FORT COLLINS — Armed with plenty of know-how and Wacky rigged Senko worms, the Colorado State University Bass Team is making a name for itself in the world of collegiate competitive fishing.
The largely self-funded team took second place at the National Guard FLW College Fishing Western Conference showdown April 28 in Clear Lake, Calif.
The team netted $1,500 in prize money and will go on to compete at the televised, three-day National Guard FLW College Fishing Conference Championships later this year.
Two two-man teams represented CSU at the conference championships in California against 76 other collegiate anglers. The team of Keane Velez and Ben Robey won second place with a total of five bass, weighing 18 pound, 6 ounces. Kyle Christianson and Chris Sabina won 11th place with four bass, weighing 10 pounds, 11 ounces.
The students paid their own way and drove 40 hours to California to compete in the weekend tournament. It paid off, CSU officials said, because this was the biggest win in the three-year history of the competitive bass-fishing student organization.
The CSU team prepared for days, studying maps of the 44,000-acre lake that they had fished only once before, picking out targeted fishing spots and analyzing weather patterns to help them develop a winning strategy.
“Most of our competitions are in California or Arizona, so we are always playing an away game, and sometimes we have never even been to the lakes we compete at,” said Velez, who is a senior. “For this competition, we had about two hours to prepare that morning before hitting the water at 6:30 a.m. We were running on adrenaline all day.”
