- [Ken] Is just that quest, man.

- It don't come from not working at it.

- Fish on.

- [Announcer] That's gonna give her the lead for the fastest.

- You never know what's underneath the surface.

- I definitely see a champion in my daughter's eyes.

- [Announcer] How about it for Charlie Sohrt?

- Some people will bass fish their entire lives and never catch a Double Digit.

- 'Cause I've put my whole life into this.

Not being able to do rodeo, it'd be the end of the world.

(dramatic and riveting music) (dramatic and riveting music fades) (no audio) (gripping music) (gentle music) (keyboard keys tap) (gentle music fades) (riveting music) - [Amber] She is very much made for this.

She dreams about it.

She works hard at it.

I definitely see a champion in my daughter's eyes.

Texas youth rodeos build character.

You win, you lose, you have ups and downs.

- It's a lot of work.

I've put my whole life into this.

(riveting music) I'm very competitive.

I like winning.

(riveting music fades) (crowd murmur drones) - [Amber] The Houston Invitational, they take the top 20.

It's a big event.

She's competed the past two years in the breakaway, but she's never ended up winning any of that.

- [Jamie] It'd paid probably 4,500 to win it.

That's a big deal.

- [Announcer] Well, here's the cowgirl, folks, I told you about.

Charlie Sohrt out of Manvel, Texas.

(tense music) (tense music fades) (birds chirping) - I am about to warm up my horse, and then I'm gonna pin calves, and then I'm gonna rope.

(upbeat music) - She started riding probably around two.

She got her first pony.

Santa Claus brought her first pony.

His name was Blue Duck.

And she started riding, and probably about four she really started riding a lot.

And when she was five, I think we took her to her first Youth Rodeo Series.

- Grab ahold!

- So we just, you know, got into it, you know, deeper and deeper and Charlie loves it.

(upbeat music) Rodeo is her true love.

(upbeat music fades) (birds chirping) - [Charlie] In breakaway roping, the goal is basically to go up there and rope my calf as fast as I can without breaking the barrier.

Two seconds is fast.

- Ride him, but don't put no pressure on him, okay?

(hooves thumping) - Keeping my tip down is something I've been working on.

But when you swing, you want your tip to be down around the calf's neck.

Thankfully, I have my dad by me or my uncle so they can just make sure everything is right.

- Her dad, he was a team roper.

When she was born, I think it was three weeks, we had her at a team roping with her dad competing, and I roped also.

Rodeo is our life.

These are pictures of when Jamie and Justin Atkinson split second in Vegas.

He split 212,000.

This was a big win for Jamie.

Honestly, I feel like this is all we know.

I mean, this is all we do.

It's a lot of fun and we really enjoy it.

(birds chirping) - So this is my trophy room.

This is one of my most memorable saddles.

This is from the Cowboy Professional Rodeo Association.

I won the All-Around in the breakaway and barrels.

- Charlie's very good.

At age 12, she's probably won at least 300,000, maybe, you know, little more, give or take.

- I won 4,560 on this one, 4,120 on that one.

Down there is 3,200, 4,100.

Here are all my buckles in here.

We kind of made a display of them.

(upbeat music) This is my All-Around buckle I won at the Cowboy Professional Rodeo Association.

This is definitely one of my favorite buckles.

This is my State buckle right here.

It's really special to me just 'cause I won State out of so many people.

I like to win.

- [Amber] Everybody wants to win, but the expense makes you to where if you don't ever win, I'm not sure you can afford to do it.

- We've got $200,000 worth of horses in the barn now.

- This is Jack.

He's four.

- Roxy, you're such a good girl.

Yes, ma'am.

You're a good girl.

Feed bills, vet bills, tires on the trailer, trucks, diesel, all our equipment.

Entry fees are expensive.

Last week, I think we probably spent anywhere from three to $5,000 just in entry fees.

You know, you really have to love it.

I don't believe you're ever gonna make money at it, even when you have your big wins.

It's very expensive.

I think if Charlie ever had to give up rodeo, it would not be a good thing.

It would be very hard and detrimental, you know, on her and our family.

- Not being able to do rodeo, it'd be the end of the world.

It's the center of my life.

