Bailey Gay can skillfully steer a bulldozer, road grader or crane.
Earlier this month, he expertly maneuvered a rod and reel. He won his first National Professional Fishing League title – and $100,000 – Dec. 13 on Lake Murray, South Carolina.
“It was unbelievable,” Gay said. “I mean, I’ve been chasing this dream since since I was a freshman in high school. I’ve always wanted to fish professionally, and it’s like a big sigh of relief to finally nail one down.”
What is more, Gay, 21, finished 10th in the Progressive Angler of the Year standings.
It was hard to tell which Gay was more excited – Gay or his dad, Scott Gay.
“Pretty proud dad, for sure,” Scott Gay said. “It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of long days.”
Bailey Gay’s athletic career started early – he played soccer for several years. About the same time, wanted to fish for Ryle High School, but there was no team at any Boone County school.
“He got into fishing early, and he loved it,” Scott Gay said.
With no high school program, Bailey Gay bought a small boat, and, with high school friend Adrian Urso, won Student Angler Federation (SAF) state titles in 2020 and 2021.
After high school, Urso fished collegiately at Murray State University, while Gay stayed in Northern Kentucky and took a job with Riegler Blacktop, where he works today. Gay said going to college would have delayed his professional fishing dream by four years.
“I started working at Riegler while I was still in high school,” Gay said. “I was already kind of established there, and I wanted to be a professional fisherman … So I kind of wanted to jump straight into things and working at Riegler really helped me, you know, make make a lot of money at a young age.”
Gay, a 2021 Ryle alumnus, joined Major League Fishing’s Toyota Series tour in 2022; he placed fifth in a tournament at Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky-Tennessee border – an event he led the first two days – and won $16,000.
The Ohio River is Gay’s home body of water; he said it’s a good place to study bass biology.
“Just spending time on the water and learning how fish change and certain weather conditions, it’s all helpful,” Gay said. “So in the spring, bass are really thinking about spawning, where they lay their eggs.”
Gay said the male bass will make beds in shallow water; the females lay their eggs, and males fertilize them. Males guard the beds against predators.
By summer, fish move to cooler, deeper water.
“We’ll fish deep all summer long,” Gay said. “And then in the fall, they know winter’s coming, so they feed up really heavy on bait fish, and the bait likes to migrate up into the back (of) the creeks and things in the fall.
“They’ll move back up shallow, and then in the wintertime, they kind of just chill out, and they just hang around and feed on bait all winter long until spring.”
Lake Murray was supposed to be a three-day tournament from Dec. 11-13, but heavy rain and mist shortened it to two. On Dec. 12, Gay caught five fish weighing 18 pounds, 12 ounces.
“I pretty much had to scrap everything that I learned at practice and just go fish the conditions, and I caught a lot of fish out of grass early,” Gay said. “There’s underwater vegetation and a lot of the fish were just hanging out around grass.”
Gay was in fifth place headed to Dec. 13 – but just a pound from first. His five biggest fish weighed in at 21-3 for a total of 39-15, a little more than two pounds heavier than runner-up Brock Bila’s 37-8.
Gay said bulldozers are his favorite piece of heavy equipment.
“When we’re pushing rock at Riegler, it’s fast-pace,” he said. “Your mind’s always occupied, and when you’ve got a lot of trucks on you and you’ve got a lot to do, it’s kind of like an adrenaline rush.”
Gay isn’t quitting his day job at Riegler; he said most professionals cannot rely on their winnings alone.
“You don’t really know when your next paycheck is,” he said. “So the way that you can quit your job and become a professional is strictly off sponsorship … You have to be cool and still perform under pressure.”
“So as soon as I nail down enough sponsors that gives me the ability to to quit my job and fish professionally, that’s what I’ll do, but at the moment right now, I do not have enough sponsorship.”