Big Ten Championship - Brookville Lake, Indiana

Last week my buddies and I from the University of Iowa Bass Team competed in the 14th annual Big Ten Championship on Brookville Lake in Eastern Indiana. This is one of my favorite college events because we can bring upwards of 10 members to the event which always makes for a good time. It's also one of the oldest collegiate tournaments (if not the oldest), so its pretty cool being apart of it.

Since we were having difficulties finding boats for our team we ended up only bringing 8 guys to the event. It didn't hurt us tremendously because the format for the Big Tens allows you to only weigh-in your 3 best boat's fish from your team for a total weight. Even though we cut our team by two guys we still only had two guaranteed boats that we were towing to the tournament. We had to rent a 14ft aluminium boat with a 9.9hp motor for one of our teams during the 1st practice day. The 2nd day of practice was even more interesting when we had to jam 8 guys into 2 boats... better be careful with your backcast!

Practice for us on Brookville Lake was just plain tough to say the least. Over a total of 2 days with a combined 8 guys fishing, we only landed 3 keepers! Brookville Lake was tremendously clear in the mid to lower portions of the lake. And as usual with most reservoir systems, we found some dirtier water up in the northern end of the lake.

On practice day one we found water temps that ranged from 50-63 degrees depending on where you were on the lake. We started in the upper part of the lake on shallow stump flats throwing moving baits and pitching a little bit to no avail. We moved down lake and caught some short fish on a shakey head with a straight tail robo worm off of small main lake cuts. It was brutally tough trying to get keeper bites, we just could not figure out what to do differently. At the end of the day we moved back up to the northern part of the lake and my buddy, Chris, finally caught a nice keeper off a laydown on a shakey head, now I had a little confidence.

After getting back to the ramp we found out that one of our other boats didn't catch any keepers and our rental boat guys had actually caught a nice 18 inch fish, also in the upper portion of the lake. It was a tough day on the water, it was time to go back to the drawing board.

On the second practice day we started off fishing the dam on the lower portion of the lake. I had read many times of the plentiful population of smallies that were in the lake and thought that we ought to give them a chance. Within the first couple casts I hooked up with a keeper smallie on a craw colored wiggle wart crankbait. We continued on down a rocky bank adjacent to the dam and Chris caught another smallmouth on a finesse jig. Things were already looking better for us and I felt that we may have found something. Our other boat didn't land any keepers on the second practice day, but recorded a couple short fish. After two days of practice our game plan was to start out in the lower portion of the lake trying to catch smallmouth and then just adjust from there. Our tournament day started off on the wrong foot when one of the volunteer boaters for out team didn't show up. This left us once again having only three boats and having to split 6 guys between two boats. Me and my partner John were able to fish by ourselves for the day. After we got everyone situated with boats it was time for take off. The wind had died down nicely compared to the two previous days which made for a nice launch. I had boat number 2 and was able to get to the dam first. However, it ended up paying no dividends. We fished around the dam and the rocky bank close by for the first 2.5 hours with nothing to show for it. I told John that we needed to scrap the smallmouth plan and get to the northern end of the lake. The previous day while driving on the north end I spotted a good looking bank with a bunch of laydowns. The water was dirty and much warmer. We never fished the spot on practice, but I told John that we were either going to live of die in the north part of the lake. I felt comfortable fishing that type of water and decided we would just grind it out there for the rest of the day. Besides the smallies, the north end was the only place we could catch keepers and I didn't want to mess with a bunch of short fish in the middle portion of the lake.

We got to that bank I was talking about and we starting flipping and pitching reaction innovations sweet beavers. After about 30 minutes I hooked into our first bite, a keeper! Man, that felt good to get that fish. After fishing that bank for awhile without a bite I was thinking, "Jeeze, another failed college tournament..." but things were beginning to turn around. After about 15 more minutes I landed our second keeper! After going all practice with only catching 1 keeper myself, I was pumped! Since its a team tournament, we can call our other boats to give them updates. We called one of our boats over to the bank we were on and they were able to also score a keeper fish on a sweet beaver. Things were definitely looking better. The water water getting up to 65 degrees and I knew fish had to be moving up to the wood and laydowns. With that thought in mind me and John made another small adjustment and went back to the exact same cove and stumps that we fished first thing on the first practice day. The water had warmed up the fish had moved up! In the last 45 minutes I bet we caught close to 10 fish pitching around isolated stumps with sweet beavers. However, only one of them went over 14 inches. We caught a lot of fish that were 13.25, 13.75, just a little to short.

We fished down to the last couple minutes that we had with no more keepers. I really feel that if I would have given myself about 2 hours in that cove that we could have scratched out a limit. But I'm also glad that we had the sense of mind to realize that fish were moving up because it had been so hot that week. It was an adjustment that paid off.

After getting back to the launch and finding out our team only had a total of 4 fish I thought we didn't stand a chance in placing that high. I figured since we were catching them pretty good at the end of the day that most of the other teams were too. However, I was pleasantly surprised. My 3 fish weighed just over 4 pounds and our other boat that had one fish pushed our team total to a little over 5.5lbs. After all teams had weighed in we found out that we had enough for 2nd place! I was shocked. I knew that the lake was fishing pretty tough, but I didn't think it would be that tough for the other teams too. From what I've read and heard, Brookville is a lake that can be very difficult if you've never fished it before. Its very different than anything I had ever fished, but I felt most comfortable flipping and pitching in dirtier water around laydowns and stumps (so fishing you strengths really does pay off!).

Overall, even though the fishing kinda stunk, this was probably the best college fishing trip I have been on since I started fishing these things. The guys that went on the trip were awesome and made it that much better. I think we had some good team chemistry. Even though it was brutally tough in practice we persevered and got it done on tournament day which always makes the ride home that much better.