Skipper and Tyson Make History
SCAD duo is first all-female team to make the FLW College Fishing National Championship
Fishing for the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) against 175 other teams in the YETI FLW College Fishing event on Lake Hartwell, freshmen Jaci Skipper and Ryleigh Tyson put 12 pounds, 8 ounces in the boat and finished 14th. With that, the pair qualified for the 2018 YETI FLW College Fishing National Championship – a difficult accomplishment for anyone, but of particular note because Skipper and Tyson make up the first team of two women to qualify.
Back in 2011, Thomas White and Allison Shaw represented Chico State in the championship (they finished 19th), so it’s not new ground for women to be successful at the highest levels of collegiate fishing. However, two women have never before qualified for the championship on the same team.
The fishing
Hartwell was the third tournament of the season in the Southeastern Conference and the last chance (outside of the upcoming College Open) for Southeastern teams to qualify for the 2018 championship. Matt Brown and DJ Barber of Bryan College earned the win with 18-14, but Skipper and Tyson beat out four other SCAD teams and enough of the field to lock up a berth in the championship.
After three days of practice, Skipper and Tyson had pretty much settled on a plan of fishing a shaky head around cover on islands. Their bait of choice was a green pumpkin with purple flake Zoom Trick Worm on a 1/8-ounce Big Bite Baits shaky head, and they targeted laydowns, stickups, rocks and some grass.
“We slowed down a lot,” says Skipper of their practice. “I threw what I was comfortable throwing in high school, which was of course a shaky head. During practice I tied one on for her [Tyson].”
On the day of the tournament, Skipper says the pair headed straight toward a set of islands near takeoff where she had finished practice by shaking off a couple of fish.
“First cast I threw the shaky head up into the trees and set the hook, and we had one in the boat,” says Skipper. “Then it got slow for a while. About an hour or two later I went to a different point, and Ryleigh got one and I caught one on the other side.”
Still with just three fish in the afternoon, the anglers’ trolling motor battery was running so low that they could no longer hold in the wind and had to position with the main motor and drift.
“About two hours before weigh-in we found another point of an island that looked similar to the first one,” says Skipper. “She caught one on the front, and then I caught our last fish on the back of it.”
“We landed that fifth fish, and we were screaming like nobody’s business,” adds Tyson. “We had five bites that day, and on every single bite we caught a fish.”
The SCAD fishing program
Unlike at most colleges, fishing at SCAD is actually a varsity sport with men’s and women’s teams, supported with scholarships and coached by Isaac Payne, who fished for SCAD and started a club-level team when he was a student. Skipper and Tyson were both recruited out of high school and are on scholarship.
Skipper was born into a fishing family. Her father, John Skipper, founded the fishing team at Rehobeth High School in Dothan, Ala., three years ago and has a strong resume in FLW competition from the early 2000s.
“I started fishing really young,” says Jaci. “My dad had two girls, and he wanted both boys. We called it ‘daddy-daughter time,’ and he would only ever take me out when we would be on fish.”
It evidently worked, as both Jaci and her younger sister, Laney, have seen success. In fact, on the same day the elder Skipper qualified for the championship, Laney and her partner finished 35th in a B.A.S.S. Nation high school event held on Lewis Smith Lake.
Tyson has fished since she was young, but unlike her teammate, she wasn’t fated to get into competitive fishing, and only joined the team at Harmony High School in Saint Cloud, Fla., midway through her time there. She graduated as the president of her club and has been on the fast track since.
“I’ve learned a lot in college so far because I’m from Florida,” says Tyson. “The fishing there is different than everywhere else. I’ve had a hard time getting used to all the different types of places, but I’ve learned a lot this year at SCAD.”
Tyson is also aware that at this point, women aren’t that common in competitive fishing.
“There’s a lot of pressure on us being women in a men’s sport,” says Tyson. “We’re often seen as not as capable, and it takes a bit to earn the respect of the men. There are things we need to overcompensate for to earn that respect. But once we earn that respect it will be a whole new ballgame, and I hope to be a role model for young girls and women in fishing.”
There are currently seven members of the women’s fishing team at SCAD, but it isn’t an entirely independent program. According to Tyson, the men’s team, the women’s team and the members of the coed club-level team all practice together, making for a situation not that different from a more typical college team setup.
“We have the same coach for both teams, so we’re treated the same,” says Tyson. “We don’t really separate ourselves between the men and women until tournament time comes. We’ve really grown together as the SCAD fishing team, and the club team also travels and practices with us just as much.”
Though Skipper and Tyson have seen success quickly in their freshman year at school, they didn’t start off together.
“In the beginning of the year I was fishing with a different partner, and I think on both sides of things switching teams worked,” says Tyson. “The last tournament we fished was a B.A.S.S. tournament on Winyah Bay, and I think we kind of got a feel for each other then. We came into Hartwell really confident in hopes of seeing how it would work out. We caught two fish really early in pre-fish, and I think that set up our confidence for the whole time.”
“I fished the first two events at Lake Seminole and Lake Guntersville this season with different partners, and I zeroed both times,” adds Skipper. “I told Ryleigh that our time was coming. It just so happened that this tournament went well for us.”