When you’re a co-angler in the Walmart Bass Fishing League, your ride is assured. The person you’re fishing with might not be your first choice, or might not fish the way you like to fish, but at least you can count on having a seat in the boat. James Jackson is grateful for that, because all of his other transportation needs are pretty much up for grabs.
Jackson lives in Edison, N.J. and doesn’t have a car, much less a boat. What he has is a desire to fish in the Walmart BFL’s South Carolina Division and he’ll do what it takes to get there. He’s gone to and from tournaments on airplanes, on trains and on busses. Jackson has been fishing Walmart BFLs off and on since 2003, and he’s spent a lot more money on transportation than on entry fees.
Consider his most recent tournament. In early April, he took an Amtrak train from Philadelphia to Kingstree, S.C., where he fished in a South Carolina Walmart BFL. The train ride took 10 hours and cost him $300 round-trip. Once he arrived in Kingstree, Jackson took a taxi to Manning, where the tournament was headquartered, and that cost him another $68. During the one-day tournament, he caught two keepers that weighed 3 pounds and finished 49th, which was way out of the money. That evening, Jackson bid farewell to his regular pals in the South Carolina circuit, removed the reels from his rods, loaded the rods back into a Plano Rod Tube and deposited the reels in his backpack tackle box with the rest of his gear. Then he began the long trek home.
Fortunately for Jackson, one of his buds is Dave Maxfield, the South Carolina Walmart BFL director. After the Santee Cooper event, Maxfield drove Jackson back to the Kingstree train station so he didn’t have to take a taxi. Of course, Dave had to drop off Jackson at about 6:30 p.m. so he could start down the road back home to Kentucky himself, and the New Jersey angler was obliged to sit in the train station for four hours before his “red-eye” train arrived for the long haul home.
Traveling by public conveyance isn’t a big deal to people who live in the Northeast. What is unusual to anyone except Jackson is that a tournament fisherman would use it to get around. To him, though, it’s just part of the price of admission. Whatever it takes, he’s going to fish tournaments, not so much because he hopes to be a pro one of these days, but because fishing fills a need.
“All my family grew up with an interest in the outdoors,” says the 50-year-old. “My brother and my father fished all the time, too, and I’ve always liked to watch the TV fishing shows like Hank Parker’s and Jimmy Houston’s. I don’t remember exactly when, but I was watching a show about a tournament down South and it got me real excited. I thought ‘I’m going to do that,’ and now I’ve got a passion for it.”
Neither Jackson nor any of his family members are from South Carolina. The reason he wound up fishing that Walmart BFL circuit is complicated or simple, depending on how you look at it. A few years ago Jackson was living in Baltimore and decided he was going to take the tournament plunge. A South Carolina BFL was the nearest, so that’s where he wound up. He liked the experience so much that he returned for the next event, and his friendship with Maxfield began.
“At the start I didn’t know anybody. I’d take a train or bus to the town nearest a tournament and just pay somebody to take me to the lake,” recalls Jackson. “Then I met Dave and he gave me his business card and told me to call him whenever I came down and he or somebody with FLW [Outdoors] would come and get me.
“So one time I rode the Greyhound down to Columbia, S.C. It took me 18 hours one way with all the stops and everything. I never was on a bus that long and I was worn out when I got there. At the station I called Dave and, sure enough, he came and picked me up even though I was practically a stranger. Folks have been kind to me every trip south.”
Jackson travels light. He carries 8 or 9 rods in the case, plus his clothes, reels and basic tackle in his backpack. His older brother, Eddie, taught him how to fish spinnerbaits and that’s still his “main thing,” but he’s also grown fond of Senkos and soft swimbaits. The tackle that Jackson fishes with now isn’t the same as he started out with. A few years back, the bus he was riding in broke down near Richmond, Va., and the passengers had to switch busses. Jackson eventually got home to Baltimore, but his fishing gear didn’t, and he never saw it again. Friends and family pitched in to buy new tackle for him, and he started over.
The road trips are longer now. Jackson got a job in New Jersey working as a cook in a hospital, and that’s helped him cover his costs better. All told, he’s won $1,192, which doesn’t stack up too well against his expenses. Still, he never figured to get more money out of tournament fishing than he put in.
Jackson never practices; he fishes the way he would if he were back home in New Jersey and fishing the reservoirs near Edison with his brother and father. When he prepares for a Walmart BFL, he tries to imagine what the season and the fishery require and packs accordingly. As the train or bus heads south, Jackson thinks about what he’s going to do. He tries to visualize what it will be like when he gets out on the water, and how many bites he’ll get. In some measure, his expectations are always satisfied.
Jackson is an easy man to get along with. He asks few things of life. When it comes to fishing, he wants the tournaments he fishes to be in a place where the weather is warm and the people are friendly. South Carolina fits the bill there, most definitely. It’s a long way down the road, but to James Jackson’s mind, South Carolina fits the bill in every way that’s important.
