Highs And Lows During A Fun 2-Week Stretch

This May was a busy month for me. For starters I was finishing up finals at the beginning of the month, then I fished the final 1-day BFL on Lake Okeechobee, along with getting my stuff packed for heading up to Alaska (where I am now) to work as a fishing guide.

Aside from all of that I had a 2-week stretch that I had been looking forward to all year, and it consisted of attending the Elite Series event on Clarks Hill in Georgia as a marshal, and then competing in the Boat U.S. National Collegiate Bass Championship.

Here’s how those 2 weeks went.

Clarks Hill

Marshaling an Elite event was one thing that I had been looking forward to for a long time. To me, the opportunity to watch the cream of the bass-fishing crop do their thing, and to learn from them, is priceless.

I traveled to Clarks Hill with my friend Patrick, who was just as excited about the opportunity to just sit and watch the best of the best for 3 days, and we were lucky enough to snag a pop-up style trailer from Pat’s boss to chill in for the week.

When we got to Clarks Hill (a place where I have had some history fishing tournaments), Pat and I set up the trailer and made the trip to the registration site.

The registration and meeting was pretty long, and I found myself just as nervous and anxious as I am when I am at the registration for a tournament I am actually going to fish.

After anxious anticipation, wondering who I would be paired with and reminiscing about the time I spent at the second day of the Classic with Randy Howell, the marshal coordinator finally called: “Alabama, Florida; Randy Howell and Miles Burghoff.”

We were both pretty blown away that we got drawn together for yet another day on the water. All I hoped was that he did well so I wouldn't be considered bad luck in the future.

True to form Randy was a gentleman and a top-level professional in all aspects of the word. Unfortunately on this particular outing we solidified the possibility that I may in fact be bad luck.

Randy had a tough day overall, finishing in the mid 70s in the standings with four fish. He fished for schooling fish on long tapering points, shoals and islands with a white-ghost colored Lucky Craft Gunfish.

However, the fact that he didn’t catch as many fish as he’d hoped wasn’t the part that reinforced the idea that I might be bad luck; a size 2 Daichi 2x treble hook to the ring finger was what did that.
Randy ended up catching a fish that ended up catching him, and we spent about 45 minutes trying the famous “line trick” to pull it out.

I pulled on that sucker about 10 times, but it didn’t do anything but put Randy in a world of pain. We finally ended up pulling the point through the other end and cutting the point. I snagged the hook before he threw it in the water and stuck it in my hat as a souvenir (which he signed later).

Though Randy and I still got along quite well, I think that he is probably going to protest against me riding in his boat a third time.

For day 2 I drew Wade Grooms. Like Randy he was a super-nice guy, however, I seemed to have a similar negative effect on his fishing too. Wade had finished day 1 in a good place, but day 2 with me he struggled and only brought two fish to the scales for just over 5 pounds.

He was fishing pretty similar structure to Randy but he pretty much camped out on one shoal where he was targeting schooling fish that would pop out every once in awhile. But they didn’t pop up much and when they did, he was unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the shoal.

I was pretty excited about riding with Jeff Kriet on day 3 – first off because he led day 1 and I figured he was on some good fish, and second, he seemed like a pretty fun guy to spend the day with.

Wanting Jeff to do well, that morning I bought a small candy at a gas station that caught my eye immediately – it was called Squirrel Nut-Zipper. With Jeff’s nickname being “The Squirrel,” I thought that it might be the good-luck candy that would help him zip up the win.

That didn’t happen, and yet again, I found myself wondering if I was bad luck for my favorite pros. Jeff had his toughest day of the tournament with me in the back. He ended up scrounging out a limit of small fish by Carolina-rigging and shaking a straight-tail worm.

I’m pretty sure that The Squirrel won’t eat Nut Zipper candy again.

Overall I learned a lot about a reservoir that I have competed on several times and I made some new friends. I can tell you right now that it wont be the last time I ride as a marshal in the Elite Series. However, I can also tell you the pros probably hope it would be.

2010 National Collegiate Bass Championship

The Boat U.S. National Collegiate Bass Championship is an event that I had been waiting for all year. I was lucky enough to fish in the 2009 event and I had a great time. I probably have more fun at this event than any tournament I have ever fished.

The event is held each year on Lake Lewisville in north Texas, and is run by Careco Multimedia, a group of people who spare no expense and put on an excellent show.

