UM wins national championship

[h2ofwlr]

University of Minnesota club fishing team wins national championship
By Dave Orrick, ST Paul Pioneer Press
Posted: 03/15/2014 03:03:08 PM CDT | Updated: about 13 hours ago

http://www.twincities.com/outdoors/ci_2 ... ampionship
University of Minnesota bass fishing teammates Austin Felix, left, and Chris Burgan hold up four spotted bass part of their winning haul during the final weigh-in March 8 at the 2014 FLW College Fishing National Championship in South Carolina. (Photo courtesy FLW)

National champion Golden Gophers.

Has a nice ring to it.

School spirit inflates, recruiting skyrockets and the money rolls in by the boatload -- in this case literally. This national title will bring the University of Minnesota a $30,000 bass boat.

No, we're not talking 1960 and football. We're talking 2014 and bass fishing.

Last week on Lake Keowee in South Carolina, the team of Austin Felix and Chris Burgan earned the Gophers their first national championship on the growing competitive college fishing circuit.

With three days of steady catches of chunky spotted bass plucked from waters as deep as 40 feet, the pair became the northernmost team to win the FLW College Fishing National Championship. The event is the climax of a season's worth of whittling down a field of 637 schools nationwide in a process not unlike college football's Bowl Championship Series.

"It's like a dream come true," said Burgan, a junior from Rhinelander, Wis., majoring in psychology and communications. Burgan serves as president of the University of Minnesota Fishing Team, which, if you must put an asterisk on it, is a club, not a varsity sport sanctioned by the NCAA.

But place that asterisk at your own peril.

Crowds turn out for events in the bass heartland of America, which is strikingly similar to the football belt. Perennial powerhouses include Auburn and Clemson, but also less-BCS-likely schools such as University of Louisiana-Monroe and Murray State. Places you can fish all year.

Before last week, the northernmost school to win it all was Kansas State. And yes, a few schools offer scholarships.

Not so for the Gophers.

"I'm not even sure the U knows we exist," said Felix, who sees the victory as a recruiting tool. "The program is really in its infancy. We've had the team for five or six years. I'm trying to get Minnesota on the map and get some of these good fishermen to come to our school. Winona State did well last year, and I've watched some of those young guns go there. We've gotta get those recruits back."

So far so good. Burgan said word of the March 8 victory has spread fast, and their 12-man roster will likely grow. "We've gotten a rush in the last few days," he said. "Most are experienced tournament fishermen. They just didn't know much about the school team."

Burgan, 21, has been fishing since he can remember, and he's been fishing competitively since age 16. So he was one of those young guns.

At age 29, Felix, of Eden Prairie, is a bit of an outlier in the college scene. You can't quite call him a redshirt, but you might be able to call him a ringer. He used to bass fish competitively full time.

"I went to school for one year after high school," he said. "School work always came easy to me, but then I wasn't motivated when I got to college, so I took a year off and spent time doing my dream, just out on a lake every day and hunting the rest of the time."

Make a good living doing that?

"Well, living at home with the parents? Sure, I guess, but I wasn't really high on the hog."

He returned to school with aims on the fishing program. He's working toward a bachelor's degree in a business entrepreneurship program he designed himself. His career goal remains the same: fisherman. "I'm trying to be one of the guys you see on TV. I thought the whole college deal was going to be a good steppingstone."

The team didn't return to a ticker-tape parade on campus.

"The tournaments before this were in the summer, but this week, man, it's been awful," Burgan said Wednesday. "I had two tests today, and a paper and a test and a project due tomorrow. It's been rough. I had to miss a week of school. I had to explain to my teachers why I had to leave. They're like, 'What?' "

Of course, the primary task was to catch fish. In a lake neither of them had ever heard of, much less fished. Against competitors who had.

And then there was the Lyme disease flare-up.

The pair drove south early in the week, hoping to fish a few area lakes to shake off the winter's rust. But the 19-hour drive didn't do Felix well. He contracted Lyme disease -- that nasty tick-borne illness -- turkey hunting in 2006 and has been unable to rid his system of it. Treatment involves piles of antibiotics, and his fatigued body didn't react well to them. He was soon in the local emergency room.

"They had to give me a bunch of steroids to calm down my immune system because it was basically attacking itself," he said. "I spent two days in the hotel room. Luckily, I started to feel better just in time for the one practice day."

They hit the water at 3 a.m.

