Cooper Gallant’s mom had some perfectly reasonable advice for her son as he chased a career in professional bass fishing.
Have a backup plan.
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“My parents always asked me — especially my mom — she’s like, ‘You better have a Plan B, because if this fishing thing doesn’t work out, you’re going to be in trouble,'” Gallant told OutKick OutDoors during a recent trip to Table Rock Lake.
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“But I didn’t have a Plan B. It was always Plan A.”
Cooper Gallant is a four-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier. (Courtesy of Monster Energy)
Fortunately, Plan A worked out pretty well.
Gallant, now 28, just wrapped his fourth season on the Bassmaster Elite Series, has qualified for the Bassmaster Classic every year since joining the circuit and has collected six Elite Series Top 10 finishes along the way. The Canadian also owns a Century Belt, awarded for catching at least 100 pounds of bass over four days of competition.
OutKick OutDoors recently went bass fishing with Cooper Gallant. Check out what we caught:
But there were a whole lot of miles — and quite a few nights spent sleeping in a truck — between deciding this was what he wanted to do and actually getting there.
“I think I lived in my truck for like three years,” Gallant said. “I slept in the front seat of my truck or in the back. I put a mattress in there, and we grinded it out really hard for quite a few years and just kind of worked our way up the ranks.”
The dream started early
Gallant grew up in Bowmanville, Ontario, and caught his first bass when he was about 5 years old.
By 12 or 13, fishing had become something more.
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He joined a local club through Ontario B.A.S.S. Nation, where being the kid in the group actually came with an advantage: He could climb aboard with experienced anglers and start learning from them.
“I’d hop in guys’ boats that were fishing the program, fishing the B.A.S.S. Nation tournaments,” Gallant said. “So that allowed me to get in the boat with a lot of really cool people, a lot of really good fishermen at a really young age. That’s where it all started.”
Cooper Gallant said there was no “Plan B” when it came to pro bass fishing. (Courtesy of Monster Energy)
The Bassmaster Elite Series quickly became the goal.
“I’ve been doing it ever since. We’re loving it. We’re having fun,” he said. “We’re fishing on the Bassmaster Elite Series, which was the dream since I was probably 12 years old — ever since I knew what it was.”
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Gallant is quick to credit the people who let a young kid tag along.
“It feels like yesterday I was 12, you know, chasing this dream,” he said. “But the reason I’m here is because of those people who took me fishing throughout Ontario B.A.S.S. Nation — friends, support from fans, sponsors. Without that, I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
One day he realized this could actually be a job
Gallant remembers the tournament that changed the way he looked at fishing.
In 2014, he traveled south to compete on the St. Lawrence River in what he remembers as his first major tournament in the United States.
They won. And the scale of tournament fishing in the U.S. caught his attention.
“We have a lot of big tournaments back home in Canada, but it’s much bigger down here,” he said. “You’ve got bigger fields, bigger payouts. And after we won that, I’m like, ‘Man, this is so cool.'”
Bassmaster Elite Series pro Cooper Gallant hit the water with OutKick OutDoors on Missouri’s Table Rock Lake. (Amber Harding Snyder)
As Gallant met more people in the industry and began learning how the business worked — including the sponsorship side of professional fishing — the childhood dream started looking like something he could actually turn into a career.
“When I realized, like, yeah, people can do this for a living and fish tournaments, I was all about it,” he said.
So he went all in.
Plan A pays off for Cooper Gallant
Gallant came painfully close to reaching the Elite Series in 2021, finishing fifth in the Northern Opens Angler of the Year standings when only the top three anglers earned Elite berths.
A year later, he broke through.
Gallant fished all nine Bassmaster Opens in 2022, won the Southern Open at Cherokee Lake and ultimately finished second in the overall Opens Angler of the Year standings and third in the Southern Division — enough to earn his invitation to the 2023 Bassmaster Elite Series.
He has been there ever since.
The next goal for Cooper Gallant is to win an iconic Bassmaster blue trophy. (Courtesy of Monster Energy)
And reaching the circuit he dreamed about as a 12-year-old hasn’t exactly made him less ambitious.
“The goals are always to win, obviously — win a blue trophy,” Gallant said of what he’s chasing in 2027. “The goal next year is to win a blue trophy on the Bassmaster Elite Series, Angler of the Year and, obviously, make the Bassmaster Classic. There’s always three goals going into every single season, and hopefully we can knock at least one of those off the list next year.”
He’s still waiting on that first Elite Series blue trophy.
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But four seasons into a career at the level he dreamed of reaching as a kid, Gallant can say one thing for certain about ignoring his mom’s perfectly sensible career advice:
“I’m lucky it all ended up working out.”
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