Recently, Chad Brinegar and Alan Fluharty were crowned Team of the Year Champions in the BASS Nation of West Virginia Buddy Trail. This title is truly one of the toughest feats to accomplish within the state of West Virginia. The team that wins this is truly one of the best in the state. The BNWV buddy trail consists of 4 regular season events and a 2-day championship hosted by the Marion County Commission in Palatine Park, Fairmont, WV. This trail takes anglers all over the state, bringing them a new challenge from each body of water they make a cast on.

Alan and Chad have been fierce competitors for years. These anglers are not only the current champions but have been competing within the ranks of the state for over 30 years. Many anglers have made remarks that they are some of the best the state has to offer, including remarks such as, “that team has forgot more about fishing than I know.”

One thing that is impressive throughout this interview is that were very selfless. They both wanted to give each other equal opportunity to answer each and every question that was thrown at them.

The team also was very adamant that I include the following section, saying that, “if you put anything in this article we want you to put this in it.” The team stated something that I couldn’t agree with more. “We want to thank everyone who contributed to hosting this amazing tournament trail. Ken Hackworth, who is selfless and doesn’t fish any events so that he can make sure everything is ran smoothly. Ed Powell for being a great help as the Vice president. Bill Pioch and JJ Dickens for weighing our fish in. Randy Huffman for being a standout tournament director. Not only to them but to the rest of the staff for the sacrifices they made for us. Without everybody involved in the BASS Nation of West Virginia trail we would not be able to have this title and we want to say thank you.”

When Alan and Chad first saw the schedule released in December, they were excited.

“We really liked the way this schedule set up” said Alan. While they knew the series would be very trying, they had an optimistic outlook.

“This schedule allowed us to fish the way we like to,”  Chad remarked. This team excels at fishing for prespawn and spawning fish and the bodies of water had one of the two at each event. While these events were spread out in the year, Alan and Chad managed to track down the fish in the stage of the spawn they wanted to look for.

Despite their win, they did not have an easy road to the championship. Up until the Championship event Nick Pahoundis and Cody Huddleston had a commanding lead. Nick and Cody had only given up 7 points in 4 events leading up to this. Not only were they behind Nick and Cody, but the team of Daniel Pearl and Daniel Post trailed them by a single point.

“Going into the final event on the Mon River, we were comfortable,” said Alan. “At the beginning of the year we had circled this event because we believed that the Mon river would be fishing well. The Mon River is consistently one of the best fisheries in the state.”

After the first day of the Buddy Trail Championship it shook up the TOY points quite a bit leaving the title to whoever caught them on Day 2 of the tournament. While the TOY needed to catch them all season to be in contention, this was the most important day of the entire year.

Alan and Chad fought hard all day but did not have much to show, “we won the points race within the last hour of the tournament,” Chad remarked.

Up until it was almost time to head in the team needed to make something happen in order to pull off this win. In the last hour they caught 2 fish that weighed 2.78 pounds to seal their victory.

One thing to highlight that not many people notice is how much work all of these teams put in. The teams that do well seem to maximize their practice by putting as much time on the water as they can. Alan and Chad are no different, they used their vast knowledge of the history of the bodies of water to help them practice and create game plans all season that ultimately resulted them in them winning the BNWV Team of the Year.