National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship - Tournament

Tournament Day 1
The first day of the tournament greeted us with overcast skies after we had practiced three days with only sun. I didn't quite know what to expect. I knew that the weather would probably help our rattle trap bite, but thought that it might hinder our other patterns.

We started off the day throwing rattle traps in the 2-5ft range around smaller sticks that lined the bank. We moved through our first spot with no keepers, but continued down the bank. Finally at 8:30 Tyler caught a decent keeper on a Berkley frenzy rattle trap. I was overjoyed at this moment mainly because I have yet to weigh in a fish in a big college tournament. We continued down the bank and I caught a solid fish on a strike king red eye shad. He nailed it right at the bank, jumped three times, and managed to stay on. We now had 2 keepers in the box by 9:00 and things were looking way better than in 2007. However, that's where our keepers would stop.

We fished our marina pattern and our boat ramp pattern with no success. I couldn't believe it; well I could kind of believe it. We needed sun on those spots for them to produce. If the sun was out, the spots would move to the edge of the boat ramp slabs and we could catch them draggin plastics. We literally made one cast on two different boat ramps in practice and caught two keeper spots right away. So after a long afternoon, we manage only 3-4lbs and were stuck in 83rd place out of 100 boats. Not quite what I was shooting for. Some of the bags that were being brought in were nuts! I definitely underestimated the quality of the fish in Lake Lewisville.

One thing I would have done differently on Day 1 would have been to slow down. The area we fished in the morning had a couple other teams on it. One of them brought 16lbs to the scales... talk about a back breaker.

Tournament Day 2
On day 2 we had a better boat draw so we were able to get to our starting spot first. We picked up a couple small keepers before the other teams got there. I saw Tarleton State coming into the area and began to back off the spot. This was the team with 16lbs the first day and I figured they earned the right to fish it and had a better shot at making the top 5 than we did. However, I found out later that a different team ended up sitting on the spot most of the day and caught a couple 3-4lb fish. Too bad for the TSU guys, but I guess that's how it goes. We back over our starting spot again, but this time we started fishing the bigger/thicker wood outside of the sticks. Right away we began catching fish, but nothing that was big enough. In practice we didn't have a single bite on the big wood, but now they were on it.

We made a big run uplake to some other bigger wood after catching some on our first spot. As we were approaching the wood I was casting the red eye shad on a main lake point. I picked up our first keeper of the day which was a 13" spot. Nothing big, but a start. I then proceeded to pitch the wood with a ribbon tail worm t-rigged. I was getting bit on a lot of the trees that I was pitching to, but they were all 13"-13.75"...too small.

After running our marina pattern and boat ramp pattern again with no success, we just began to fish new water. I ended up catching about a 3.5lb fish on my red eye shad at about 12:00 and that's the last of the keepers we would see for the day. It turned out the be a tougher day in general for many teams. 14 team zeroed on day 2, so it made me feel a little better that we got two in the boat. We moved up 8 spots to 75th for the tournament. Its not the finish I had imagined, but we did do better than last year. I really learned a lot about fishing reservoirs and was able to talk to a couple local college kids that fished the lake quite a bit. They caught all their fish in the marinas and around the thick/bigger wood.

I feel that we were around the right areas, but just didn't capitalize or fish slow enough in them. However, getting to meet and talk to pros such as Kelly Jordan, Luke Clauses, Shawn Hoernke, Jeff kriet, and Tommy Biffle is something I will never forget. We also received so many perks from the sponsors of the tournament it was crazy. Free pair of frog toggs, ranger hats, $50.00 swiss army knives, free shirts, couple packs of the new biffle-o's...the list goes on and on. If we qualify for the championship event this upcoming spring/summer, you can bet that we will be back.