Karyn Otta Sanchez ’01 finished among the top 10 co-anglers in the 2007 FLW fishing tour, a feat accomplished by a woman only once previously.

The FLW tour is a series of bass-fishing tournaments held around the country. Competitors accumulate points at each tournament, and at the end of the year a championship tournament is held. Eighty-one co-anglers, or amateur competitors, participated in the three-day tournament in Hot Springs, Ark., and Sanchez finished ninth, taking home a prize of $3,500.

Sanchez, who lives in Midlothian, began fishing as a tot. Her dad would take her out on Lake Arlington, and she was 4 when she caught her first catfish in the White River in Arkansas. She didn’t start fishing for bass, though, till she married husband Davey Sanchez.

The couple began participating in fishing tournaments, but found spending all day together on a boat could lead to rough marital seas, so she became a co-angler, the person who sits in the back of the boat – and pays lower entry fees and wins lower prizes – in 2006. There were about 400 co-anglers on the tour and only six women. Sanchez did well and in 2007 Wal-Mart agreed to sponsor her. She did even better in 2007, and was the only woman to qualify for the championship tournament. Wal-Mart continues to sponsor her and she’s picked up some other sponsors.

Now her husband is her manager and she’s angling to go pro in what can be a surprisingly physically challenging sport.

“It takes a lot of your core and a lot of your back muscles to maintain your balance all day on a boat,” she said. “Still, it’s a sport in which women, in theory, can do as well as men.”