Holy Hokies

Virginia Tech takes top two spots at Northern Regional Championship

Virginia Tech teammates Andrew Blevins and Carson Rejzer caught six bass Sunday weighing 9 pounds, 7 ounces. With a two-day total of 18-5, the Hokies have a 3-pound lead going into the final day of competition. Photo by Brett Carlson. Anglers: Wyatt Blevins, Carson Rejzer.

November 8, 2009 • Brett Carlson • Abu Garcia College Fishing

DAVIDSON, N.C. – Similar to their ACC supremacy in college football, the Virginia Tech Hokies are dominating the relatively new sport of collegiate bass fishing. After two days of competition on Lake Norman, the top two spots on the leaderboard are occupied by the Blacksburg, Va., university.

Although the school name at the top still reads Virginia Tech, the lead changed hands on day two of the National Guard FLW College Fishing Northern Regional Championship. Yesterday Charlie Machek and Scott Wiley were tied for the lead with Fairmont State. Today, the Virginia Tech team of Andrew Blevins and Carson Rejzer assumed the top spot.

Blevins and Rejzer are the only team to have caught six-bass limits each of the two tournament days. Today’s limit of 9-7 looks good on paper, but in reality it was tenuous at best.

“I caught mine throughout the day, and he caught his limit fish within the last five minutes,” said Blevins. “We got in with only one minute to spare.”

“A lot of our midlake stuff didn’t produce today,” said Rejzer. “We completely changed and ended up stumbling on a new spot.”

That new spot was a highly productive dock on the north end of the lake. That’s where Rejzer caught his final two keepers, and Blevins accidentally caught a fourth.

Combined with an 8-14 stringer from day one, Blevins and Rejzer have a total weight of 18 pounds, 5 ounces and a 3-pound lead heading into the final day.

“It feels pretty good right now,” added Rejzer, a sophomore majoring in building construction. “We’ve just got to get it done tomorrow.”

Blevins and Rejzer have fished in three tournaments together and are now guaranteed a fourth as they will fish in the College National Championship April 10-12, 2010, hosted by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Blevins has fished other FLW events as well. In 2007, he finished fifth as a co-angler at the Walmart BFL event held on Smith Mountain Lake.

“This is by far my best tournament experience,” said Blevins, the president of the Virginia Tech bass club and a sophomore studying fisheries science. “It is pretty cool to have our teammates in second place, and we have become pretty good friends with the N.C. State team sitting in third place. Tomorrow should be a really exciting day.”

Machek and Wiley slip to second

Virginia Tech’s Machek and Wiley, who led day one, slipped to second place by 3 pounds even on day two. They were able to scrap together 5 pounds, 14 ounces total – plenty enough to stay in the top five.

Wiley said he measured 15 spotted bass that were just short of the 14-inch minimum length requirement. Ultimately they ended up with only five bass, one short of a tournament limit.

Without that sixth fish, Wiley and Machek were unable to work their second pattern in which they target kicker largemouths.

While they were visibly disappointed with their day-two performance, they know they still have one day left. And considering they won the 2007 Under Armour College Bass National Championship, it would be unwise to count them out.

Wolfpack on the prowl

North Carolina State University’s Ben Dziwulski and Kevin Beverley made a big push on day two into third place. Although they only caught 6 pounds, 2 ounces yesterday, they followed it up in grand fashion today with a 9-pound, 2-ounce bag. Of the five keepers they caught, four were spotted bass. The lone largemouth they caught weighed just over 3 pounds.

“Tomorrow is going to be interesting,” said Dziwulski, a sophomore majoring in business. “I really thought they (Machek and Wiley) were going to pull away with it. We got four yesterday, five today and we’re going to catch six tomorrow.”

In practice, Dziwulski and Beverley (agriculture engineering major) were on a solid spotted-bass pattern. To their surprise, they have caught a largemouth in the same spot during each of the two tournament days.

“We’ve been coming here the last three weekends for practice; we’ve probably put in over 120 hours. But within the first two days, we already had found our spots. We had several days where we caught 12 or 13 pounds. We need one of those days tomorrow.”

Dziwulski is no stranger to tournament bass fishing. In 2008, he finished second at the TBF Junior World Championship held on the Monticello Reservoir in Jenkinsville, S.C.

Fairmont State falls to fourth

Sitting in fourth place is the Fairmont State University team of Wil Dieffenbauch and Brent Dodrill. Dieffenbauch and Dodrill caught 9 pounds, 7 ounces Saturday and followed it up today with 4-13.

“We were pretty worried,” said Dodrill. “We didn’t have a single keeper until the last hour. It was really stressful.”

In that last hour, the two sophomores caught three bass to clinch their berth in the finals. Although they are 4 pounds behind the leaders, they know what it takes to win, having clinched victory at the Potomac River qualifier earlier this year.

Hampden-Sydney rallies to fifth

Rounding out the top five teams was Hampden-Sydney College’s Charles Parris and Allen Luck. Parrish and Luck started the day in 13th place with only two fish weighing 2 pounds, 14 ounces. On day two they rallied all the way to fifth with a six-bass limit weighing 10 pounds, 3 ounces – the heaviest stringer of the tournament thus far.

“We found them chasing shad,” said Parrish. “They were down deeper, and we just jigged them right up.”

Hampden-Sydney was the first team to weigh in Sunday afternoon.

The five teams – two from Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Fairmont State and Hampden-Sydney – will launch from Blythe Landing Monday at 7 a.m. for the final day of competition. The winning team will receive $25,000 plus a 177TR Ranger wrapped in school colors and powered by an Evinrude or Yamaha outboard engine. All five teams are now qualified to fish the National Guard FLW College Fishing National Championship, which will be held April 10-12, 2010, in Knoxville, Tenn.

The final weigh-in will begin at 4 p.m. tomorrow at Davidson College. The Reel Life Festival, which has been running in conjunction with the tournament weigh-in, will continue tomorrow from 4 to 7 p.m. Reel Life Festival visitors can register to win a MacBook Air, which will be given away tomorrow.