A young start
Career Day at elementary school probably wasn’t too interesting to Ott DeFoe.
At a young age, he already knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.
He spent hours watching the Bassmaster television show with his older brother. When he was 9, he and his family attended their first Bassmaster Classic, and Ott was hooked.
“It was so great to meet all of these guys I watched on TV,” he said. “I just loved the whole experience–watching the guys weigh in, their big boats, the crowd, everything.
"I wanted to do that.”
About a month later, his family went on a vacation to Florida and DeFoe got a chance to fish with a guide on Lake Okeechobee, and the hook was more firmly set.
Later that year, Ott fished his first bass tournament, a buddy event with his dad Bud. It would be great to say that they won, but that was far from the case.
“We didn’t even catch a fish,” he said. “I remember watching guys bring bags of fish to the weigh-in and thinking, ‘Well, there were fish to be caught. We just didn’t do a very good job at it.’ ”