About Our League

The GreenHorn Bass Tour (“GHBT”) was established in 2008 by Mike Anderson of Forest Lake, MN with Co-Director Chad Strowbridge.  Prior to the establishment of GHBT, Mike ran a tournament trail with USA Bassin’. He had previously fished other tournament trails in the Forest Lake area, but became discouraged with the poor sportsmanship and disrespect among anglers.

 

Mike was a ”greenhorn,” just in it to have a great time and learn to be a better fisherman. The tight lipped and cut-throat mentality among these other leagues was frustrating. He was not learning and not having a good time.  He soon decided to take things into his own hands and created a league for the “greenhorn” angler.

Mike contacted the USA Bassin’ Tournament Trail to get things started. Mike's division of the league was geared toward the angler who wanted to learn and have a good time while still gaining competitive fishing experience. He implemented a discussion at the end of each event where the top finishers from the event must discuss the techniques they were using to catch the fish. With this strategy even the anglers that finished last and next to last benefited from the weigh-in. Not monetarily but through learning and understanding. The anglers who didn't catch-em could now compare their techniques against the techniques used by the winning anglers. 

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The league stayed with USA Bassin’ for a couple of years, but this league didn't satisfy Mike and the league members because it was not 100% payout. Some of the tournament fees had to go straight to the USA Bassin’ national headquarters to support things such as their final Classic Tournament.  The Classic Tournament always took place in the south on lakes such as Douglas Lake in Tennessee.  The GreenHorn community wasn’t interested in traveling these great distances to fish the USA Bassin’ Classics.

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The GreenHorn Bass Tournament Trail was born! Mike and Chad decided to break away from the formal league format of the USA Bassin’ tour and started the GreenHorn Bass Tournament Trail in 2008 and the Trail has thrived ever since.  All anglers benefit from the GHBT and the members have grown from a one technique, "Let's cast a spinnerbait at every shoreline and we will win it!,” type anglers to anglers who have learned and grown from their GHBT experience. These anglers have learned to listen to the fish and catch fish using techniques that match the conditions.

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Mike stepped down as tournament director at the end of the 2010 season to spend more time with his family. New anglers who grew straight from Mike's vision stepped up to lead the GHBT. Andrew De Kock took over the GHBT  starting in the 2011 season.

 

Andrew developed nearly all of his bass fishing skills directly from his learning in the GHBT.  Andrew joined the league after he finished college and moved to Minnesota from Iowa.   Andrew used to fish small Iowa lakes and farm ponds and thought he was a great fisherman until he moved to Minnesota.   The un-pressured ponds and lakes of Iowa made it easy to catch good numbers of big bass. After moving to Minnesota, Andrew spent all of his money, and a lot of the bank’s money, to get a bass boat. He thought he could really fare well against any angler.  During Andrew's first two seasons in the GHBT he consistently finished in the BOTTOM 3. Fourteenth out of sixteen boats was a decent finish!

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"Well at least we didn’t get last!” Andrew would say, even though a last place finish did happen on a few occasions. Mike's vision of the GHBT shined through. In Andrew's third season with the GHBT he managed a third-place finish and several finishes in the top-half. This was all based off of the learning developed through the discussions with the top anglers at the end of the tournaments.  In the 2010 GHBT tournament series Andrew was able to finish in 4th place in points for both the weekend and weeknight series events. In 2012 Andrew won his first bass tournament event ever on N/S Center lake.   In 2013 Andrew and his co-angler Pete Wolf won the GHBT Tournament of Champions on White Bear Lake.  "Thank's Mike for putting the GHBT in place to allow me to learn the winning ways to become competitive in the sport of Bass fishing!" 

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With a “Can-Do” attitude and a couple of years experience, you too can become a competitive angler.

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For questions or discussions related to the GHBT and/or how you can become a great Bass fisherman, please join us!