# FLW College Fishing Regional Tournament Report



## Bassnpro1 (Apr 6, 2004)

3RD PLACE; $11,000









First off, I want to say thanks to everyone for the support. Especially Mike(Fishingredhawk) and Marshall, you guys really shortened our learning curve and we appreciate it.

Now for a recap of the tournament.

Day 1 got off to a horrible start as I managed to lose both of my contacts on our initial run. I had never been in a boat that fast and there really wasn't a windshield. Since I am basically blind without them, I had to give the tournament director a call and he allowed me to hitch a ride back to my hotel room to grab my glasses. So we started off with a 1 1/2 hour delay. But one of our main focuses coming into this tournament was to not let anything get to us and to keep on fishing. So really we never even thought about this again, except when the camera man kept bringing it up. When went to our first spot only to discover another competitor already on it when we arrived. We fished around that area alittle but only managed a couple of short fish. When then made a move to what turned out to be our money spot. We had seen alot of busting fish on this secondary point in the back end of a bay during practice, but there was another boat on that school then. This fish were absolutely going nuts on this point, so we stopped and watched this boat fish and the first fish they caught was a 3+ lb fish. So we marked the spot and remembered it. When our tournament time came around the bigger fish were still concentrated on this point. Within 5 minutes of arriving on this point, a school of shad gets blown up and I throw my Chrome bandit 300 into it and nail a 4+ lb bass! That is the way to catch up when it is already 11:00. Less than five minutes later Casey boats a 3+ fish on a spinnerbait and it was on. We managed to get 5 keepers off of this point that went 16 lbs 14 oz. That gave us a 3 lb lead going into day 2.

Day 2
NOVEMBER 1, this date is so important because that point we whacked them on the day before just so happened to be in a waterfowl sanctuary that went off limits on Nov. 1. So our only spot that we KNEW had quality fish was out of the question. We had numerous other secondary points with the same characteristics of the epic one, but none of them had keepers on them that we were able to catch. Also the weather had taken a huge turn. Day 1 was just after the huge front had passed through and we still had clouds and some wind(although it was dying down). Day 2 greeted us with bright bluebird skies and a glass lake. Not ideal for our powerfishing techniques that worked the previous day. So we spent our time chasing some other schools of bass we had located, but catching them turned out to be extremely difficult. I never thought it would be that hard catching bass that were blowing up shad, but it was. We threw everything we had at them and managed to catch around 20 bass, but only 3 measured the required 15" limit. Those 3 weighed 5 lb 13 oz and left us in second place only 1 lb back of the leaders. 

We had made the final day and secured our spot in the NATIONAL! That was our main goal coming into the tournament and we were excited despite the slower day. We knew that anything we did on the final day was just icing on the cake, but that didn't stop our intensity. We wanted to win this thing so bad, I still get the chills thinking about it. 

Day 3
We figured the bite would pick up some with the same weather as it stabilized a bit. We were dead wrong! This turned out to be one of my toughest days on the water. We started in a spot where we had seen some bigger fish busting shad, but nothing we did got them to bite. We threw topwater, various cranks, a couple different spinnerbaits, white jigs, black jigs, swimbaits, soft plastics, etc, but no takers. So we abandoned there and finally managed a few shorts in the middle of a cove that were relating to shad. These shad were not visible and the high sun had moved them a little deeper as well. We encoutered these same conditions during practice and managed a few keepers, so we tried to run that pattern of graphing shad fishing around them, but we couldn't get any more to bite around the lake. It was around noon now with nothing to show but 3 shorts. We knew what we were doing wasn't working so we completely changed our plans and tied on shaky heads(they always work). We moved to some different secondary point located a little deeper and closer to the main lake thinking maybe the sun has pushed some shad and the bass farther out. We get 2 more shorts and that was done, we then move to a ledge near the main lake that we liked and only managed one more short on our finesse tatics. The during the last hour we threw jigs, shakyheads, and senkos around some deep water docks in coves just hoping for a keeper or two. Nothing. So Day 3 ended and we had no keepers and had to walk on that stage empty handed. Disappointing to say the least. We were on Kentucky Lake and failed to catch even one keeper. But at the weigh-in, the lake proved to be tough on everyone except Indiana who must have struck gold on a spot. They weighed in a limit, but the other 3 teams only managed 4 fish between them. So that made us feel a little better that we weren't the only team that struggled and we still managed 3rd place, a spot in the nationals, $5,500 for our bass club, and $5,500 for The Ohio State University.

Not a bad tournament looking back on it and I am stoked to be heading to the national at Fort Loundon Lake( if anyone has any knowledge of this place, PM me please! 

We got the pro treatment with wrapped boats, we were driving wrapped trucks, the stage and weigh-in was a huge production.

The TV show will air at 12:30 Nov. 29th on Versus country. Although we don't have any footage from the final day, our first day footage should be good!

Kevin
OSU Bass Club


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## DaleM (Apr 5, 2004)

Congrats Kevin/Casey, you made us proud. You guys will do fine in the nationals for sure. 
I'll be glued to the TV on the 29th.


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## Marshall (Apr 11, 2004)

Thanks for the report. We have all been there with those tough conditions and some days its just down right tough to get em to bite. 3rd place is nothing to hang your head about. Great job to both of you and good luck in the nationals.


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## WB185Ranger (May 18, 2006)

Congradulations guys!


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## fishingredhawk (Apr 14, 2004)

Great report, and again, congrats to both you on a job well done!


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## fish4osu (Feb 23, 2008)

Great job guys. Never surprised to see you guys at the top. Hope to see it again at Nationals!!


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## GarryS (Apr 5, 2004)

Great job.... You guys will do fine.... Good luck on the Nationals....


GarryS


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## bman (Apr 20, 2009)

I've been on ky lake more times than I would like to admit where the fish were busting and just about nothing would get them to strike. Kudos to you guys for still netting a nice bag on day 1 and for 3rd overall.

Indiana-they fished blood river mon morning, right?

Monday was also a very tough bite for my father + 2 friends fishing KY Lake that day. Lots of bass but only a few keepers and nothing bigger than 2.5 lbs. Then tuesday afternoon, they hit the motherload for a 3 hour stretch for 15-18" fish. It's crazy like that sometimes! Good luck w nationals!


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## bigcatjoe (Sep 6, 2006)

way to go fellas, great fishin. April couldn't come soon enough right? haha 
-Joe


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## liquidsoap (Oct 22, 2005)

Awesome job guys!


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