Texas-Tyler Wins College Fishing Tournament

      “We didn’t get

our first fish until after 11 a.m.,” said McClellan, a senior majoring

in Kinesiology. “We had a pretty good practice and with wind were able

to find fish in shallow grassy points. The wind was blowing about 15-20

miles per hour this morning so we decided to start shallow. We made

about a 10 mile run and at 10 when we didn’t have a bite we decided to

move to a location closer to the launch site. By 10:30 we still didn’t

have a bite so we decided to go deep.

      “We had graphed a

location that was full of concrete and brush about 10 to 12 feet deep,”

McClellan continued. “At 11:00 we finally caught our first keeper, it

was over 6-pounds! We then got a 4-pounder followed by a 1 ½-pounder and

the last fish we caught was a 4-pounder all within 45 minutes. We just

ran out of time; I think if we would have gotten to this spot earlier we

would have caught our limit and could have easily gotten a 20 pound

sack.

      “Once we moved deep we switched to a football head jig. You really needed something that you could feel the bottom.”

      This was the

first year the pair of seniors from the University of Texas – Tyler

fished together as a team. Finishing in the top-10 in the previous three

Southern Conference events, McClellan and Brown missed making the

top-five cut by ounces to qualify for the southern conference

championship making this victory even sweeter.

      “Toledo Bend is

renowned for fishing deep,” said Brown a senior finance major. “I knew

the tournament couldn’t be won shallow, but with the wind and cloud

cover this morning we thought the bass would be feeding off the shallow

banks so decided to start on grassy humps with swim jigs and frogs. By

mid morning we decided that clearly wasn’t working so decided to go

deep.

      “The bite was

really slow,” Brown continued. “You really had to fish very slow and

methodically. But, like Matthew said, I think if we would have gone to

our deep spot a little earlier we would have had a huge sack, we just

didn’t have enough time there to get it today.

      Brown who will celebrate his birthday tomorrow said of their victory that this was an early present for him.

      Rounding out the top five teams and also advancing to the Southern Conference Championship are:

      2nd:            Angelo State – Josh Seale and Ethan George, 12-14, $1,500

      3rd:             Arkansas Tech University – Reagan Moore and Evan Barnes, 10-11, $1,000

      4th:             Lamar University – Danny Iles and Justin Royal, 10-5, $1,000

      5th:             Louisiana State University-Shreveport – Joseph Landry and Gavin Havard, 9-1, $1,000

      Complete results can be found at FLWOutdoors.com.