Bass Fishing team reels in fourth-place finish
The team was the highest finishing team from outside of Alabama.
“It wasn’t an easy weekend,” Matt Henry, the team’s president, said. “But we went out there and showed that we can compete with the big schools.”
GCSU sent four anglers in two boats to compete against eight other southeastern schools in Auburn’s second annual tournament. The other schools included Auburn University, the Univeristy of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Georgia, Georgia Southern University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Montevallo, and Radford University.
“We’re the smallest school represented there, and to come out and beat the big schools – Georgia, Tennesse and all, it shows us a lot,” Henry said.
Henry, a junior, teamed up in the Bobcats’ first boat with junior Zach Olson.
The tandem pulled in a total of 21.68 pounds over the two day competition.. The top finishing team, UAB anglers Tim Waits and Braxton Setzer weighed in with 28.41 pounds.
“The Alabama teams were out there in their own back yards,” Henry said. “They had more boats out there, but we were able to compete.”
The top five finishing boats were from UAB, Alabama and Auburn. Henry and Olson were the sixth finishing boat.
“It was pretty awesome,” Olson said. “We got out there and got on the correct pattern and had fish zeroed in and it panned out for us.”
Even with the success the pair had Henry felt like the duo could have put up an even bigger score.
“We lost some big fish,” he said. “We had a lot of three pound fish in the boat, but lost two four to five pounders, then we lost a six pound (spotted bass).”
Henry lost the fish halfway to the boat, saying it managed to get away from the hook that was too large.
The other GCSU team was made up of freshmen Josh Beck and Tyler Fiscus.
That boat pulled in 8.78 pounds good for an 18th place finish.
Beck caught the highlight bass for the Bobcats in the tournament with 3.81 spotted bass on the first day. The fish would register as the second largest overall for the day.
In all, the team is happy with its success in the tournament and looks to continue progessing in future tournaments.
“I feel like we’ve improved a lot since last year,” Henry said. “I think we really have a chance at being one of the top schools at these tournaments.”
The team will certainly have plenty of opportunities to prove how good they are with a busy schedule ahead of them.
Currently, the team is fishing in three organizations, Auburn’s Southern Collegiate Bass Fishing Series, Fox Sport’s National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship series, and the FLW College Fishing Circuit.
“We have a full season ahead of us,” Olson said. “It’s going to be pretty interesting to see what happens.”
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Dec 5 2008. Filed under Sports.
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