You might be a little bit unsure of the name of this publication after you get through reading it. No, it’s not Davy Hite Sportsman; it’s still South Carolina Sportsman. The amount of articles involving Davy Hite, including this one, is strictly a coincindence.
A native of Saluda who lives in Ninety Six, Hite gave up a career in the S.C. National Guard to try his hand on the pro bass circuit back in the early 1990s. To say it was a big gamble is an understatement. To say the gamble has paid off would be an equal understatement. In the 16 or 17 years he’s been a full-time pro, he has won way, way, way over a million dollars in prize money. He’s been BASS Angler of the Year twice, and he’s won nine huge tournaments, eight on the Bassmaster circuit, including one Classic, and one on the FLW Tour — the tour championship.
It just happened that Pat Robertson, one of South Carolina’s most-revered outdoor writers, was scheduled to write a feature on bass fishing at Clarks Hill Lake for the June magazine, using Hite as a major source. As usual, Hite was scheduled to write his bass-fishing column, as he has done every month since this magazine began publication in January 2006.
Then, as the magazine headed toward its press run, he had to go and win a bass tournament and another $100,000. News about that win is the lead item in Glenn Corley’s “Linescores from the Livewell” report this month.
So there’s plenty of Hite in this month’s magazine. I don’t have a problem with it, and neither should anyone else. If he keeps winning bass tournaments, he’ll deserve just as much ink as he’s already getting. If there has been a better fishing ambassador for South Carolina over the past 15 of so years, I don’t know who it might be. A lot of the great, young fishermen from South Carolina who are making their mark on the pro bass circuits were just starting their careers when Hite was winning most of his tournaments and most of his money. Maybe they saw something they liked.
I met Hite in 1993, the first year he fished the big pro circuit. At a BASS event on Buggs Island Lake on the Virginia-North Carolina border, Ray Sedgwick, the retired pro from Santee Cooper, told me flat out, “Davy Hite is gonna win the tournament and make the Classic.”
He almost won the tournament at Buggs Island, and made the Bassmasters Classic, and that’s where I met Davy Hite was. In fact, I had the highlight of my fishing career when I won the press tournament from the back of his boat. The fish weighed 6-1, if I remember correctly, and it hit a half-ounce Hawg Caller “willow-branch” spinnerbait. I won $500 for the fish and another $20 from side bets with various other outdoors writers.
Since that day, I’ve probably been in Davy’s boat as often as I’ve been in any other fisherman’s. We have traded hunting stories, fishing gossip and told tales about the athletic adventures of our kids. We have needled each other about the triumphs and failures of our favorite college football teams: Georgia (mine) and South Carolina (his).
Hopefully, as we slide into and through middle age, we’ll continue the fishing part. Now, at least, he’s got a pond of his own we can fall back on if we can’t catch the “picture fish” we photograph to run with his column on a big lake. What? A bass pro skunked? I’ll never tell.
Be the first to comment