the tournament after deciding to stay in Pool 8 to avoid the risks of getting caught on the wrong side of the river’s barge traffic. He weighed in only three fish for 5-10, effectively nuking any hope he had to post the kind of finish he needed to gain the necessary points to climb into the Top 50 in the Angler of the Year standings.

After his day-2 catch registered 17-09 – the third-biggest stringer of the day – Hite’s voice cracked and his eyes welled as he reflected on things way more important than a mixed limit of largemouth and smallmouth.

“Since I was 12 years old, I dreamed of becoming a professional fisherman and this concludes my 23rd year,” he said on stage. “You never know what tomorrow will bring. … To be able to raise my family and provide a good living, I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

To some, that may have sounded like a passive attempt at a retirement announcement, but those close to Hite know he was referring to the news of his father-in-law being diagnosed with lung cancer and the knowledge that this oldest son, Parker, an Army Ranger, would soon be deployed to the Middle East.

“There was a lot of stuff going on,” he said.

After the La Crosse event, Hite continued on to Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota. Despite not qualifying to compete in the season-ending event, he went to fulfill in his role as Bassmaster Live contributor and host of First Look.

While Hite was in Minnesota and two days before his father-in-law’s scheduled surgery, Hite’s mother-in-law took a nasty fall at a grocery store and was rushed to the hospital with a severe head injury. Hite said doctors painted a bleak outlook, but she has shown signs of progress while still in intensive care.

Hite’s wife, Natalie, has been at her mom’s side nearly non-stop during her hospitalization.

“You’re not guaranteed tomorrow and you need to be thankful for what you have,” Hite said. “When you’re 1,000 miles away from it, it makes it hard.”

Few could find fault with Hite, 51, if he were retire or apply for an exemption for the 2017 season to be at home for his family. He’s a two-time Angler of the Year and one of five anglers to win both the Bassmaster Classic and Forrest Wood Cup. He finished 2016 in 15th place on the B.A.S.S. career money list with just shy of $2 million in tournament earnings across 254 events. He also won more than $375,000 during a seven-year stint with FLW between 1997-2003.

Asked what his plans were for 2017, he said it was too early to say.

“To be honest, I haven’t thought about it with everything going on with my family,” he said. “When I get home from a tournament, I tend to forget about fishing for a while.”

Swing and a ‘Miss’

Hite went into the Mississippi River event needing a decent finish to move into the Top 50 in points. A stellar finish would’ve put him in the mix for a Classic berth.

On day 1, he opted to not lock up to Pool 7, and that decision proved costly.

“I thought I was fishing smart by deciding not to lock,” he said. “There was not even a tentative lock schedule and there was more barge traffic than I’d ever seen there. They wouldn’t give us a schedule so I thought I was doing the wise veteran thing by staying put. I thought I had enough fish there to do well.”

The cumulative effect of the heavy rains toward the end of practice rendered his best areas mostly worthless and he came in with just three fish to start the tournament.

“Those severe rains washed out my best two places,” he said. “By the time I figured that out, it was too late to lock and I was stuck with what I was stuck with.”

The following day, he made his way through the lock to Pool 7 and caught multiple limits worth of keepers.

“I had nothing to lose,” he said. “I knew I had to make a strong push. I must’ve caught 20 keepers and any one of those fish on day 1 would’ve been enough to help me make the AOY event, but that’s how it goes.”

Rolling With It

Hite’s been through enough ups and downs in his career to know how to deal with them, but it doesn’t make the bitter disappointments any easier to swallow, especially with as stiff as the competition has gotten in the Elite Series in recent years.

Looking back over his season, he knows the tournament that cost him a legitimate shot at making his 15th career Classic was Winyah Bay. He’d charted many different routes to and from where he was fishing during practice, but on day 2 of the tournament, he made a decision on the fly that resulted in his boat getting hung up on a mud flat after the tide went out.

He never made it back to weigh in and took a zero for the day.

“It was one little quick decision,” he said. “ I had no reason to be in a hurry. I was 15 minutes ahead of schedule and decided to take a turn. I’d plotted a trail everywhere else, but it was one of those split-second decisions and it wound up being my worst Elite Series event ever. After that, it made it tough to have a decent season.

“I’ve been fortunate to have won AOY titles and it’s those split-second decisions that are the difference. Sometimes you make the right ones and other times you make the wrong ones.”

Over his career, Hite has been able to absorb disappointments like Winyah Bay and not let it carry over to the next event. He tries to not get too high when things are going well and not get too low when the negatives start piling up.

“I talked with Brent Ehrler about this (at La Crosse),” he said. “We had almost identical tournaments. Each of us had a good day and a bad day. I told him we both must’ve gotten out of bed on the same wrong side. I said, ‘When everything is going just perfect, you’re not as good as you think you are and when things are going against you and you think you stink, you’re not as bad as you think you are because you can’t catch a limit on a place where it seems to easy.”

Notable

> Hite has developed an appreciation for the media side of the sport through his work as host of the First Look web feature on Bassmaster.com. He’s able to interview anglers in contention to win on the final day as they come off the water and before they head to the weigh-in. It’s a role he hopes to continue in.

“I really do enjoy that,” he said. “I never thought that was something I’d do. Since I was 12, I dreamed of being a pro bass fisherman, but I never thought about doing something like that. I’ve gotten to know some guys I’ve fished against for years but never got to know. It’s given me the opportunity to see the emotions and feel what they’re going through. That’s been exciting. I’ve been there and know about the thrill of victory and agony of defeat and I’ve been able to relate to the rookie types and the older veterans.”