Since he was old enough to go fishing, one local teenager has expressed a love of the sport and a dedication to perfecting his skills for finding and catching bass. John (Danny) Iles has practically grown up in the back of a boat and as anyone who knows him can attest, would rather be doing that than just about anything else.
At the age of fifteen he began participating in bass tournaments partnering first with his step-father, Stephen Johnston, from whom he has gleaned many of his skills, and then, another young angler and fellow Hemphill High School student, Andrew Upshaw. In their first season fishing together, on the Bass N Bucks Team Trail, Danny and Andrew competed against some of the most fierce competition in all of East Texas to qualify for the annual Championship. In that event, back in 2005, Danny and Andrew finished an impressive 19th Place in their bracket and were lauded as the youngest team in the field by Tournament Director David Concienne.
He also joined and competed in a local bass club, the Fairmount Bass Club, and even though only able to fish on the weekends due to his school schedule, finished near the top of the roster (3rd Place) for their year and was awarded a coveted bass club jacket.
The next spring, Danny and Stephen partnered to compete in the Bass Champs Team Trail as well as the Bass N Bucks trail. Together, and with well known professional angler Johnston captaining the team, they made a good showing and collected several checks in each trail along the way. In the Bass N Bucks Championship that year they finished in second place overall, just narrowly missing the win.
The following year, in 2007, same story, second verse. They again competed in the team trails together, Johnston as captain of their team and young Iles growing ever stronger as an angler and contributing more and more to the team. By now, he was licensed to drive a truck and could pull one of their Ranger Boats to practice on Lake Sam Rayburn on his own thereby bringing more valuable information to the team on competition days.
It was that same year that Danny obtained a Texas Parks and Wildlife Fishing Guide license and began to take trips for the family fishing business, Johnston’s Guide Service. Mostly fishing with clients for crappie in the early days, he soon was asked to take bass trips as well. The clients were becoming aware that this kid had real talent as an angler.
In the summer of 2007 he participated in his first individual event, as a co-angler in the the FLW Stren Series which was being held on Toledo Bend. And later, in the fall, at the Bass N Bucks Championship, the team of Johnston and Iles once again were considered a threat and did indeed make a showing, finishing in third place overall in their bracket.
In 2008, with Iles now a senior at Hemphill High School where he would finish the spring at the top of his graduating class, the team of Johnston/ Iles continued to compete in the Bass N Bucks trail. Their finishes held them in good stead for qualification for the fall championship. The field of anglers was getting to know Danny and his passion for fishing, but still gave most of the credit for the team to the senior partner.
Because Johnston’s national tournament schedule prevented him from competing in some local/regional events. Iles was asked by a guide client and family friend, Ralph Logan of Magnolia, Texas, to compete in the Anglers Quest Team Trail on Toledo Bend. By season’s end, they had garnered two second place finishes and qualified for the Championship to be held on Choke Canyon in November. As two relatively unknowns competing together, they had accomplished this feat quietly and under the radar of most of the fishing community.
In August, as Danny prepared for a start at Lamar University to study Engineering, and with plans to join the new Collegiate Bass Fishing Team at Lamar, the BFL tournament was set to be held on Lake Toledo Bend. He had spent many days practicing for the event with the anticipation of sharing that information with Johnston and then watching the weigh-in from the side lines. The tournament, as it turned out, needed more anglers to compete so Iles was recruited and for the first time, was going head to head with not only his mentor, but a field of other well know anglers. The talk of this happening was interesting, but as luck would have it, on that particular weekend, neither Johnston nor Iles did very well in the tournament, catching fish, but not placing in the money.
Weeks later, as Johnston was preparing for his last major event of his fishing season, the FLW Stren Series to be held on the Red River in Louisiana, Iles was again practicing for the team, on Lake Sam Rayburn, in preparation for the Bass N Bucks Championship that was scheduled for the very same weekend.
They strategized by phone and traded information in the days leading up to the event. Because the Championship was a two day event to be held on Saturday and Sunday, it was decided that should Johnston make the Saturday cut to fish in the Top Ten on the Red River; that Iles would fish alone and carry the flag for the team on Rayburn for the fist day of the Bass N Bucks competition. Sure enough, that did happen and the family and friends who usually show up to support the anglers at the weigh-ins all headed over to Louisiana to watch Johnston as he not only competed for a win the in Stren tournament, but also the Angler of the Year honor which was hanging in the balance.
The Stren weigh-in was set to begin at 4:00 PM, the Bass N Bucks weigh-in began at 2:30. Iles was one of the first to come in to the scales in that event and before he could even speak with Johnston and let him know the results, the phone lines were buzzing. When the Stren anglers pulled into the boat ramp to load their boats, Johnston had fourteen messages on his phone and two of the other top ten anglers asking him if he had heard the news of his partners catch. By the time they had made their way over to the weigh-in site at Walmart in Natchitoches, the spectators were buzzing about a young angler who had caught more than 34 pounds of fish on Lake Sam Rayburn. At that moment, the Stren weigh-in became secondary to not only the friends and family gathered to watch, but to Johnston himself.
Danny, on his own, had brought to the scales five fish weighing 34.38 pounds including one that tipped the scales at 10.50 pounds and would hold up as big bass of the tournament. This weight is almost unheard of for an individual angler and has only been done once before that anyone can recall on Lake Sam Rayburn. (Todd Faircloth, another young promising angler who has gone on to compete in the BASS Elite tournaments and make a run for Angler of the Year against Kevin VanDam, did it while fishing an Anglers Choice event when his partner/father was away on another lake in another tournament several years ago.)
The phone calls did not stop all evening with Johnston’s mailbox filling up more than once. Many of the comments left were congratulatory; others were hailing young Iles as the real force behind the team and with tongue in cheek, urging Johnston to âsit down, shut up, and just fishâ the following day when he rejoined his partner for the final day of competition.
The Internet message boards lit up with talk of this unknown teenager who brought in such a catch. On one of them, the Texas Fishing Forum, it was Andrew Upshaw who gave props to Danny and introduced him to the chat community while offering congratulations on a job well done. (Andrew incidentally, has gone on to compete for the Stephen F. Austin Collegiate Bass Team and has done very well in regional tournament events himself.)
The team, not leaving anything to chance, spent the night preparing for the final day of fishing: retying baits, checking line and equipment, discussing strategy. They calculated that with another fifteen pounds of fish, they would maintain the lead that Iles had built and win the Championship.
Sunday came and the friends and family that always cheer them on, along with hoards of others now interested in the outcome, watched as the teams made their way to the weigh-in at the Umphrey Family Pavilion. When the leaders reached the scales they had another eighteen pounds, enough for a lead of twelve pounds over the next closet competitor. After three years of close finishes, the team of Johnston/ Iles had claimed victory.
The real victory here though was not the Ranger Z-20/Mercury rig that they pulled home, but the acceptance within the fishing community that the team was now a 50/50 proposition and Iles was not just the kid in the back of the boat. Danny Iles is a nineteen year old, talented, hard working, angler capable of bringing in a sack of fish when it counts and one to watch for the future.By: Robin Johnston
