Logan Greeno is following his dream of being a professional fisherman, and he's taking the college route to reach it.
A junior in the fisheries and wildlife program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Greeno leads the Husker Bass Anglers as president and has since his sophomore year. The team became recognized as a club sport at Nebraska in 2022 and has quadrupled its membership under Greeno’s leadership, from about 15 to 65.
Members now compete in at least 15 national tournaments a year and bring home prize money in about a third of them. They are starting to earn recognition and respect nationally, but funds to compete for Nebraska are a constant challenge.
Most tournaments are in the South, where the lakes are big enough to support 250-boat tournaments and bass habitat. Anglers hauling their boats from Nebraska have to pay expenses like travel, lodging, food and registration fees. Each boat is allowed two anglers, and mileage to a tournament can run more than $1,000 per boat. The Husker Bass Anglers club tries to reimburse teammates for mileage.
The team receives about $4,000 a year from the university as a club sport and has stepped up fundraising, like Glow Big Red and business sponsorships.
"Glow Big Red is huge for us," Greeno said. "That's a good opportunity for the families to send in money."
While southern colleges known as "fishing schools" have fishing teams as big as their football teams and provide coaches, boats, and trucks wrapped with their university letters, as well as credit cards for expenses, Greeno said the Husker Bass Anglers and their families often bear much of the costs to compete in tournaments. They use their own boats. Greeno paid for the majority of his Nitro Z-7 in high school by detasseling corn and working at Hy-Vee and the local YMCA. His parents picked up the remainder as a graduation gift.
"It was my whole life earnings pretty much," Greeno said.
Then his father passed away freshman year of college. With two younger siblings and a single mom, Greeno has been simultaneously trying to pay for college and tournaments through work and scholarships.
He started his own business, Revived Bait Co., through the Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program at Nebraska. In it, he collects damaged plastisol lures in bins at tournaments, melts them down at home, pours the material into molds and sells the resulting lures. Besides recycling lures that would have lain in a landfill or polluted lakes, he saves fish that might otherwise swallow the lures but not be able to digest them.
His freshman year, he took part in the CASNR Change Maker Competition and won an award for his idea to introduce children with special needs to fishing. He and the Husker Bass Anglers held his proposed event, Casting to Make a Difference, at Holmes Lake with 30-40 children. The team then won an award for best philanthropy on campus.
Greeno has continued carrying out Casting to Make a Difference events and worked with a local church to introduce other children to fishing. He said his father and grandfather inspired him to serve as that mentor to children by taking him fishing as a young child before they both passed away.
"That was super hard, but that was even more of a reason to carry out this organization because I realized I was so fortunate to have them early in my life to get me involved in this," Greeno said.
He and the Husker Bass Anglers do have a few corporate sponsors, like Yeti Coolers, Strike King and Lew’s, who supply them with free gear for tournaments. Greeno has been seeking more. This year, he set up a system in which each team member must acquire three local sponsors. The system has three sponsorship levels, and businesses sponsoring the team get their names hoodies that team members wear everywhere.
"That has probably been the main contributor to all our funding," Greeno said.
Although professional fishing tournaments can pay out $100,000 or more for the grand prize, Greeno said college tournaments pay far less, barely covering expenses, and 250 teams compete for that purse. When college teams compete in major league fishing tournaments, checks are made out to the college, to go back to their club, he said.
Without a coach, Greeno carries a lot of responsibility for his team, like registering teammates for tournaments, booking Airbnbs and even shouldering risk and liability.
"It is different being at Nebraska than a lot of those teams down South," Greeno said. "But I think we're working in the right direction to still be able to compete, still win tournaments, still do really good, still make it to nationals, despite not being a fishing school."
Learn more about Glow Big Red.