The championship is a team tournament for full-time college anglers, and this year my partner Len and I were to compete against 138 other teams from around the nation. I had finished in the mid 20s in '09 and was looking to move in for a win this year.

From my previous experience on Lake Lewisville in May I was able to eliminate some unproductive patterns and key on the most productive. Len and I decided to focus our practice energy on four patterns: fishing the floating docks and tire reefs in the marinas, shallow main-lake points, offshore structure, and flipping shoreline brush and flooded willow bushes (which I thought of as more of a secondary pattern).

Though offshore structure had historically been a strong pattern in the May post-spawn period, Len and I were unable to find suitable schools of fish to do well with it, and neither the shallow main-lake points nor the marinas showed consistency. However, our secondary pattern, flipping, turned out to be our most reliable bite.

The flipping bite was very consistent, and I figured that we could catch about 14 pounds a day, good enough for a Top 5, and if we got fortunate enough we might score a couple extra bonus kickers that could push us to the top slot. The only downside to flipping on Lewisville was that the big bites were few and far between, and we would have to get those one or two 5-pound-plus bites in the boat if we expected to meet our target weights.

The first day of competition, we brought a camera boat with us to help them get some day 1 footage. We ended up giving them some good action on our primary spot, which was on upper Old Lake Dallas. We caught some keepers early in the day flipping Reaction Innovations Sweet Beavers (sprayed grass) to flooded willow bushes.

By mid-day the camera boat lost interest and we had yet to score our one big bite for the day, and we had only about 7 pounds in the well for four fish. I switched to a Reaction Innovations Boom Boom tube (same color) and lost a fish close to 3 pounds, and then I made my way to a cove that had some prime willows (also where I had caught a 5-pounder in 09’). I instantly hooked up with my big bite I had been working for, but unfortunately I lost it close to the boat, and from the looks of it, it would have pushed 5 pounds. I knew it would be hard to make up for those two key bites.

Len and I flipped our best areas before scrambling to some places where I figured we could scrounge up the last fish for our limit, but we failed to capitalize on several opportunities.

Though we had the bites, as predicted, to reach our 1- pound goal, we didn’t get them in the boat and we ended the day with a bag that was one fish short of a limit weighing around the 7-pound mark, and settled amongst the middle of the field.

Frustrated from our disappointing performance the previous day, Len and I agreed that we needed to fish our best stretches on day 2, and just drive around and fish any new isolated willow bushes we could find. We also decided that we would only flip, and not back-pedal into any other technique.

In other words, we would live or die by the big stick. However I did leave a box of small crankbaits and a crankbait rod in there specifically for a small creek near Sneaky Pete’s where I knew we could catch a keeper spotted bass if we needed to.

I ended up taking all the rods and tackle out of my boat to force myself to focus on flipping. Also, taking about 250 pounds of tackle out of the boat made it more efficient too.

We ended up running everywhere in Old Lake Dallas that day with similar results from the day before, and we only had three somewhat-decent keepers in the well around 11:00. Bites were getting more and more difficult to come by.

Our momentum started to pick up again when I managed to land our big bite of the day, a fish around 4 1/2 pounds on the Beaver around some isolated willows.

After a couple more hours of running and gunning, hitting the best cover fitting our pattern, we ran out of fresh willows to flip, so we decided to head to a creek near the launch area at Sneaky Pete’s where I figured we could catch a spot. Len ended up doing just, that cranking a Bomber Fat Free Fingerling (citrus shad). We cranked a bit more, rotating among the steep, rocky ledges of the creek, with nothing more than a couple of lost fish to show for it. With less than an hour left and only about 10 pounds in the well, we decided to hit our primary stretch of willows in Old Lake Dallas again, and it turned out to be the right move.

Immediately we started catching fish. The small fish that we had been catching earlier were replaced by very solid keepers and we culled four times within 10 minutes. The flurry ended as fast as it started, but not before we culled up to a solid limit weighing 13.15 pounds – the 10th-largest sack of the 138 teams that day. Combining our mediocre day 1 and our decent day 2, Len and I ended up finishing 29th.

Overall we were disappointed that we missed our opportunity for our target weight on day 1, but we had a great time competing in this world-class fishing tournament, and we cannot wait until the 2011 championship rolls around next spring.

Miles "Sonar" Burghoff is a student at the University of Central Florida and an aspiring professional angler. He writes a regular column for BassFan.