B3: National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship

I just got back from Texas a couple days ago after a fun, but at times stressful, week. The trip down to Lake Lewisville took us 14 hours, but most of it went without a problem. I traveled down with my fishing partner (Tyler) and one other car that had another 2 person team from our school. We got down to the lake, got our licenses that night and went to bed exhausted.

Day 1 Practice:
In the first hour of practice I was already having better success than in 2007. We found some good areas and covered a lot of water. We fished the main lake and also ran all the way up the lake into the muddy water. We focused on the western part of the lake and were able to eliminate a lot of water.

Day 2 Practice:
On this day we focused on the eastern part of the lake and once again ran a lot of water. We were able to expand on what we found the day before and also figured out another pattern that was actually working in 2007. We also began to have boat motor problems on this day which was a real drag. That night we spent time with Mark Gintert from The Bass Federation in a parking lot working on my fuel lines and fuel filters until about 11:00pm. It was a god send that Mark helped us out that night, unfortunately we would find out we hadn't solved the problem.

Day 3 Practice:
On Day 3 of practice we tried to expand on what we had found the first two days. We found a couple more areas, but our day was cut short when I couldn't get my motor to start. We ended up getting towed in by Boat U.S. (good thing I'm a member!). We then took the boat to a shop to get a compression test and found out that we had a blown head gasket. Well, $140.00 later it was fixed. If it weren't for the boat motor problems this trip would have gone fairly smoothly, it was really a drag worrying about whether the motor would start. It was hard to concentrate on the task at hand, and that was finding the fish.

Our main patterns:

Strike King Red Eye Shad in sexy shad color

Dragging a storm hot craw on a football

Targeting areas that had sticks on the inside edge with bigger wood outside of that. You could picture it as a weedline, but it was wood instead. We were catching most of our fish in the smaller sticks, not as much in the bigger wood.

We also had success around marinas. I used a gamakatsu wacky head with a pink trick worm, an All Terrain Swim jig and an All Terrain senko to catch these bass that were suspended under the docks. The docks ranged from 25-40ft deep.

Our bonus pattern was fishing boat ramps with a shakey head, hot craw, or tube. They changed the rules this year so we could bring in 12" spots. Last year it was 14". We pulled up to two boat ramps in practice and immediately caught two good spots right were the boat ramp slab ended in about 7-12 ft of water. We figured we could bank on these areas to finish out a limit.

Picture of the Gamakatsu wacky head