On August 16, 2009, Chad Griffin won the last Bassmaster Elite Tournament of the 2009 season on Lake Oneida in New York.  Chad became only the third angler to win a Bassmaster Elite tournament in their rookie season.  On day one, Chad was concentrating on largemouth under heavy grass mats with a 1-1/2 Ezee Grass Jig “Conroe Craw”, and tipped with a “Sprayed Grass” Sweet Beaver. He caught the largest bass of the tournament, a 5 lb. 8 oz. lunker, on that combination.  Day two was more of the same along with catching some small mouths.  On day 3 and 4 mostly small mouths were caught as the largemouth bite waned.  No doubt the early success with the Ezee Grass Jig helped to propel him to victory.

Chad’s path to the Bassmaster Elite Series is unique.  He was born and raised in Alaska and moved to Texas after graduating from high school.  When Chad moved to Texas he did not come with any bass fishing experience but did come with plenty of fishing experience.  He started fishing when he was three years old in the streams of Alaska.  His grandparents traveled to Alaska numerous times spending the whole summer at Deep Creek on the Kenai Peninsula.  Chad was there most of the time catching king salmon, silver salmon, pink salmon and steelhead.

So when Chad moved to Texas in 1995 he was eager to match his skills against the largemouth bass.  He found he could catch them but not consistently in different conditions and he wanted to figure it out.  So he just worked hard at it when not working or going to college.  In 1999 he began to enter bass tournaments in Granbury, Squaw Creek and other lakes in the area.  In 2000 he fished in the Angler’s Choice Pro Am Division as a non-boater and won the co-angler Angler of the Year award.  The next year he moved up to the boater’s side and fished in the Cowboy division of the BFL and some TTT tournaments.  He has been fishing those every since plus the Stren (Everstart) and in 2007 added the Bassmaster Opens.  All total he has fished in over 100 tournaments in these named  series.
Modifying lures and designing various styles and colors of jigs to match what the bass like to feed on comes natural to Chad.  His granddad, M. J. “Mutt” Plummer was a renowned bass fisherman in West Texas from the early 1940’s into the early 1980’s.  Mutt made hundreds of jigs and lures, many of them hand carved and many of them very innovative.  When Chad could not find exactly what he was looking for he began to make his own jigs creating new color combinations and started selling them in 2005 as other fishermen saw them and asked him to make some for them.