Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Tech's bass anglers new, but not novices
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Having recently won the College Bass National Championship, Virginia Tech students Scott Wiley and Brett Thompson have big plans.
For the team, not themselves.
"I have a dream of one day becoming some kind of professional bass fisherman," said Wiley, a 22-year-old senior who helped launch the team last spring. "But for now I just want to grow the club."
There's plenty of room to grow.
As of Monday, the team was only four strong, with juniors Charlie Machek and Chase Grinnell the other members.
But that is about to change. The team is holding a meeting tonight for prospective members, and 15 to 20 students have expressed interest. (The meeting is at 8:30 p.m., in Squires 300).
The four current members all hail from the Midlothian area, and all attended Clover Hill High School.
Wiley said he had fished a few local tournaments on his home lake, Swift Creek Reservoir.
"Sometimes I fished with my dad or my brother," said the landscape architecture major. "I didn't do very well.
"It was mostly just for fun."
The other guys were even less experienced.
That didn't bode well as they headed into contests against college anglers with impressive tournament resumes.
But it hasn't seemed to matter.
Fishing in an invitational in North Carolina just a few days after formally forming the team, Wiley and Grinnell won the tournament. Thompson and Machek teamed up for fourth.
Thompson and Grinnell paired up for a seventh-place finish at a big tournament in Texas earlier this fall.
Then it was Thompson and Wiley's turn in the 36-team field on the Arkansas River in late October.
While the drive to the tournament took more than 12 hours, qualifying for the national championship wasn't exactly a long road.
College teams had to send their top two anglers as determined by two club-only qualifying tournaments.
So one day last summer the four Tech students took to Swift Creek in individual boats and fished two tournaments -- one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Thompson and Wiley had the top weights at the end of the day.
They hardly performed like rookies in the Arkansas River tournament, for which organizers covered the teams' expenses.
In two practice days, the anglers had been catching some good fish on topwater lures along rock walls. But the weather changed from rainy to sunny once the tournament started.
Plenty of pro anglers have used the excuse that they stayed too long with productive practice patterns once a tournament started, but these guys didn't make that mistake.
"As soon as we saw the sun come out, we knew the topwaters wouldn't work," Wiley said. "We put on crankbaits after five minutes."
A first-day catch of 13 pounds, 11 ounces was enough to put them in second in the tournament. They added 13 pounds on the second day and moved into the lead, advancing along with four other teams to the final day of action.
For the finals, the teams started from scratch.
Thompson and Wiley fell a fish short of the five-bass limit, but their 8-pound, 8-ounce bag was the day's heaviest.
The team's prize included a trophy, Costa del Mar sunglasses and Sperry Topsider shoes.
Thompson said he and Wiley also were told they would get some scholarship money, although they still don't know how much.
"I kind of want to find out what it's going to be," Thompson, a 21-year-old junior majoring in building construction said, laughing.
The team's next tournament is on Alabama's Lake Guntersville, hosted by the Auburn bass fishing team.
Thompson said he's not planning to fish, instead hoping some of the club's new members will be able to represent Tech at that event.
That's the kind of news rival teams would probably welcome, but maybe not based on how well the Tech's other novices have fared in their first few tournaments.
Ski show is Wednesday
The Roanoke Ski Club will hold its annual preseason ski show Wednesday at Hidden Valley Country Club at 6:30 p.m. The show will feature displays from ski areas in the region, vendors and refreshments.
Guests are welcome.
Visit roanokeskiclub.org for more information.
