Bass fishing team loses No. 1 position
Jeremy Reese and Trent Gephardt from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock won the tournament, which ran from July 9 to July 11.
The Virginia Tech team, ranked No. 1 in the nation, sent rising seniors Scott Wiley and Charlie Machek to this year's competition. Wiley had competed the year before with Brett Thompson and successfully won the title.
The 2008 edition of the College Bass National Championship was held on Lake Maumelle, located just outside of Little Rock, Ark. The event was originally scheduled, as it was last year, on the Arkansas River, but because of Midwest flooding this summer, tournament organizers were forced to make a change just two weeks ago.
"Last year the event was held in October on the river," Wiley said. "We were prepared this year for the river as well. We had contour maps, lures chosen, and had done a lot of preparation ahead of time. The change of location was kind of a curveball. We didn't have a lot of information on the lake, and the lateness of the change made for a unique challenge."
The first two days of the competition would see 56 pairs of anglers from different colleges, competing for only five places in day three's final round. Daily standings would be based on the total weight of fish caught, with each team only being allowed to weigh in its best five. For a fish to be designated as a "keeper" and thus qualify to be weighed, it had to be over 12 inches long.
The Tech team had a mediocre start on day one and weren't even able to catch five keeper fish to weigh. Their four fish weighed a total of 4.5 pounds and put Tech in 18th place for the end of the day.
"The lake had a bit of a 'dead sea' reputation as we had learned going in, just lots of small fish out there," Wiley said.
Wiley and Machek were still sitting in the top half of the pack after day one, leaving them with plenty of room to improve on day two. Both teammates were satisfied, considering nine teams had failed to catch a single qualifying fish.
"It was a battle out there, and it was tough to catch fish," Wiley said. "We actually felt pretty good going in. We had four days to practice here and really felt like we had found some good spots."
The Tech team was able to use some of this backburner confidence to improve their performance on day two. By catching the maximum five legal fish, totaling 5.3 pounds, they were able to jump up the leaderboard, and finish the competition in 11th place.
"We were very pleased overall, because we figured out how to improve," Wiley said. "Jumping seven spots on our final day was a good way to end it. The difficulty of the lake provided very small gaps on the leader board, and in the end, we just didn't quite make it to the final day."
Fifth year landscape architecture major Wiley will graduate next spring, so this was likely his last college championship. He plans on continuing to pursue architecture, but expresses interest to always fish competitively on some level, beginning first with weekend tournaments and seeing whether that takes him anywhere.
"To make it any further than that or to receive a sponsorship would be a dream," Wiley said.