"We drove around for about three or four hours in the dark graphing structures," Felix said, noting that the pair had done as much research on the lake, both online and by calling locals, as they could beforehand. "We had maps but we needed to see more detail. With our sonar, we can see schools of bass. I think I marked about 100 waypoints (on GPS)."

Here was the scene: A "cold front," such as a South Carolinian might call it, had swooped down over Lake Keowee. The lake is an impoundment created by people in the 1970s in the eastern piedmont. I've actually been on the lake system and can tell you things on those lakes don't always make a whole lot of sense to someone used to fishing natural waters. There are two dams, a nuclear power plant and water clarity and temperatures that throw you. Some guides report catching bass in 90 feet of water. Go figure.

Keowee is full of spotted bass, which are similar to largemouth but smaller. And they tend to hang deeper. Keowee also has lunker largemouths. Southern lunkers. Up to 16 pounds.

The tournament format was this: five heaviest fish per day per boat. So a 16-pounder goes a long way. And most of the teams sought them.

Not Felix and Burgan. "Those largemouths are few and far between, so we figured if we could catch 2 pounds of spotted bass every day, we'd be in contention," Felix said.

The first day they fished in 20 feet of water with fairly standard bass jigs and weighed in 11 pounds 4 ounces of fish. Conditions got worse, and Day 2 pushed them deeper. Other boats -- there were 50 in all -- stayed shallow.

"We hardly saw anybody," Felix said. "It felt like we were fishing by ourselves."

A few of those largemouth bass were caught, but no other team kept it up like the Gophers. In the end, Felix and Burgan was the only team to register more than 10 pounds each of the three days, and the margin of victory over West Virgina was more than 3 pounds.

"Our plan worked out perfectly," Felix said.

The victory earns the pair entry into the Forrest Wood Cup, a professional tournament often described as the Super Bowl of bass fishing.

And it wins them the boat, a Ranger Z117.

Felix said he'd like to be able to convert the boat into cash for the club's coffers, to defray travel expenses, which team members currently shoulder themselves.

Burgan said he's unsure whether that's possible.

"We got a giant $30,000 check for a boat," he said. "That's all I know. I have no idea where the boat is or what's gonna happen to it if they deliver it to the U."

[Gordon]

Do people read these copy and pasted articles? Or do they get sucked into a topic and then become slightly disappointed to see an article from another website? Haha they get me more times than I'd like to admit.

[Muskrat Hunter]

Ya they should put a * by them

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[Swartzy]

I read less than half


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Goldfish]

If I find the title interesting I read it. I'll be honest, on this one I wanted to know what the people were saying in the replies more than the article itself

Sent from a phancy fone

[h2ofwlr]

Hey, I thought it was pretty good that they beat all the other schools. So how about a "Atta boy" for the 2 local fishermen?

This is how I look at it, as a few have already indicated, you can read it or not-- it's your choice as no one is pytting a gun to your head to read it now are they? Same as the old fashioned print newspaper, the articles are there, you can choose which ones to read, or not.

[Quack]

Fishing tournaments are horse siht. I can't believe there is now "Youth Competitive Ice Fishing League" and Collegiate bass fishing.

Fowler, what would you say if there was Big 10 competitive Wood Duck Hunting. Or Competitive Collegiate Early Teal shooting?

Yeah, I get that they release the fish and a few of em even survive... that's not my point. The point is that we don't have to make a competition out of every stupid thing that was once plain ol' recreation or food procurement.

[Gordon]

Hey, I thought it was pretty good that they beat all the other schools. So how about a "Atta boy" for the 2 local fishermen?

This is how I look at it, as a few have already indicated, you can read it or not-- it's your choice as no one is pytting a gun to your head to read it now are they? Same as the old fashioned print newspaper, the articles are there, you can choose which ones to read, or not.

Meant nothing by it fowler....but I usual scan this site with a few spare minutes and don't have time for the articles. I do admit you do have them conveniently placed for when I do have a few extra minutes.

[h2ofwlr]

^^^^^ yeah I know that you were just whinning a bit there.

Fishing tournaments are horse siht. I can't believe there is now "Youth Competitive Ice Fishing League" and Collegiate bass fishing. All fishing turneys, or just college and HS ones?

Fowler, what would you say if there was Big 10 competitive Wood Duck Hunting. Or Competitive Collegiate Early Teal shooting? That made me laugh, a good one for sure!

Yeah, I get that they release the fish and a few of em even survive... that's not my point. The point is that we don't have to make a competition out of every stupid thing that was once plain ol' recreation or food procurement. No diagreement from me on that point.