Ethan Perry and Garrett Thompson clinched the 2023 BASS Nation of West Virginia College State Championship with a total weight of 22.31 pounds!

Perry and Thompson who are seniors at West Virginia University won their first State Championship today and punched their ticket to the Strike King Bassmaster College Series National Championship that will be held later this year. The duo who won the tournament are no strangers to College fishing as both of them have been competing on the Bassmaster College Series for 4 years now.

Yesterday Gary Ross and Jason Kusich won the BASS Nation of West Virginia Buddy Trail with 20.68 pounds, but Perry and Thompson showed they could do one better. Perry claims he had found a stretch of bank Saturday around 5:30 in the evening that ended up producing the winning bag.

“I didn’t have a bite all day Saturday and I stopped on one spot yesterday and I lost a 4-pounder,” said Perry.

When the field took off this morning, the duo pulled into their starting area and began fishing. What happened next would have thrown any angler for a loop. The WVU duo lost the first seven fish they hooked this morning.

“I was ready to sell everything and quit,” said Perry. “Three of the seven fish we lost were well over four-pound fish.”

But the duo persisted, kept their head down and continued fishing. After a disastrous morning, they stumbled upon their first keeper at around 10:00 AM and that is when they ran into two, six-pound fish that eventually bolster their 22-pound bag. 

“We caught most of them on a trick worm and a few flipping a tube. We weren’t sight fishing for them either, we were just flipping down the bank looking for places we knew they were setting up and spawning.”

This time of year in West Virginia is when you would typically find the fish in prespawn conditions, but with the unusually warm spring West Virginia has had, the spawn has started a little early.

“At the end of the day, we saw a few up spawning and actually rolling but didn’t mess with them. Instead, we left a little bit early to make sure we got back in time.”

Assumingly, Thompson and Perry now have the record for the largest bag weighed in during a BASS Nation of West Virginia College State Championship in history. And while they might hold the record, the two are headed to the third stop of the Bassmaster College Series on the James River in Virginia today. 

“It is going to be so nice, getting to go the James River and not having to worry about qualifying. I can’t wait for next week to just go down there and have fun and fish.”

Finishing up in second place were Marshall University’s Hayden Nelson and Lawson Blake with 14.66 pounds.

Third place was Marshall University’s Levi Smith and Bailey McKinney with 10.35 pounds. They also won the big fish of the tournament which went 6.92 pounds.