When Pam Martin-Wells and her sister were in elementary school, their parents would pick them up from school on Friday afternoons and head out. As in, way out to the middle of Georgia’s Lake Seminole, where they would spend weekends fishing and camping. But how could that little girl have known then that she would be able to make a living, build a career, from that thing that she loved to do most?
Martin-Wells is the most accomplished female bass angler of all time. She is the sport’s winningest female competitor and the only woman to reach the top 25 in the annual Bassmaster Classic, against a field of the top male competitors in the world.
Martin-Wells is the women’s tour’s all-time leading money winner, a five-time Angler of the Year and has been inducted into the Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame.
The native of Bainbridge, Ga., was headed down a more traditional sports route as a kid, playing basketball and softball, and competing in motocross racing until she was 22, when an injury forced her off the bike.
“I loved motocross and I was very good at it, but the older you get, the harder those falls get,” Martin-Wells, 50, said. “I injured my elbow and the doctors told me that I would need massive surgery if I didn’t quit. It was like fishing for me, I’d grown up doing it. I got my first minibike when I was 6. I’d been doing those two things forever.”
Not long after her forced retirement from racing in 1986, Martin-Wells stumbled upon a women’s angling event on the now-defunct Bass N’ Gals Tour at a lake near her home. She went down to watch.
“From very early on, it was my love,” Martin-Wells said. Read more….