FREMONT — There was a friendly, loving, and amicable tug of war going on in the Gallagher household about 18 years ago. Mom wanted a voracious reader, a grammarian, and a skilled master of the language. Dad wanted a baseball player, a sportsman, and a fisherman who could finesse a bait through heavy cover and read the water like it was a Hemingway classic.
It turns out that they both won.
The son they raised is an education major who could very well end up teaching English, like his mom Heidi does. Or he might be a professional fisherman since he has the credentials to make a run at that career track. Either way, the Gallaghers reached an agreement to give young Grant the best of both worlds and then see where life might take him.
“My mom used to read to me all of the time, but I think my dad said that once I turned five, I was going fishing with him,” the Adrian College senior said.
Before that, Gregg Gallagher said he would have to sneak out of the house to go fishing since his little son would throw a fit if he couldn’t go along.
“Once we started going fishing together, he was in there from start to finish,” the elder Gallagher said. “One time — and he couldn’t have been more than six years old — there was a big nor’easter on Lake Erie, and I tried to convince him we wouldn’t catch anything, but he insisted on going. He could put trolling boards out at seven-years-old.”
Baseball was Grant’s main sport at Ross High School, where both of his parents are on the faculty, but fishing filled many of the available hours, especially during the summers when his dad was off from school.
“I was mostly a walleye fisherman before, but it didn’t matter if it was the lake, creek, pond, or a puddle — I would be fishing,” Grant said. “I always wanted to play baseball in college, but when a friend of my dad showed him a Blade article about Adrian’s bass fishing team, that was it. Fishing moved to the forefront, and it has stayed there.”
A family friend connected the Gallaghers with Adrian coach Seth Borton, and Grant was on his way to the Duke basketball of collegiate bass fishing programs.
“It was a big transition going from trolling for walleye on Lake Erie to the casting techniques used for bass fishing,” Grant said. “They are completely different but some things — the attention to detail, the ability to change on the fly — are the same. In the end, I think being a walleye fisherman helps you be a better bass fisherman.”
His first year at Adrian was a little rocky on the fishing front. Grant was always playing catch-up since most of his teammates had been focused exclusively on fishing throughout high school.
“He had to learn the ropes, because in high school Grant was playing baseball while those other kids were fishing in tournaments,” Gregg said. “The tournament fishing mindset is different, but he stuck it out, made the right adjustments, and he’s ended up loving it.”
Grant also benefitted from the advice and expertise of a trio of local anglers with a boatload of competitive experience — Lake Erie walleye pro Ross Robertson from Toledo, tournament bass fishermen Michael Simonton from Fremont, and Jason Root from Fostoria.
“I’ve been blessed because my dad and those guys have been so helpful, and they’ve taught me a lot,” Grant said. “Going into tournament fishing in college for one of the top bass fishing programs in the country can be pretty intimidating, so I took some lumps when I first got here, but I was lucky that there are experienced guys around who really want to help out a young guy like me.”
Borton said Gallagher initially struggled since there is a very steep learning curve before you can be competitive on the collegiate bass fishing scene, but he’s been very pleased with Grant’s evolution as an angler.
“He’s always had a quiet confidence in his abilities as an angler, and it's great to see him making the most of his opportunities this year,” Borton said, alluding to a recent top-tier Fishing League Worldwide tournament on the foreign waters of the Chesapeake Bay that Gallagher and fishing partner Ben Statly won.
“We were fishing the upper bay, which is a tidal fishery, and that is something totally different for us northern boys,” Grant said. “It took us a while, but once Ben and I got dialed in on how to fish that water we caught 20 or 30 bass, and quite a few of those came in an hour-and-a-half span.”
Gallagher and Statly, a native of Fenton, Mich., claimed first place in the Abu Garcia College Fishing event presented by YETI at the Chesapeake Bay by posting a five-bass limit of 18 pounds, 2 ounces. They beat the second-place fishing duo of Caleb Dachenhaus and Hayden Scott, also from Adrian College, who weighed in five bass that totaled 17 pounds, 3 ounces. Dachenhaus is an Anthony Wayne graduate and a sophomore for the Bulldogs.
Adrian flexed its bass fishing might at the event, with its two-man teams finishing in first, second, third, and fifth. The strong showing in Maryland, coupled with Adrian’s success in previous events this season, means 11 Adrian teams have now qualified for the National Championship event next March in Oklahoma. That represents a record number of qualifiers from one school.
“It is awesome to be a part of all of this, and to have great teammates like Ben,” Grant said. “I think the success we’ve had is a testament to our coach and his drive and competitiveness, and to the type of team we have. There’s a lot of good guys who are always building off of each other. The recognition we get is awesome, and I’m proud to be a part of this program. We’ll be in Kentucky or Tennessee on our way to a tournament, and people will see the Adrian name and recognize us as a top college team.”
Gallagher plans to graduate next spring, do his student teaching in the fall of 2021, and then ...
“In a perfect world, I want to do something related to fishing, maybe as a guide,” he said. “But I’ll consider whatever options are out there.”
Mom still might get that English teacher after all.
First Published October 24, 2020, 4:00 p.m.
