The six-angler team that will represent the United States next month at the 19th edition of the World Black Bass Championships in South Africa will be a mix of savvy veterans and emerging stars. According to coach Kevin VanDam, who hand-picked the squad, it also contains a big dose of the unquantifiable but highly sought team sports concept known as “chemistry.” VanDam, the sport’s all-time winningest competitor, took on his role with USA Bass late last year. The Sept. 4-6 event at Arabie Dam in Limpopo, South Africa will be the team’s first under his watch.

The team will be split into three duos who’ll fish together each day. Those pairings will consist of Jacob Wheeler and Kyle Welcher, Scott Martin and Logan Parks, and Ott DeFoe and Drew Gill.

“I think we’ve put together a really strong team,” VanDam said. “International competition has gotten really good, but I expect our guys to do exceptionally well and we expect to win. For the rest of the world, the biggest bullseye is on Team USA, but our expectations are high and we’re pretty confident that we’re up for the task.

“Our team has a lot of experience, and also some younger guys who are really good anglers. One of the things that (USA Bass) came to me for help with is chemistry, and that’s a big factor. When you put two guys together in a boat, they have to complement each other.”

He noted that the nature of international competition is in direct contrast to the manner in which tour-level anglers normally operate. “All the guys have fished some team tournaments for fun and whatnot, but usually they’re a one-man show and they’re used to keeping things secret. In this format, being a six-man team, there can’t be any secrets.

“From watching the MLF Team Series, one thing I noticed that really hurt certain teams was not really giving each other the most detailed information. That’s something I’m stressing – we have to communicate all the details and the intricacies we’re seeing. Telling somebody is not the same as showing them. The more info everybody gets, the faster they can learn and understand.”

The list of individual accomplishments for Team USA’s veteran contingent is lengthy: Wheeler has been the top-ranked angler in the world for more than half a decade; Martin has an FLW Championship and Angler of the Year title on his résumé; DeFoe is a Bassmaster Classic champion and Welcher has won a Bassmaster Elite Series AOY. Martin has extensive international experience, having captained the American squad in several events, and Wheeler was a headliner on some of those teams. As for the younger competitors, Gill was the runner-up in the Bass Pro Tour points last year and is third this season, and Parks won the Bass Pro Shops U.S. Open million-dollar tournament with fellow Elite Series angler Tucker Smith when both were students at Auburn University in 2021.

The competition will be preceded by three days of practice on Arabie Dam, a 3,200-acre impoundment on the Olifants River known for surrendering big bags (five-fish limits weighing in excess of 30 pounds are possible). It’ll be springtime in that part of the world and fish will be in the prespawn/spawn phase. “It’s a quality fishery,” VanDam said. “It has timber and rock, but really not much grass. It’ll probably fish a lot like the lakes in Mexico.

“It’s really pretty straightforward and it’s much smaller than the lakes our guys are used to competing on. One of the things we’ve already talked about strategy-wise is handling the (angling pressure). All of these guys are exceptional with electronics and that’ll be critical for finding the needles in the haystack.”

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