RAT History

A Brief History of the RATs

Way back in 1987 two intrepid anglers entered the 3rd Annual McDonalds Big Bass Classic held on Lake Sam Rayburn each April. They entered this tourney all "bright eyed and bushy tailed" with every intention of bringing home the big prize. Sadly it was not to be. Over the next several years they were joined by family first then close friends, each and every one with the intention of winning it all. At one point RAT Central was home to somewhere around 35 anglers. Alas, only one of our legion even weighed a fish in and he did it more or less for the novelty of actually doing it. As the years passed, tourney officials continued to increase the fee for fishing in their tourney. They also put in rules making it harder and harder for our intrepid anglers to continue in good faith. Sitting around camp in 1997 an idea was hatched. Why in the hell should we keep supporting all those other anglers when we could just as easily support ourselves? We dubbed ourselves the Renegade Anglers Tour and RAT was born. Its sole purpose was to see to it that someone from our group won along with showing our disdain for Big Bass. We wrote our own bylaws which dealt with putting our own tournament together. It worked out great. Our first tourney was held in 1998 and was a great success. This year (2006) will mark our 9th tourney and I don't know of any RAT that does not look forward all year to RATASS (Renegade Anglers Tour Annual Spring Summit). We have not missed Big Bass and have no intention of ever returning. If you are lucky enough to be invited (it is invitation only) to join us at a Summit, you should beat down the "Gates of Hell" to make it. Below I will attempt to list the names of people who have been associated with the RATs over the past 20 years. They are not in any particular order, just whichever order I thought of them.

Tom "Catfish the Younger" Hooper

Tim "Killer" Hooper

Tracy Hooper

Torey "WoJo" Hooper

Mack "the Elder" Hooper

Trey Hooper

Garrett Williams

Grant Williams

Jim "Bass Assassin" Largent

John "Cappy" Largent

David "Catfish the Elder" Shepherd

Steven "Shep" Shepherd