After the awards ceremony and still flying high, one of our competitors approached us and said “Man, y’all did great today; y’all beat some of the best fishermen in the state.”
I remember thinking to myself. “What a nice thing to say to a couple of clueless rookies.”
His name was John Ed Wilder III and from that day on, he was one of my dearest friends in the bass fishing world.
As the years passed, not once did John Ed and his team partner and my dear friend Jay Poore ever fail to go out of their way to say hello to me. As the years past, John and Jay also went on to set countless team tournament records, many of which will fall.
In 1992, I became the tournament director for the WON BASS Southern California Region and was blessed to build the region into the largest team tournament circuit on the West coast. I ran the region for 16 consecutive seasons, during which time John Ed and Jay won the region’s Anglers of the Year title an unprecedented eight times. But perhaps their greatest accomplishment, one which will never fall, is that they qualified for every WON BASS Tri-State Team Championship ever held from 1989 through 2009 - again, a feat that will never be beaten.
When I decided to hang up my microphone and retire from tournament directing after the 2008 season, I returned to fishing team tournaments in the So Cal area. So much had changed in the 16 years since I had last fished team tournaments - and not for the good. The camaraderie and friendship that had once been so very prevalent in the sport had all but vanished. It had been replaced with a vicious, cutthroat, “win at all cost” mentality and I have to say that were it not for a handful (and I mean like four or five) of the veteran teams that I had cut my teeth with that were still competing, I would have given up and walked away from the sport for good. And, of course, topping those very few remaining veteran teams were John Ed Wilder and Jay Poore, who even then continued to go out of their way at every tournament to say hi and to share “the secret handshake.”
Over the past year or so, I have drifted away from the sport but I shall always cherish so many great memories from my 30+ years of competitive bass fishing; many of which include John Ed, Jay, Dennis Taylor, the Vandenburgs, and so many others - all of whom I will always considered my extended family.
When I received word that John Ed had passed away earlier this week, a very huge part of me passed away with him. Without question, the single-most difficult part of growing old is losing friends who have been so very important to us and meant so much to us throughout our lives. For me, John Ed Wilder is one such person. And even though the pain and sorrow that I and many of you are experiencing right now with John Ed’s sudden passing, I am so very grateful and so very blessed to have shared so many great times and memories with him and to have been his friend.
God Bless You, John Ed - I will dearly miss you.
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