“This was our last chance to qualify for the national championship,” said Gillenwater, who recently graduated with a degree in Management. “We both just graduated, and neither of us have been there before. I knew that we had a pretty good bag today, but I definitely didn’t think that we had enough to get the win.”

 

      The Hoosier bass club said that they fished the same spot on both days of competition – a shallow rock bar in the Detroit River. The duo said that all 10 of the fish that they weighed in came on a green pumpkin-colored tube.

 

        “We really didn’t know what we were going to do coming into the tournament,” Gillenwater added. “Neither of us had been here before, and we didn’t get any practice time, either. But I grew up fishing for smallmouth with my dad and I am comfortable fishing tubes.

 

      “It was very rough out there on both days,” Gillenwater went on to say. “Our Mercury outboard was crucial to our success. It ran perfectly all week, and was 100 percent a factor in our win today.”

 

      The top 3 teams that advanced to the College Fishing National Championship are:

 

      1st:  Indiana University – Sean Gillenwater, Bloomington, Ind., and Josh Collier, Ellettsville, Ind. (10 bass, 31-10, $4,000)

      2nd: Georgetown College – John Hunter, Shelbyville, Ky., and Vincent Timperio, Corbin, Ky. (10 bass, 31-9, $2,000)

      3rd:  University of Nebraska-Omaha – Ben Milliken, Bennington, Neb., and Ben Kroeger, Omaha, Neb. (10 bass, 31-9, $1,000)

       

 

     FLW College Fishing teams compete in four qualifying events in one of five conferences – Central, Northern, Southern, Southeastern and Western. The top 15 teams from each regular-season tournament will qualify for one of five conference invitational tournaments. The top 10 teams from each conference invitational tournament will advance to the 2014 FLW College Fishing National Championship.

  

   Visit CollegeFishing.com to sign up or to start a club at your school.

 

Boater Jason Shipton of Muncy, Pa., won the July 13 Walmart BFL Northeast Division event on Oneida Lake with a total catch of 16 pounds, 15 ounces. Shipton took home over $4,150 in winnings after capturing the tournament title.

     In his first BFL win as a boater, Shipton ran the length of a rough Oneida Lake for the winning limit of four smallmouth and one largemouth.

 

     “It was windy in the morning, so I started by the islands on the west end,” Shipton said. “We weren’t catching any, though, so I figured we needed to go fish where I’d found them in practice.” So, the Muncy, Pa., pro picked up and ran more than an hour through rough water to the east end of the lake.

 

     Once there, Shipton targeted boulders in the grass in 12 feet of water. He credits his Sneaky Hollow Baits Tubes and Tarantulas with the success. “There were other boats there, but I was the only one catching them. I probably caught 25 smallmouth.”

 

         

     Sal Messina of Waterbury, Conn., weighed a five-bass limit totaling 14 pounds, 11 ounces Saturday to win $2,078 in the co-angler division.

 

       

      The next BFL Northeast Division tournament is scheduled for Aug. 3 on Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, N.Y. After the last divisional tournament is complete, the top 40 boaters and 40 co-anglers based on point standings will qualify for the Oct. 3-5 Regional Championship on the Chesapeake Bay in North East Maryland. Boaters will compete for a top award of a Ranger Z518 with a 200-horsepower Evinrude or Mercury outboard and a Chevy Silverado, while co-anglers will fish for a new Ranger Z518 with a 200-horsepower Evinrude or Mercury outboard.

 

     The BFL is a 24-division circuit devoted to weekend anglers, with 120 tournaments throughout the season, five in each division. The top 40 boaters and co-anglers from each division qualify for a regional tournament and compete to finish in the top six, which then qualifies them for one of the longest-running championships in all of competitive bass fishing – the Walmart BFL All-American presented by Chevy.