(dog barks) - Charlie puts in that work to make it worth my time and my while and my wife's time to go out there and buy her the good things, give her the opportunity to win.

- She works very hard at it.

She practices almost every day.

- What do you want me to do?

- Maybe ride in more to the end, and then over in the circle, okay?

- [Charlie] Okay.

- Hard work pays off.

Everybody's like, "Oh, Charlie, she's got a whole room full of saddles, a house full of buckles, trailers.

How much money has she won?"

It don't come from not working at it.

It's hard work and determination of what you want, and that's goals and you go after them.

(hooves thumping) Forward!

That's good!

Good job!

Good job!

Now whoa.

Drive, drive, drive!

Yes, ma'am!

Good job!

- It's definitely a lot of work.

Cleaning stalls, saddling horses all day.

- She kind of decided that she wanted to homeschool so she'd have a little bit more free time.

She gave up sports and basically her school friends.

- Homeschool definitely, like, lets me do more rodeo, I would say.

Definitely have more time to practice.

(page flips) I am gonna practice tonight.

- The rodeo culture just kind of brings a lot of character to a person.

- Awesome practice today, okay?

- [Charlie] Thank you.

- We're gonna move it on tomorrow and hopefully do well, okay?

- Okay.

I'm proud of you, you had great practice tonight.

- [Jamie] I want you to track him.

- In '22, Jamie had a stroke.

And it's given us some challenges, but it's also made us realize that we just keep pedaling.

The most important thing is that Jamie, you know, he doesn't want this to affect Charlie.

- My dad is definitely one of my biggest supporters in life and he's just always been by my side.

- So that was probably my biggest motivation was knowing I had a little girl and she needed a father, so it did motivate me a lot, it helped me a lot to get to it.

- I say I'm a dad's girl.

I look up to him.

(door thumps) (engine humming) (gentle music) (gentle and tense music) (gentle and tense music fades) We probably see each other, like, every other weekend.

- Yeah.

- Maybe once every two weeks.

I mean, yeah, I wanna do the best, but if I win first, I want her to win second or I want us to tie for first.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we always want each other to do good.

- [Charlie] Yeah.

- [Announcer] Let's go to draw four, Charlie Sohrt out of Manvel, Texas.

- They're not gonna try and get away from you out there.

- Okay.

- Does that make sense?

Just be patient.

- But you gotta see your start before anything.

(soft, gripping music) (soft, gripping music continues) (hooves thumping) - Dang.

- [Crowd] Ah.

- [Announcer] Oh, that was a slick eye, kids.

There's gonna be no time on it.

Slick eye, Charlie Sohrt.

Draw five.

(hooves thumping) It'll be no time for Charlie Sohrt.

- [Charlie] I broke the barrier, I didn't see my start and I whacked the back of the head.

Definitely I have to work on patience.

- It doesn't always go our way, but it's the part of learning and developing that.

Rodeo's kind of got some ups and downs.

We don't always win every time we nod our head.

But if we can learn along the way, that builds our solid foundation and our run gets stronger from that.

- My runs today were not that good.

We wanna, like, leave the blocks too early and then- - We fudge everything.

- 10 seconds.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And the barrier was a little longer today, and the calves, some of them ran and some of them didn't, so it was a little trickier than normal.

(crowd murmur drones) (tense music) - [Announcer] Yeah.

(audience clapping) 2.16, folks.

How about it for Charlie Sohrt?

That's gonna give her the fastest time in round two and the overall fastest time.

(audience clapping) - Charlie did good today.

She won the second round in the 12 and under and made a really good run, got a great start.

That's a lot of what we've been working on is just really staying involved in the run right to the bitter end.

She's always got a great attitude.

She tries hard, has a great work ethic, and that's what it takes, right?

- When I win, it's definitely one of the greatest feelings, knowing that all your hard work paid off.

And when I lose, it's not the best, but, you know, you can't win all the time.

So then when I lose, I try to fix what I did bad that day and do it different next time.

I hope I get to continue pro-rodeoing in the future when I'm over 18, and, hopefully, win a world championship one day in the breakaway or the barrels.

(gentle music) - It feels good to pass it down to Charlie to see how much she works at it.

It's hard for me to find another kid that puts the time in.

