Angler of the Week: Jason Christie
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This week we had the opportunity to catch up with Major League Fishing Pro Jason Christie while he was driving from Oklahoma to the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. This will be Christie’s sixth time competing in the Classic, and he’s hoping this is the year he wins it.
“I feel good about it,” he said. “I actually won my first professional event on Lake Hartwell in 2011 so I like the lake. I feel comfortable fishing the lake.”
Christie says he’ll be comfortable, but not cocky. After all, he’ll be competing against some of the best anglers in the world.
“There are no slouches at the Classic, everybody there can catch them,” he said.
When it comes to preparing for this major competition, Christie says he takes the Major League Fishing approach, meaning he’s not worried about studying beforehand.
“Everybody has their own way of doing it,” Christie said, “I’m really not a big preparer. I don’t sit down and look at maps for weeks, or anything like that. And it’s not laziness, that’s just what works for me.”
In MLF there are strict rules that prohibit anglers from researching the lakes that they will compete on. In fact, MLF doesn’t even tell anglers which lakes they’ll be fishing until the morning of the competition. In other tournaments, anglers know where they’re going so they can research and practice as much as they please.
“I just choose not to do that. It seems like the more I think about it, the more ideas I get, the more confused I get. So I just try to keep it simple,” Christie said. “I’m old enough now. I’m stubborn enough, I’m not going to change what’s been working.”
Whatever he’s doing in tournaments is certainly working. Christie has been a pro angler for 11 years now, but he says he’s been making a living off of fishing for 20 years.
“I taught school for 10 years and coached,” Christie explained. “In all honesty, I was fishing professionally then because we both know what teachers make. Not very much. So I had to supplement my income, those ten years, by fishing.”
Christie says he was a junior high school teacher and basketball coach for Tenkiller Public Schools, which is a community southeast of his hometown, Park Hill, Okla.
“One year I’d teach math. One year I’d teach social studies. The next year I would teach just whatever they needed me to teach. And I only an hour or two each day, I pretty much was in the gym most of the rest of the day,” he explained.
Christie says he grew up playing basketball.
“If I wasn’t fishing or killing something, I was playing basketball.”
Now, his three daughters, Ali, Ana, Jaslyn, share his passion for athletics.
“Actually my oldest is on a college scholarship right now, basketball scholarship at Oklahoma Christian. And I have a sophomore in high school and sixth-grader, and both of those are involved heavily in athletics, and it ranges from softball to soccer to track to basketball,” Christie said.
He says his wife, Amy, is the one who makes sure everyone gets to their practices and competitions on time when he’s traveling.
“She’s the one that holds the fort down when I’m gone. That’s a lot bigger job than we give credit,” he said.
MLF Pro Jason Christie on Hubbard Lake in Michigan for the 2018 Summit Cup
Later this year, Christie will be competing close to home, on Grand Lake in eastern Oklahoma for the 2018 Bassmaster Elite Series tour stop there. We asked if he’ll have an advantage over the other anglers. Surprisingly, he says he won’t.
“This is going to be the first time I’ve ever fished a professional event on Grand Lake,” he said. “Most of the times we’ve fished there it’s been cold.”
That won’t be the case in late April. The weather will likely be warm and sunny.
“The fish are going to be biting. They’re going to be everywhere,” he said. “I’m not going to have the advantage. The only advantage I’m going to have is the sleeping accommodations.”
This will be Christie’s second year of fishing the MLF Cups. He started fishing the MLF Selects in 2014 and worked his way up in the Angler Point Rankings to become a full-time Cup Angler. That’s a major accomplishment in MLF.
“After this year, I’ll be eligible for the World Championship and that’s something that’s kind of on my radar,” he said, “But it’s one step at a time.”
Christie believes that competing in MLF has made him a better angler.
“That may be weird to say, but I think just being on a clock, you know, and making us find them a lot faster than what we usually do, that’s carried over into the Bass Elites,” he explained. “I think it’s not only helped me, but I think it’s helped a lot of us find fish a lot quicker.”
Christie says he feels like his career has been on a steady climb over the last ten years. Now, he’s one of the anglers that everyone wants to talk to. Shortly after our call, he was scheduled for another interview with a radio station.
“I can remember the days when nobody wanted to talk you. And that’s some of those kind of lonely days, where nobody expected you to do well. So I take these interviews and these calls humbly because people expect you to do well in the events,” Christie said.
Christie will be one to watch during the Classic, and on the next episode of MLF. You’ll be able to watch him compete in the first Sudden Death Round of the 2018 Summit Cup on Saturday, March 10 from 2-4pm EST on Outdoor Channel.