On a midwinter Saturday, you will find most students inside doing homework, watching a show, or entertaining themselves with a comfortable, preferably warm activity. But select others, like Ankeny High senior Tyson Rauser, are not. Tyson would rather spend his time sitting in a tent, maybe half a foot above shockingly freezing water, separated by only a four-inch thick sheet of ice. Here he will remain for hours, completely alone with his thoughts, waiting for a fish to catch interest in his hook. Tyson will repeat this process every day because he loves it. And on top of that, he is pretty good at it.

Backed by his numerous tournament wins, 13 years of experience, and collegiate fishing scholarship offers, Tyson has earned the title of a semi-professional fisherman at the age of 18. For all his life, and for the rest of it to come, Tyson will dedicate his time to improving his craft and turning the art of fishing into something so much more.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fishing,” Tyson said.

Tyson, like most prodigies, was taught and mentored into his craft by his family members from a very young age. His uncle taught his father how to fish, and together they mentored Rauser for years. Tyson’s father, Daryl Rauser, knows this best of all.

“Tyson has always been obsessed with fishing. I remember teaching him how to cast as young as five years old. His first fish was on a SpongeBob Squarepants rod. He loved playing in the minnow bucket, and he was never afraid of the fish or hooks,” Daryl said. “He had a knack for wanting to do it all by himself from a very early age, from tying knots, baiting hooks, and taking fish off to release.”

Eventually, Tyson went from fishing recreationally to entering competitions going into his first year of high school.

“During my freshman year, I didn’t know anything about tournament fishing, I was pretty novice. My first two tournaments I didn’t even catch a scorable fish, but my third tournament ever on West Okoboji, I caught the season big bass for them, and that was my moment,” Tyson said. “I got a trophy and it was a really big deal.”

Tyson carried this momentum onto his next competition and did not disappoint.

“The tournament after that was the final one of the year and it was miserable. It was two days, super cold, and no one was catching fish the first day. The second day I caught a fish that was slightly smaller than the tournament before, and I won that tournament too,” Tyson said. “Those moments might have been a little bit of luck, but it’s what hooked me.”

Throughout his early competition years, Tyson found companionship and another mentor in Ankeny alumni Darin Dash.

“A big way that I’ve learned everything I know is from the people around me, and it’s brought a lot of cool opportunities,” Tyson said. “I’ve fished with a lot of different people, but the best partner I’ve ever had is Darin Dash. We won the Iowa high school team championship together, and we smoked everybody. It was even on the news.”

Dash had also been fishing since he was young and had a similar love and passion for the sport as Tyson.

“I started fishing around 3 or 4 years old, and it just clicked,” Dash said. “I fished with a different guy for half of my senior year, then I partnered with Tyson for the last half, and it was a lot more fun with Tyson because he actually knows how to fish. My other guy brought Walmart budget reels, and I had to hand out a lot of tackle.”

Dash not only appreciated Tyson’s skill and experience, but also his unique personality and adaptability as a fisherman.

“It’s entertaining with Tyson because every now and then when he’s not catching anything, which doesn’t happen too often, he’ll start rummaging through his tackle box, putting together some weird stuff that I’ve never seen before. He gets really creative really quick,” Dash said. “He’s taught me a good amount of stuff too. There’s a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have thrown unless he was bugging me to do it the whole time.”

Tyson and Dash together have claimed a number of first-place finishes and were a powerhouse throughout their fishing season.

“Our Rathbun tournament is probably the most memorable. He’s just there fishing, minding his own business, and I’m getting snagged the whole time,” Dash said. “All of a sudden he yells, ‘Fish! Fish!,’ and his rod is completely bent in half. That fish set a club record.”

Winning tournaments and setting records are not easy feats. A typical fishing tournament begins at 5 or 6 a.m. and could last upwards of 10 hours. Teams are oftentimes randomly selected via lottery number for which order they embark upon the lake, usually already having certain spots in mind. Anglers race around the lake until the time runs out, and whoever has the heaviest weight combined out of all their catches, wins. What sets Tyson and Dash apart from the rest of the competition is their dedication and competitiveness.