I know I watch Charlie every day and see what she puts into it, and it makes me proud.

- And that's the enjoyment, you know, to see her grow, to see her win, you know, making these memories, and, hopefully, one day, you know, she'll make a career out of it or at least learn something, gain some values in life from it.

The wins, the losses, learning how to deal with all that.

We've come this far.

You gotta keep going.

You gotta keep turning the wheels and pushing through.

(riveting music) (riveting music fades) (pages flipping) (gentle music) - [Ryan] As a fisherman, you never know what's underneath the surface.

This story is about obsession and it's frankly about passion.

A lot of these anglers are going after something much rarer and much harder to land, and something that gives them bragging rights for a lifetime.

- They're getting bigger.

- I'm Ryan Krogh, and I wrote "Hooked on Big Bass" for "Texas Monthly."

(bird chirping) I grew up fishing in Minnesota, fished across the country, and I've always known that Texas was a hotbed for big bass, and I've always wanted to fish it.

When I moved here in 2020, I immediately started seeking out the places that I could go to, and that's one of the reasons that I came across this story is I was just looking for a place to fish.

As a fisherman, it's kind of natural that you wanna catch a big fish, and Texas is known for its big bass, for its largemouth bass, particularly.

For most anglers, catching a fish over five pounds is a big deal.

Catching one over eight pounds is better.

Catching one over 10 pounds is the fish of a lifetime for 95% of anglers.

That's kind of just the starting point for these big bass fishermen.

- [Jeremy] That is a freaking tank!

Yes!

- If you are part of this subset that wants to catch a giant, you have to put in the time and effort to do that.

(bright music) I came across Ken Addington by simply asking the question, who's the biggest fanatic when it comes to big bass?

- Yes, sir.

Gotta get my lucky hat on.

It's my lucky hat for tomorrow.

I'm a self-proclaimed bass snob.

That's a $1,300 rod and reel right there, and I've got about a dozen of them that are just like that.

Here we go.

Got it.

Fantastic.

You know, there's a lot of guys that'll pay six or $700 for a driver that are golfers.

Well, I pay $400 for a lure.

So, you know, it's just about your priorities and your obsession, I guess, you know?

- He only cares about catching bass over 10 pounds, Double Ds as he calls them.

- What would make tomorrow successful for us?

If we're fishing along and you just get this funny feeling that you're about to get bit by a really big fish, and if we get that feeling and we catch a fish of eight to 10 pounds, that would make tomorrow a total success to me.

If we don't catch an eight-pounder or better tomorrow, I don't consider it a success.

- Largemouth bass are fondly called the linebackers of the freshwater fishing species.

They are big, chunky.

They have shoulders.

They're really fun to catch.

(water splashing) - Oh my god.

- Please hold.

Please hold.

Yes!

(beep) (both laughing) - John, look at the gut on that dang thing.

Holy.

- The bass, like no other fish, when a bass strikes, the first thing they do, typically, is they'll jump out of the water.

It's just a feeling like none other.

- The event that really kicked off the big bass craze in Texas happened in 1986 when Mark Stevenson caught Ethel, which, at that point, was the state record bass in Texas.

He kept this bass alive in a live well, and that bass went on to become a celebrity in its own right, and that started what's called the ShareLunker program, and it's basically Texas's version of genetically modifying or encouraging the biggest bass they can in the fish that they stock into these lakes.

That was the moment that Texas became known as the Big Bass State.

- That's a giant.

- So you have to be a little bit crazy to chase these little green fish around the state.

You know, a bass is a living, breathing creature.

Just because you put your lure in front of a 12-pound fish doesn't mean they're going to bite it.

And, to me, that's the ultimate challenge.

- [Ryan] So, as a fisherman, you're always looking for the next spot that you know and nobody else does, and that's how I slowly found out about this underground current of private water with big fish.

- We are on our way to Valley Lake in Savoy, Texas.

Man, it's 1,100 acres of private water sitting right in the middle of about a 2,500 acre ranch.

(door beeps) (door whirring) I hope I brought enough stuff.

- I bet whatever you don't have, I have you covered.

- [Ken] All right, here we go.

- [Ryan] Texas big bass fisheries are primarily reservoirs.

