STEVENS POINT, Wis. — The Aggies of Texas A&M tipped the scales with 8 pounds, 1 ounce to lead after Day 1 of the Carhartt College National Championship presented by Bass Pro Shops. Josh Bensema and Matthew Mcardle started fast and furious on Lake DuBay and lead the way on this tough fishery.
“This morning went very well for us,” Bensema said. “We had our fish by 7 a.m. this morning and then we decided to lay off of them and save them for tomorrow.”
These Texas anglers fished the way they like to back home and making that decision on the final practice day was crucial to figuring out a substantial pattern.
“It took us three days to figure the pattern,” Mcardle said. “ We are from Texas and we have largemouth. We tried to figure out the smallmouths over the last few days and we couldn’t so on the third day of practice we went searching for largemouth and we found them.”
Unlike Bensema and Mcardle, who were right at home in the shallow backwaters catching largemouth, the two teams tied for second place weighed in limits of smallmouth.
JP Kimbrough and Jared Rascoe of LSU Shreveport and Trevor Lo and Chris Burgan of the University of Minnesota are tied at 7 pounds 15 ounces. Kimbrough and Rascoe started slow this morning, but slowly and surely put together their three fish limit.
“We fished some practice areas and caught one small fish so we decided to scrap that plan and head to another area,” Kimbrough said. “We threw some moving baits and caught our big one pretty quick, but then our area started to get crowded so we left to find something else.”
As soon as they made their move to the new area they boated number two. After grinding it out in that area for three hours they finally boated their third and final keeper with 15 minutes before they had to head back to the launch site. The falling water on Lake DuBay was a popular topic backstage, but LSU Shreveport doesn’t think it will bother their bite much, but they wonder how it could affect the anglers targeting largemouth.
Minnesota’s Lo and Burgan caught 7-15 as well and are just two ounces off the pace set by Texas A&M.
“We were just hoping to catch a limit going into today and we pulled up to a spot that we didn’t fish in practice and we caught them there,” Lo said. “We only culled once today so it was slow after the flurry.
“A couple boats saw us catch some and our area got crowded quickly. I think we are boat 67 tomorrow so we don’t think we will get the first shot on that spot.”
Appalachian State’s Hunter Hill and Ethan Howell sacked up 7-14 to finish the day in fourth. Their Day 1 bag consisted of two largemouth and one smallmouth. Rounding out the Top 5 is Frankie Appaluccio and Logan Shaddix with 7 pounds 8 ounces of smallmouth.
The defending National Champions, Jake Whitaker and Andrew Helms of UNC Charlotte, are tied for sixth and sit just two ounces behind. Cade Laufenberg and Wyatt Stout of Winona State are tied with Whitaker and Helms. The weights on DuBay were very close with 12th place sitting just two pounds out of the Top 5, which will advance to the final day.
John Garrett and Brian Pahl from Bethel University lead the Bass Pro Shops Big Bass, which weighed in at 3-11.
The three-fish limit may seem odd to those watching from afar, but the state of Wisconsin allows each competitor to have three fish a piece with the sixth fish being a cull only. There are four anglers fishing the National Championship solo this week so bringing the limit down to three for every team was a must.
All of the Day 2 action from Lake DuBay will be on bassmaster.com throughout the day and weigh-in begins at 3 p.m. CT at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Day 2 takeoff is at the Tiki Beach Bar and Grill at 6 a.m. CT.