“There’s a lot more factors to it than there should be, I mean there’s science behind it, barometric pressure, tides, high water, all sorts of stuff,” Dash said. “You almost have to run the equations through your head.”

While Dash is more analytical and by the book with his fishing, Tyson focuses on being able to adapt to any situation.

“It’s a mental sport more than anything. From a tournament perspective, it’s eight hours out on the water and you’re focused and concentrated,” Tyson said. “It could be a summer day, steaming hot, and you have to focus.”

Despite these challenges, Tyson has experienced consistent success since these tournaments, earning himself the title of vice president for the Iowa Youth Fishing League (IYFL). This attention has even acquired him multiple opportunities and scholarships to fish in college.

“I’ve had about three offers now, I’m looking at going to Wabash Valley Community College. They have a great program. It’s out of Mount Carmel, Illinois with their head coach Todd Gill,” Tyson said. “His son, Drew Gill, is a professional angler and he went through that program and it set him up for success.”

While Tyson is excited for the chance to fish collegiately, he is not so sure about a competitive future in fishing beyond college.

“I really like the competition. But I feel like when you go past collegiate, it becomes more of a marketing thing,” Tyson said. “You’re fishing and you’re selling products. A lot of these guys aren’t much better than the other guys. It’s who sells products, and who does good at their home lake.”

Rather than competing for the money or the fame, Tyson fishes simply because he loves it. He would rather spend his future years showing others the beauty he finds in the sport.

“In the future I see myself becoming a mentor, becoming a guide, and teaching others how to fish,” Tyson said. “It’s something that I thoroughly enjoy, it’s something that I like to do for fun, and I’d like to pass that on, like how it was passed on to me. My uncle is no longer with us, and he passed it on to my dad, who passed it on to me, and I hope I can pass it on to someone else.”

Whether he is fishing competitively or recreationally, Tyson loves fishing wholly and has made it a key part of his life.

“At the end of the day it doesn’t even matter if you catch anything. I always do, but it’s about the experience,” Tyson said. “I have one of these patches on my back-pack, it says ‘Do fishing not drugs,’ and I think that’s one of my life mottos.”

The only part of his high school fishing years he didn’t enjoy was the lack of opportunities that he could find to participate in the sport locally.

“High-school fishing is something I love, and I wish there were more opportunities at Ankeny for kids to do that. It would be great if they had a fishing team or a fishing club. Dash and I won the high-school championship for Ankeny, under Ankeny High School’s name, but the school doesn’t even accept that,” Tyson said. “I think fishing as a hobby is actually really growing, and especially growing as a sport. You have all these people, this new technology, and it’s something a lot of people picked up in 2020.”

This increase in popularity, and especially in advancing fishing technology, could even change the sport indefinitely. After seeing a massive uptick in fishing participation during COVID-19, fishing has seen consistent growth for the following years, amounting to over 52 million anglers as of 2021. The fishing industry has also seen massive growth, going from $689.33 billion in 2024 to $736.51 billion in 2025 according to the Business Research Company’s fishing global market report of 2025. Some argue that the recent changes in technology and participation are having impacts on the fish, causing them to adapt and act differently than normal.

“Fishing is all about the fish, and as technology advances and fish become more pressured it’s gonna become more difficult to catch fish. I don’t think it’s something we really need to worry about that much, but it’s an evolving sport,” Tyson said. “People will always find a way to catch fish. I think that’s part of the reason I don’t really want to fish professionally. A big part of it is that you do it for fun, and if it becomes too serious and you’re too hard on yourself, it really takes away from the experience.”

Tyson has grown with the sport and is eternally grateful for what fishing has done for his life, and what it can keep doing for him in the future.

“Some people argue that Bass fishing is not a sport. It’s a hobby. I would challenge anyone to go fishing with Tyson and you would think otherwise afterward,” Daryl said.

This story was originally published on The Talon on February 12, 2025.