Hopefully this will be a cool, new and entertaining updated blog on College Fishing around the state. This is also the first bit of WV bass fishing news this year as well, so why not do a little piece on it.

I guess to start this off, I’ll discuss my week and how it went at the first stop of the 2022 College Bass Series. I’d be lying to say I was proud of mine and Tyler’s finish last week. Actually very disappointed, but with that I learned a ton last week about Harris Chain, how to practice, what to do and not do in Florida and little bit about myself last week. 

Practice

Going into Florida I strictly wanted to focus up shallow, as for me I have no experience nor confidence out deep or fishing shell beds. Which in Florida deep could be 6 or more feet depending on who you talk to. For me when I go to place I have no experience on I want to fish my strengths and find a way to catch them fishing my strengths.  I went into practice with the mindset to find spawners which I assumed there would be some and then find a pattern that produced up shallow. Last week I maybe found 5 or 6 spawners but no spawners that would actually benefit me fishing for them. Along with the cold fronts we had coming through I knew spawners were pretty much out of the picture for me. So I decided to just look for a pattern up shallow and see what happens.

We did stumble up on a little pattern the second day of practice on some shallow off-shore hydrilla and eel grass that did produce some keepers on a rattletrap. Have to give Levi and Bailey a shoutout for giving us a clue on a decent area. They had originally found the area that had some really good fish on it and invited us in and I just pulled off that area about 200 or 300 yards away and found the nice offshore hydrilla and eel grass.

Although the spot we had found had some fish on it, I knew it wasn’t a place to win or have a chance at a high finish. Some point in the second day of practice after I had found the little off-shore spot I feel like is where I kind of messed up. I did find a little stretch up shallow that had some decent keepers and a few spawners, but again no size at winning. At that point I had abandoned the shallow game plan and started looking out deep for stuff that I wasn’t going to find anyways. Don’t know why I chose to do that, but out to the deep I went and spent basically the entire rest of the practice looking deep. After day and half more looking out deep I hadn’t found anything at all and was really banking on one off-shore spot and a stretch that had a few spawners and pre-spawners. In my mind I wanted to find a magical shell bar so bad it was about to kill me. To be honest I am still not real sure how to locate, see shell bars on your graphs and how to fish them down in Florida, but I kept looking and hoping to find somewhere where there was a bunch big ones loaded up. After practice I knew I wasn’t on much of anything just held out hope that on my off-shore spot I would stumble into one or two good ones and fill a limit and see where we ended up.

Tournament

Day 1, WVU duo Garrett Thompson and Ethan Perry ended up with biggest bag out of the West Virginia teams with 15-4 that had them sitting close to a Top 25 slot which would lock them into the 2022 Bassmaster College National Championship. 

Photo via Levi Smith

Sitting in 115th with 9-14 was Bailey McKinney and Levi Smith. Tyler and myself ended up way back in 164th with just 7-14. Leading the charge was an Emmanuel fishing duo who weighed in 31-0!

We knew going into the tournament day we needed luck up and get a few big bites early and that never happened for us and we found ourselves way back. It started out hot and heavy for us as we had a small limit in the boat by at least 9:30, so we were already looking to get a few big bites and bolster our bag. Spent basically the entire rest of the morning beating up our spot to try to upgrade and then moved to our stretch of bank in the afternoon that had spawners on it to find they were gone.

Photo via Chase Sansom

Day 2, I knew we had our work cut out and again I went back to our primary spot and tried again. This time our fish had completely moved after the cold front and strong winds and I had to completely relocate them in that area. They had moved just about 200 yards into a windblown bank, but the conditions had gotten worse and we had way less bites than on Day 1. Still managed to scrape out a limit in there along with a getting a decent 3 pounder, but still nothing crazy.

Photo via bassmaster.com

After Day 2, WVU duo Garrett Thompson and Ethan Perry would finish up 45th out of 250 teams with a total of 27-2 which they credited to two spots and rattletrap to get them there. Bailey McKinney and Levi Smith finish up 116th with a total of 18-13. After a bit better day, Tyler and myself jumped up a few spots and ended up 136th with a 17-4 total.

Next Up

College Bass Stop #2 will visit Charlotte, North Carolina on Lake Norman where both WVU and Marshall will have teams attending the event. Hopefully the Marshall team will have 3 boats in it and for sure at least 1 WVU team will be in it. 

Looking very much forward to the event, going to spend some time before the event on the lake and get familiar with it and hopefully turn those mid pack finishes into Top 50’s. My goal this year was to at least finish inside the Top 50 in points in 4 events. Which I figure now is going to be one heck of a challenge, so stay tuned after Norman we will have another one of these updates.