It has been almost three months since my season-ending victory at Texas Fest on Lake Fork, and I’m still trying to digest what that victory will mean for my career and how to use that momentum to push forward. After all, there are no rearview mirrors on a bass boat for a reason – you’re only as good as your next tournament.

The current year has been one a lot of people would like to forget, but Summerville’s Patrick Walters is not one of them.

Walters married his longtime girlfriend Emily Walters last November and has been living his professional fishing dream, collecting a pair of first-place trophies and winning more than $250,000 on the Bassmaster professional fishing circuit in 2020.

I make a concerted effort to avoid hyperbole in my writing, so I had reservations about using the word “historic” in this piece, but there’s simply no other way I can articulate what happened this past weekend during the Elite Series tournament on Lake Fork. Patrick Walters absolutely smoked the field and beat second place by 29 pounds.

Patrick Walters of Summerville put together a solid final-day catch Friday and captured the Bassmaster Eastern Open tournament fished on Lake Hartwell. Walters, a regular on the Bassmaster Elite circuit, had the third-largest catch of the 12 competitors who fished the final day with five bass that weighed 13 pounds, 11 ounces and finished the three-day event with a total of 44-5. He earned $42,267.

Tideline: Patrick Walters Finishes 4th in 1st Elite Series Bassmaster: Carhartt College B.A.S.S Degrees Bassmaster: 20 Percent of the New Elite Field Fished in College