Country singer Terri Clark says her own band has joked she might need therapy for her fishing habit, which includes practicing knots on the tour bus between shows. She’s about to get a chance to put that passion to the test alongside some of the best anglers in the sport.
On Sunday, the Grand Ole Opry member will take part in The Champions Celebrity Pro-Am on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville, sharing a boat with a professional bass angler. The event caps a three-day championship tournament featuring 60 top anglers competing for a $3.25 million purse.
Clark, who has spent years fishing Lake Erie, told OutKick OutDoors she blames Instagram for fueling her habit — she can’t scroll past a video promising the “strongest fishing knot known to mankind” without trying it herself.
“My band is just like, ‘You can get therapy for this. There’s a problem,'” Clark said.
Despite her reputation as a skilled angler, Clark says she doesn’t expect to outfish the professionals on Sunday.
“Everybody thinks I’m such a great fisherwoman. I’m like, they have no idea the level that these guys operate at. I mean, they’re professionals. They make a living doing this,” she said.
She said the pros have to adapt to unfamiliar lakes and study underwater terrain, while she has the advantage of knowing her home waters. “I’m going to be taking a master class in bass fishing, which will be super fun,” she said.
Clark is especially curious about fishing electronics. She owns a Humminbird MEGA Live 2 system but hasn’t installed it on her own boat, saying she doesn’t want to spend the day staring at a screen. Still, she joked that if the lesson reveals good spots on Old Hickory Lake, she might come back later in her kayak.
The One That Got Away — For Now
While the Nashville tournament is on her mind, Clark said she’s still chasing a bigger goal: landing a musky over 50 inches. She recently returned from a fall trip to Lake Erie hoping to catch one, but strong easterly winds and unusually warm water delayed the fish’s typical fall movement, keeping her off the water for much of the trip.
“I’m gonna get one though. I’m gonna get one,” Clark said.
She’s even considering trying for musky closer to home on Tennessee’s Caney Fork River.
Lake Erie remains one of her favorite places to fish because of its mix of species — she’s caught bass, northern pike and walleye there, sometimes in the same outing. In 2022, she landed a 16-pound northern pike memorable enough that she had a replica made for her wall after releasing it.
One of her favorite recent memories on the water, though, belongs to someone else. Over the summer, Clark took comedian Kathleen Madigan fishing on Lake Erie, where Madigan landed a personal-best five-and-a-half-pound bass.
“The fish was bigger than Kathleen,” Clark laughed. “When they get something big and they get excited, it’s just as exciting as if I caught it myself.”
Madigan is also set to compete in Sunday’s Pro-Am.
Zoned In
Clark describes fishing as meditative, but she admits she approaches it with intensity. “I will dehydrate myself because I won’t even stop casting long enough to take a drink of water,” she said. “I’m so zoned in on it.”
She’s had pike leap out of the water beside her boat and has cut her hands badly enough to need bandages while fishing. She keeps multiple weather apps on hand to track conditions on Lake Erie before heading out, and even while touring, she tries to fish on days off — though never on show days, for fear a boat breakdown could make her miss soundcheck.
Beyond the catch itself, Clark said what keeps drawing her back is the time outdoors. She recalled watching the sunrise over Lake Erie at 6:30 a.m., with the water completely still, and being moved to tears by the moment. “It’s almost like you’re part of nature’s heartbeat at that time, and I don’t know a better way of putting it,” she said.
She hopes more women and young girls will discover that same experience, saying, “I think that we need more female anglers out there.” Her advice for beginners: find someone knowledgeable to learn from, start with basic gear, and don’t overlook the simple wacky rig, which she says still reliably catches bass.
Clark’s remaining bucket-list items include headlining Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre and finally landing that 50-plus-inch musky. Asked to choose between the two dreams, she wasn’t having it: “Don’t ask me though if I had to choose Red Rocks or the musky. Don’t ask me which one.”
