Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship Lake Belton

[fishinkid2010]

Any reports I'm able to write up as of late will not be kayak reports, since my kayak is at home in CA. (You have no idea how much I miss my Hobie) So if yall would prefer me to not post reports here please just let me know, since they'll be from boats and not yaks.

Anyways, thought I would share...



Today was my fishing partner and my first collegiate bass fishing tournament. I’m a California transplant from San Diego, so I get to mix a little bit of my west coast style, with some traditional Southern bass fishing. We fish for Baylor University in Waco, TX. This tournament was only open to other schools in the Lone Star State. Texas State, University of Texas, TCU, Texas A&M, Baylor, Tarleton and a few others were there. There were about 40 boats in the field.

And I really want to know what some of these guys (or their daddy’s) do for a living… because there were some pretty damn nice rides on the water! (50,000K+ boats)

We had pre-fished Lake Belton the weekend prior and knew it was going to be a tough tournament. One thing that made it tough, is that there is no aquatic vegetation whatsoever in the lake, paired with the fact that the lake is extremely deep relatively close to shore.

None of the fish we caught were in deep water. Even pre-fishing we attempted fishing with deep diving cranks, heavy drop shot, and Carolina rigged worms and lizards with a ½ sliding weight. We knew that all of the fish would be shallow, so the tough part came finding coves with shallow water and trees.

We ended up pulling all of our tournament fish off of shallow coves and flats with Stanley spinnerbaits. White, as well as the pink/orange and grey spinner worked well.



We ended up drawing number 32 in the tournament, and were forced to be one of the later boats to launch. Luckily nobody headed the way our “spot” was and we lucked out having the cove to ourselves early in the morning.

I pulled a spotted bass out of about 1’ of water on the fifth cast. About fifteen minutes later I pulled a 1.5 lbs Large Mouth off of a shallow brush pile. (both on a Spinnerbait)
After that major ego booster in the early AM we were having a tough time scratching together any more bass that would measure. We caught a few more shorts on spinner baits, but since that was not working we switched tactics. We made a big run to the other side of the lake despite the inclement weather. (that rain gear came in REALLY handy!) We continued fishing shallow flats and coves and switched over to Mann’s Baits soft plastics, and some Roboworms rigged Carolina style and shakey head.

These colors are always a hit, fish them with as light of weight as you can get always with. This proved to be a little difficult with the high winds we faced.

The Mann’s Baby T Minus series of crankbaits are also winner in my book. Today we only picked off one short with a crank, but in other lakes, and in pre fishing, the shallow diving Mann’s, in shad pattern swam with a really enticing action.

Pitching into the thick trees proved to get bites, but only produced one hook up, which ended up being a short.

Finally after not catching any more keepers we made a big move to the clearer end of the lake, it what was the equivalent of a monsoon! We were being drenched, and even had to turn on the bilge pump a few times! My move proved to be an excellent idea, Quin pulled a chunky Small Mouth in the boat on a white Stanley spinnerbait. (fishing trailer hooks was essential to the solid hook sets… several of the bites throughout the day were short biters, than we got due to the extra hook!) That Smallie made the day! Right after that I pulled in a 13 ½ inch Large Mouth… another half an inch and it would have weighed!!! Major bummer.

Since the water was rough and we thought it would be tough to run at WOT we headed back a little earlier than we would have like. We mad one stop on the way in some submerged trees for nada. We made it back to the launch ramp without any issues.

We obviously did not win or place with just three fish, but being that we are Freshman in our first collegiate tournament we held our own. Fishing was pretty tough overall. Many teams came back with only one or two small fish, if not a skunk. We actually scratched together a bag weight of 4.47 lbs.
On the bright side, the other team of Baylor’s took second place with a bag in the high 10 lbs. Word was they only caught 5 fish today, but everyone of them was large enough to measure and pull off a 2nd place finish.

Today was extremely fun, needless to say we are those ones who are hooked! This time we fished off our Bass Tracker, but the next tournaments will be off our Pro Craft… so gunning it out of the hole, and cruising at 60 mph will be no problem.

Here are a few more pictures from throughout the day!

We would especially like to thank our generous sponsors for their support!!! Without them things would be a heck of a lot tougher!
-Diamond Pacific Construction (San Diego)
-Mann’s Baits
-Stanley Jigs Inc.
-Lake Fork Tackle
-Roboworm
-Owner Hooks
-North Fork Composites
-Bullard International











Sic ‘em Bears!!!