Getting to know Defoe

Young FLW Tour pro talks fishing, family and being a local favorite on Fort Loudoun-Tellico Lakes

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Eastern Tennessee is notorious for producing some of the most respected names on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour.

For starters, there are Craig Powers, David Walker, Andy Morgan, Jack Wade and, of course, the whole Strader clan.

Now it’s time to add one more name to that list: Ott Defoe of Knoxville, Tenn.

At 21 years of age, Defoe has graduated up through the competitive Mountain and Choo Choo divisions of the Wal-Mart BFL, proved himself in the Stren Series and recently scored a top-10 in the very first FLW Tour event of his life at Lake Travis in Texas.

But if you think this is another story about a young gun looking to burn up the bass tours by fishing every tournament he can get into, guess again.

Talented as he is with a rod and reel, Defoe is more interested in striking a healthy balance between family, a full-time job and being competitive with a rod and reel – something that seems to come naturally for folks from eastern Tennessee.

Those who already know young Defoe probably also know his father, Allen, who is better known around the Tennessee Valley as Bud Defoe.

“Dad and I really discovered bass fishing and bass tournaments together,” Defoe said. “And that’s been a pretty special journey.

“Dad always took us fishing, and when I was about 9 years old, we fished our first bass tournament together. We didn’t do any good; I don’t even think we weighed in a fish, but it lit our bass-fishing fires, and from that point on, we fished every team tournament we could. The next year I think we fished about 50 tournaments together.

“Since then bass fishing and tournaments have become a lifestyle for us,” Defoe added. “Dad runs the B.A.I.T. (Bass Anglers Invitational Trail) tournaments around here, and when he’s not doing that, he travels with me to FLW events.”

Defoe has fond memories of his early years fishing with his father, including a trip to Lake Okeechobee where he and the family spent a week reeling in lunker bass.

“After that trip, Dad bought our first bass boat; it was a fish-and-ski with a walk-through windshield,” Defoe recalled with a laugh. “It was actually a TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) boat that Dad bought at a surplus sale.”

From there, the Defoes joined the East Tennessee Bass Anglers, a federated bass club, thanks to the help of another well-known Tennessee pro, Mark Mauldin.

“Mark Mauldin and another friend, Jason Nichols, have been instrumental in helping me develop as an angler,” Defoe noted. “Both fished pro-level tournaments before I did, and they have always passed their experience on to me, which has been a huge help with my learning curve.”

During the last two years of his bass club tenure, at the age of 15, Defoe was the points leader in the bass club, and he began looking toward Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League competition when he turned 16.

But there was one problem: a little something called school.

“We worked out a deal with my high school principal,” Defoe revealed. “As long as I did my studies, I could miss a certain number of days of school to fish tournaments. There were many days when I would practice a long day and then spend the evening doing school work. And it worked out great: having to earn the privilege to fish through school work kept me motivated to do my studies.”

Defoe’s real school of hard knocks, however, did not involve pencils and paper, but rather rods and reels in the Choo Choo and Mountain divisions of the BFL, often regarded as some of the toughest divisions in BFL competition.

“These hills are just chock full of great fishermen,” Defoe said. “If you don’t believe it, just come to a few of the tournaments here. They regularly draw 100 to 150 boats, and 95 percent of the anglers are guys who have been fishing these waters for years. It usually takes a huge bag of fish to win the one-day events here.”

Going head to head with such formidable competition has forced Defoe to perfect classic shallow-water power fishing, something that has propelled his career in the Stren Series Southeast Division.

“It’s no secret: I come from Tennessee, so I love a homemade flat-sided crankbait and a jig,” he said. “Wind’em until you find’em is our motto here.”

That formula has earned Defoe three top-10s in Stren Series competition: one at Lake Eufaula, one at West Point Lake and one at the Stren Series Championship on Wheeler Lake in 2006.

“My confidence zone in tournaments is stained, shallow water in the 50-degree range with a flat-sided crankbait in my hand,” he said. “That’s what I did at those Stren events on the Chattahoochee River chain in Alabama and then at Wheeler last fall.”

Defoe was hoping to find those exact kinds of conditions on his home waters of Fort Loudoun-Tellico Lakes this week as the FLW Tour event rolls into Knoxville, Tenn., for stop No. 2 of the 2007 season. But it looks like a sudden onset of summer might prevent that from happening.

“Three weeks ago the water temperature was in the upper 40s, and we were fishing Silver Buddies in the freezing cold,” Defoe said. “Now the water temperature is nearly 70 degrees, and they’re spawning on the bank.

“The water temperature was in the mid-50s, literally, for just a few days instead of a few weeks. It’s like the fish never had a chance to even stage up anywhere before hitting the bank. We’ve gone from the dead of winter to the spawn without a prespawn.”

With the sudden warmup, Defoe thinks local advantage will lessen to a certain degree.

“If it had stayed cold, like we were all hoping, we would have had a definite advantage,” he explained. “Mauldin, Morgan, Strader – we all know where prespawn sweet spots are out on the river. And some of those places might still produce, but I’ve got feeling we’re all going to be hop-scotching pockets, looking for beds now.”

Defoe, of course, likes to entertain the thought of a second top-10, or possibly a win, in just his second FLW Tour event. To be fishing the FLW Tour at such a young age is certainly an enviable position, but he is humble and wise beyond his years about his expectations in this event – and his future as a professional angler.

As a forklift operator for a trucking company in Knoxville and a soon-to-be father in June, Defoe is very cautious about biting off more than he can chew in the tournament world.

Currently, his boss allows him time off to fish about 12 events a year, a pace Defoe sees as a perfect fit for him.

“I love fishing, but I also love my family and my job,” he said. “Right now, I don’t see myself as one of those guys who fishes 20 events a year full time while being gone from home for months at time. That works for some anglers, but I’m just not wired that way. I like being home too much with my family, and quite honestly, I like working.”

Earlier in the year, Defoe was enrolled in the FLW Tour, the Wal-Mart FLW Series and the Stren Series Northeast Division. But since then he has dropped out of the FLW Series.

“I think it’s possible to get burned out on tournament fishing by trying to do too much too fast. My wife, Jennie, has been a real blessing in helping me realize that. She doesn’t want to see the sport that I love so much turn into something that haunts me. So I’m seeking to reach a balance of family, work and competitive fishing.

“Someday, if things line up right and I can get enough sponsor support, I might consider taking on more events and traveling with my family in a motor home like some of the pros are doing these days. But for now, I’m pretty content where I am.”