Thousands of fishermen on a weekend will be out there.

But these private bodies of water, when you rent it, it's yours for the day.

You can be the only person on it.

And, add to that, these owners are grooming these lakes to produce big fish.

The chances you're more likely to catch a big bass at one of these lakes makes people wanna spend that money.

- Well, that's not the 10-pounder we're looking for, but it's a good start.

- Ken spends thousands of dollars, by my estimation, he will never quite tell you how much he spent- - Found it.

- On these jaunts to private lakes.

He has caught roughly four dozen, at the moment, bass over 10 pounds.

- New lake record, 15 pounds!

- Oh!

Are you serious!

- His largest was 15 pounds, caught on a private lake that charges anywhere from 1,500 or $2,000 a day.

Ken, I think, has been there 30 plus times.

He is obsessive, as all of the good largemouth bass fishermen are.

- Fish on.

Y'all got that harpoon ready?

(water splashing) This fish right here is about 3 1/2 pounds, so we're just looking for one three times that size.

Man, I tell you what, some people will bass fish their entire lives and never catch a Double Digit.

One of my good friends that I've known for 35 years, he has bass fished his entire life.

He caught his first Double Digit about a year ago, and it's not for not trying, you know?

- [Ryan] On public bodies of water, a lot of the fish that they're putting in there are coming from the ShareLunker program.

The private lakes don't have access to those offspring, so they need to buy and stock their own lakes with their own fish.

- My name's Justin DuBose, but a lot of my friends call me JD.

There's very few places you can go and expect to catch a teener.

- That's a nice fish.

- Yep.

- These fish are not natural.

You have to have kind of a ecological kismet come together to grow them this big.

- Well, if we were to start over from scratch and just do it from the ground up, I mean, I don't know how many millions and millions of dollars that would cost.

Lakes are cyclical, so, like, they go up and down.

So you'll have a really good, healthy population of fish that grow, they get big, and then they die off, you know?

And that other generation, depending on if there's drought, lake levels, vegetation, it depends on how good the quality of the fishery is.

- Nothing's a given.

You can drain a lake, and two years down the line, there's a drought and the lake never quite fills up.

And then, all of a sudden, you have a half-empty body of water that's stagnant and that's not producing any fish whatsoever.

It is a really risky proposition that is a gamble.

- Two at a time.

Mine's big, JD.

- Yours big?

- No.

- Not that.

Not that big.

- Let's turn around.

If you hold them closer to the camera, they look bigger.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- When I was guiding on Lake Fork, you know, in the late '80s and early '90s, you know, guiding is, it's hard on marriages, man.

And I'll tell you that, you know, it was the primary cause, one of the main reasons that caused a divorce.

Back then, I was not as considerate about being home when I should be.

I would be gone for maybe days at a time instead of hours, and it took its toll.

- Ken and I had a lot of conversations about why people spend so much money on bass, why they're so obsessive, why they potentially ruin their marriages over this, and he admitted it's like a drug when you catch a big fish.

And, from experience, I can tell you that it's true.

It gives you a high, for sure.

- [Ken] As each day goes by, your time here on Earth gets shorter and you just don't have that many opportunities.

- And he just wants that next high.

He wants that next 12-pound fish, that next 15-pound fish.

- Fish on.

- And so it never ends, but that's also the fun of it.

- The thing that keeps luring me back to the bass fishing world is just that quest, man, to catch a fish bigger than my personal best.

Huge.

This one's not quite six, JD.

Let's get outta here.

What are y'all doing?

No Double Digit, dadgummit.

(gentle music) Well, we didn't catch our Double Digit today, but every day's a new day and we'll be back tomorrow to try it again.

Not gonna stop us.

We're gonna continue every day till we catch the big one.

- [Ryan] Texas definitely has its fair share of passions that are unique and specific to Texas.

(riveting music) - You can't win all the time.

But knowing that all your hard work paid off, it's definitely one of the greatest feelings.

(riveting music) - [Ryan] It certainly takes passion and dedication, and even sacrifice, to pursue a lot of these sports.

(riveting music) - [Charlie] I've put my whole life into this, and it's just kind of made me, me.

(riveting music ending)