After 15 years at Carlyle Lake, the Illinois High School Association [IHSA] Bass Fishing State Finals will be held at Lake Shelbyville this weekend.
The change comes after Carlyle Lake's hosting commitment concluded and bids were opened last year.
The host bid was prepared and supported by Shelbyville High School, the city of Shelbyville, Lake Shelbyville, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who oversee Lake Shelbyville, and several local community chambers of commerce. The five-year hosting commitment will encompass the state finals this year and in 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029, according to an IHSA press release.
Illinois Farm Bureau and COUNTRY Financial are sponsors of this year's tournament.
Ahead of the June 6-7 state championship, RFD Radio's Jim Taylor spoke with Shelbyville High School Bass Fishing Coach Greg Harkins about the change. You can listen to the full interview or read a lightly edited transcript of their conversation below.
HARKINS: I do want to point out some numbers first. I'm like, 'Holy cow, we're at 329 teams or schools participating in bass fishing, now.' It has just blown us away how much this has blown up and how popular it's gotten.
Kudos to the leadership at IHSA ... what a cool thing they're offering all of these high school kids — and it's expanded and it's growing. We just added a regional [tournament], so very neat and cool to see.
We thought with it expanding, growing the town of Shelbyville, we were really excited to put in a bid and try to get the state championship to Shelbyville.
TAYLOR: And you succeeded, so tell us a little bit about putting the wheels in motion and what led to the community and the school saying, 'Hey, let's try to go host this thing.' It's not easy to apply for these things and bid for these things — it takes some serious sweat equity, I know.
HARKINS: It sure does. We've had an awesome team behind the whole bid.
When we saw that their [Carlyle Lake] bid was ending and schools could submit bids, we said, 'Hey, we are very centrally located.'
We figured it made sense to take this state tournament, put it in the middle of the state. We've got teams coming from the north, the east, the west, the south, so it just made sense to get it right in the middle of the state for everybody to maybe alleviate some travel issues.
We just thought Shelbyville was such a great place because of our wonderful community. We have 3 million people who come and visit our lake every year — and of those 3 million people that come and visit our lake, it's a ton of fishermen.
We've got hotels to stay at. We've got bait shops. It's a little bit of an outdoor fishing community right here in central Illinois, so we said it only makes sense for us to host.
And nothing against Carlyle, but those fish congregated in very little areas where it makes for a very crowded high school tournament with boats on top of each other.
We were able to pitch, 'When you guys come here, these fish are going to be in all phases of the spawn. You're gonna have some spawners. You might have a few pre-spawners and there's going to be some post-spawn — which means it's going to spread out all these boats.' Whatever ... the kids' strengths are for fishing, they can go and do their strength.
Our lake offers so many different techniques you can do and it's going to spread out the boats, just making for a much smoother tournament, with all these boats not being on top of each other.
When you've got kids involved, the number one thing is a boat captain, or ... a fishing coach. Of course, you want your kids catching fish, but the No. 1 thing is you've got to be safe out there. And our lake sets up really, really well.
From a weather standpoint, one of the things that could get a little bit hairy down at Carlyle was if that wind started blowing, it got really dangerous out there. Our lake holds wind really well. It blocks it really well, which means we probably wouldn't have to postpone this thing or cancel this thing if there [were] high winds.
Between our community getting behind this, the lake offering good fishing, us being centrally located and us being able to keep all these kids on the water safely, we thought we would be a great host to this.
TAYLOR: You sold this thing to me. I know you're talking about just the state tournament series, but this is really a prime recreation area outside of just the sate bass fishing series, right? You can serve, kind of, as a tourism spokesman for Lake Shelbyville in that part of the state too, can't you?
HARKINS: Between camping, boating, fishing, hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding — There are so many neat things at Lake Shelbyville. And our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers here at Shelbyville do a fantastic job with our parks. We offer so much and that's why 3 million people come and visit this place every single year.
TAYLOR: So when you said, in the community ... 'Hey, let's go for this thing,' who was all involved in that effort?
HARKINS: First, I want to start with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They've been, from day one that we began this process, they've been all in on this. They've got a ton of man hours behind this.
Then you have our city council. City council was the same thing. They've gone around and pitched this to all the different restaurants in town and the restaurants have agreed to ... feed these kids. We're going to give them chamber bucks. [City council has] gone to all the different hotels, [asking], 'Hey, can we block off rooms?' So, it's just been a team effort to on their part. Once you get off the water, there's going to be kids that need to eat, go to get more tackle bait shops, tackle stores. And of course, they need a place to sleep at night.
We knew when it came [to] organizing this tournament, we were going to be all right just because of all the fishermen that we have involved with this. We've got [Windsor/Stewardson-Strasburg] and their program, which is a town right outside of Lake Shelbyville. You got Okaw Valley High School, they're involved with this. A bunch of coaches, too, around Lake Shelbyville came together and said, 'Hey, let's partner to get this thing here and work together to give a good tournament to showcase what we have.'
Then, on top of it, a shout-out to our Lake Shelbyville Fish Habitat Alliance.
This is a group of guys that were putting fish habitat in the lake, but they've kind of expanded to, 'Hey, yes, we put fish habitat in the lake, but also we want to offer our services to any youth to promote the future of fishing.'
So yes, a lot of work to put this on, but it's a lot easier when you've got that much manpower.
TAYLOR: I've covered this thing since its inception, back in the spring of 2009 and I remember when they first launched it ... there was a lot of tongue in cheek, 'Har, har, har. There's really going to be bass fishing teams in Illinois and you seriously can get a state trophy in bass fishing?' And if you fast forward to 2025, most people would say, 'Heck yes you can get a trophy in bass fishing and it means something — and it's tough to get.'
HARKINS: Yeah, isn't it crazy how far we've come? I always joke with my high school kids — I'm like, 'Where was this when I was in high school? This is awesome.' It's gotten to the point where they had IHSA listen to the coaches and said, 'Hey, we have to offer more, just because how much this has grown, because you have so many schools competing.' They recognized, 'Hey, we need to add in a regional week.' So this just continues to grow and grow and grow. Ehat's really neat is, obviously it grew substantially in the state of Illinois with IHSA making this a activity for the high school students, but you've seen it grow nationwide.
And Illinois, IHSA, they were the poster child for this and their plan was copied nationwide.
