“Back in high school, my coaches, my football coach, my baseball coach, my Dad, they always told me: If you can get up, get up. Don’t just lay there. And I think that mindset took over,” said professional fisherman Wes Logan.
Logan was zipping across the open water of Lake Champlain at 50-plus miles per hour when he struck a submerged object that ripped the motor off and threw it into the cockpit of the Skeeter he was piloting on day 2 of the 2024 Lake Champlain Bassmaster Elite tournament. The impact caused the boat to spin around, and Logan’s head smashed into the gunwale. The incident probably would have been much worse, but the motor LEASH did its job and prevented Logan from getting chewed up. Still, the ensuing injuries would require more than few stitches to fix, and the broken bones will likely take months to fully heal.
Most people would have called it a day after being carted to the hospital, but not Logan. After explaining the ins and outs of professional bass fishing to the hospital staff, they rallied around Logan, and worked double-time to get him back out the door and on the water. They conducted some CT scans, put a dozen stitches in his forehead and a bunch in his jaw as fast as they could so the Alabama native could get back to the tournament.
Back out on Champlain, he caught the fish he was after. Logan ended the day with a 5-fish bag weighing just under 16 pounds, a good showing any day but even more impressive when you consider his injuries. Though he didn’t make the cut for the next round, that last fish will help him in the point system toward the 2025 Bassmaster Classic.
There’s no rest for the weary, and Logan was out fishing in the Elite Series event at the St. Lawrence River only three days later. That’s next level tough.
THE TENACITY OF WES LOGAN
“Well, the soreness is about the same, ribs are about the same, headaches have kind of slowed down a little bit. So that’s a plus,” Logan told Wired2fish when we caught up with him a little over a week after that fateful day, and he was still feeling the effects. It would be understandable if he took a couple of weeks off, but Logan needed to get back in the saddle. Not for himself, but for those that help make his professional fishing career possible.
“I knew pretty quickly, once I got my bearings, I had a bad, bad cut on my head. I could feel how wide and deep it was, though obviously I couldn’t see it. I had some rags in the boat, so I grabbed them and started putting pressure on it,” Logan said. Despite the obvious gash, his first thoughts centered around getting back to fishing. “Then I got my phone started calling; called the tournament director, called my wife, let everybody know what had just happened. I was trying to come up with a game plan; get somebody out there to come get me. It didn’t really matter who. I’m just thinking ‘I just got to get back out and get back fishing. I’ve got four, I just need to catch one more. Even though it’s been a tragedy, I can still make up for it, if I just get to go back fishing.’”
Once he got back to the boat ramp, emergency personnel let him know just how bad his injuries really were. They made it clear that they couldn’t slap a couple bandages on him and send him on his way. So he got into the ambulance and headed for the hospital, but kept his thoughts on the tourney—and those that helped make it all possible.
“Obviously I love to fish; I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t love it and have a lot of passion for it. But all I could think about as soon as I got hurt and when I was in the ambulance was that I had to get back out there, because of all the people that have poured all the support into me, that wanted me to get to the Classic and wanted me to do good. I didn’t want to let them down,” said Logan.
“And I knew, if I could just get back out there and catch one more, it would save the Classic points and all of that great stuff that we worked so hard all year for. It’s not a one man deal. You can’t do this without a support group, and all I could think about was not letting them down.”
That kind of passion and drive is infectious, and it quickly spread to the hospital employees that set to work on Logan. “When we got to the hospital, I’m talking with the doctors and the nurses. They had no idea about any kind of bass fishing, professional fishing, anything like that. I gave them a quick rundown. I told them I just need one more fish; I’ve got four. And so they kicked it into overdrive. I couldn’t be more grateful to them, because they just kind of stopped what they were doing. A couple of them missed their lunch break to get me patched back up and get me out of there as quickly as possible.“
Against all odds, Logan made it back on the water with about an hour left. He connected with that fifth fish, and made it to the weigh in on time. But perhaps more impressively, he didn’t stop there. The next morning, he got on FS1 with Dave Mercer. Then, he worked the Yamaha booth, followed by the tournament on the Saint Lawrence where he caught enough to make the Classic before finally making the 20 hour drive back home.
“Everybody’s kind of been saying, I can’t believe you kept going like that. Well, it didn’t kill me. I’m still able to move around a little bit. I have obligations, and I’m going to be there.”
MOTOR LEASHES ARE EFFECTIVE
“I’ve had a motor LEASH on my boat for about five years, and that’s obviously the first time I was really glad I had it. I fish a lot of shallow stuff, so I put it on my boat in case I hit something running way in the back somewhere. I didn’t ever dream I was going to be in the middle of Lake Champlain, and hit something,” said Logan about the device that kept the 250 horsepower Yamaha from doing further damage.
Precision Sonar says their LEASH is to ‘to an outboard motor what a seat belt is to a car.’ The device surrounds the motor, and reduces the risk that it will flip into the cockpit should you end up hitting something. Apparently, they work as advertised.
