Hometown heroes John Ledet and Justin Cooper of Northwestern State University brought in the biggest bag on Saturday –17 pounds – to take home the title of 2015 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Central Regional Champions. Their three-day total was 30-9.
In addition to their win on the Red River, Ledet and Cooper qualify for the 2015 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series National Championship, along with the remainder of the top 14 teams from the Central Regional.
“The Good Lord blessed us today,” said Cooper. “We went into some spots that I’ve had a lot of success in before and we just caught them.”
After starting the event off a little slow with only two fish for 6-15, it was apparent that the local favorites going into the event were around the right quality of fish.
However, the brutal cold front that moved in on the final day of practice was something that, local or not, made catching numbers of those fish on Day 1 very difficult.
On Day 2, Ledet and Cooper brought in another 3 fish for 6-10 and found themselves in 7th place headed into the final day.
Their 17-0 Day 3 weight was the second biggest bag of the entire tournament and enough to rocket Northwestern State to the top of the leaderboard and grant them a win by a margin of 4 pounds.
“The first two days we tried to wait out our pre-spawn fish that we had found but they wouldn’t bite fast enough,” said Johnny Ledet.
“Then today we decided we had to change things up if we wanted to win this thing. We started to run and gun, and finally ran into a school of fish that wanted to bite.”
Ledet and Cooper caught most of their limit Saturday fishing a flat filled with lily pad stems in the Little Jungle. Their kicker, a big female weighing 6-2, came off that same flat.
“I caught that fish on a three-and-a-half-inch V&M Baby Split Tail Beaver in about 5 feet of water next to a sunken duck blind,” said Justin Cooper.
Evan Smith and Aaron Sarna of Arkansas Tech University finished the Central Regional in second place, making a big move on the final day with a 12-0 bag that gave them a total of 26-9 for three days.
Dwight Camp and Jonathan Furlong of Southeastern Oklahoma University had taken the lead on Day 2 with the Bass Pro Nitro Big Bag of the event, which weighed 17-8. They fell to 3rd place on the final day, with four fish for 5-7 bringing their three-day total to 25-3.
The 6-10 lunker caught by Hunter Leppert and Cole Eubanks of Arkansas-Monticello on Day 2 held on to the Carhartt Big Bass honors for the Central Regional.