Wrap Design  by Creative Edge Design in Altavista, VA.

     The Virginia Lottery, in cooperation with Angler's Choice Marine and Creative Edge Design, put forth the resources to have a team boat wrapped in an effort to give all of our sponsors the recognition that they deserve. To this day, the Bass Fishing Team at Virginia Tech is the only collegiate fishing team, out of over 200 nation wide, who can say that they have a wrapped team boat. 

     With the sport of collegiate bass fishing growing ever so rapidly, the competition for sponsorship and support is also intensifying. Serving as an excellent marketing tool, the option that collegiate teams now have to wrap boats may open up a new realm of advertisement for businesses across the country. It is our goal to use the team boat as a symbol for what is to come in collegiate fishing and the possibilities seem endless. On behalf of our entire team, I would like to say thank you to The Virginia Lottery and Creative Edge Design for making this possible.

     We hope to compete from this boat in as many collegiate events as possible this semester and compete at a level higher than ever before. The team is heading in the right direction and we feel that we still have one of the strongest fishing programs in the country. Win or lose, we hope to make this fishing season the best that it can be.

                                                                   - Scott Wiley

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A Close Call

We haven’t had any bloggers in a while and I thought it was time to start sharing some stories again. It has been a very busy end of the semester juggling schoolwork, exams, sponsorship adjustments and getting some time in on the water in between. Now that things have settled down and I am home in Richmond for Winter break, I can focus on what is most important—fishing. A few days ago, during this mid-December rainy period we have been experiencing, I was able to get out on the James River to figure out the coldwater bass.

Before I get into the meat of the story, I will let you know the basics of the fishery. The tidal portion of the James River below Richmond is increasingly becoming a better largemouth fishery. The reason that this part of the river is enticing this time of year is simple; the Dominion Power Plant rests just upstream and dumps warm water out and consistently keeps the water temperature around the 60-degree mark. The bass know it, the stripers know it, and I know it! I was able to find some eddies and breaks in the current where bass stack up and caught a number of them to three pounds. In a river system, perhaps more so than in lakes, bass will be schooled up in these locations and it will be easier to catch a number of them from one spot.

The real reason I chose to write this blog follows. As I approached a spot that looked like it would hold some quality fish, I took out the spinner bait to match the hatch of the shad that were scattered in the creek channels and proceeded to throw it. I was using a 6’-6” J.B. Custom Rods Black Snake paired with a 7:1:1 ratio Abu Garcia Revo SX, a $350.00 combination. I tell you the price because it is critical to the story. As I made my first long cast to the eddy, a striper about three pounds nailed the spinner bait. Anyone who has ever caught a striper knows how hard they hit! The rod actually got yanked out of my hands and into the water, sinking in the seven foot deep muddy water. I stared as my rod drifted into the abyss and got pulled away by the fish at a rate that my trolling motor could not catch up to. I was distraught.

I had to think quickly and efficiently. The first thought was to dive in. I quickly ruled that option out as the air temperature was close to freezing and my cell phone was in my pocket. The next logical option was to grab a deep diving crankbait and dredge for the line and pull in the rod. I must have done this for ten minutes with no success and was about to give up, shed a tear, and keep fishing when I hit something with resistance. Sure enough, the line was on the bill of the crankbait as planned and my rod was at the other end. I pulled in the rod, briefly inspected it for damage, and began to pull in the spinner bait. The striper was still on the line! As I got the lure to the side of the boat the fish dropped off and swam happily back into the water with a story to tell its friends. I was ecstatic.

The lesson of the story is a popular theme of my fishing career—never give up! Mike Iaconelli shares the same theme. His story is more interesting than mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvdQYnnr1s4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluB1vPgH4U

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Arkansas Pit Stop

Where Boats Go to Die

(Posted on July 4, 2008 by Scott Wiley)

So here we are, Scott and Charlie, in route to Little Rock for the College Bass National Championship and a quick stop in Murphreesboro, Tennessee was on the agenda to pick up a loaner boat from our gracious sponsor Stratos Boats. As we arrive at the warehouse where all the beautiful boats are born, it dawns on us that these boats have a lifespan much like our own.

Driving through the parking lot in search a our electric yellow 2004 Stratos equipped with a 225 Evinrude to hook up to, we stumbled onto a boat yard that had some recognizable statues that we simply couldn’t pass up a quick photo opportunity. First, Elite Pro Jason Quinn’s boat was in storage between tournaments and soaking up some rays in the Tennessee heat. Disrespect if you ask me. Ever heard of a boat cover? Talk about protecting investments. Anyways, not a few spaces down, we noticed an empty hull of Skeet Reese's boats followed by another of Quinn's. This is when we call to question, where do boats go when their lifespan is over? 

This place was a litter yard of boat parts and half hulls and anything you could imagine. This is where nice boats die, the quality boats that once had Elites standing on the decks making thousands of dollars. I could have built a $40,000 boat out of spare parts from a combination of nice boats here. Boats like my ’85 Ranger won’t ever see a death bed this nice. It’s depressing to talk about, but who knows what happens to the millions of boats that don’t run anymore. They must get sent to the garbage in bits and pieces.

As we hooked up and proceeded to leave with the boat we will be fishing from tomorrow, it was interesting to look into the rearview and see a boat fresh from the assembly line ready for a long life and one right next to it taking its last sip of gasoline and being picked apart for it organs.

Ok, I need to go, the co-pilot’s duties in the car are calling…

The Trolling Motor Derby

(Posted on May 19, 2008 by Scott Wiley)

The mighty Swift Creek Reservoir is a 1,700 acre impoundment in Chesterfield County, Virginia that serves as the primary drinking source for thousands of local residents. With this reason in mind along with the relatively small size of the lake, it is no mystery why no gasoline motors are allowed to run on the lake.

This past weekend, the local Lions Club hosted one of their three or four tournaments that they put on each year, usually drawing about 35 to 45 boats. I grew up fishing this reservoir as did VT teammates Charlie, Brett, and Chase. I always turn my fish finders on while I fish, but I often find myself using the contours that I have stored in my head from the 20 plus years of fishing the lake. I usually approach these tournaments with a relaxed attitude and just try to go fishing. An average stringer of five bass on this lake usually get me 10 to 15 pounds every time out.

I will lead into this story by telling you that this tournament is also a showcase for boats. I fish out of my 1985 Ranger with a 101 pound thrust trolling motor on a 36 volt system, nothing too special. Some of these other guys live for these tournaments and rig their boats to be electric motor masses. One of the locals took a new Bass Tracker and took off the factory gas motor (must have been too heavy?) and felt it necessary to rig two transom mounted 80 pound plus trolling motors on the back and one foot controlled haus on the front. The guy must have been going faster than someone I saw on Claytor lake a few days ago with a 10 horse power Evinrude! I digress.

31 boats, 28 of which had multiple trolling motors on them, set out at first light to race to the honey holes on the lake. My partner and I pulled up to our first spot within five minutes and ended up fishing right behind a small jon boat who boated three keepers in the first 10 minutes, all of which were smaller than a pound and a half. This creek channel is flooded by golf balls from the nearby par 3 hole that shoots to an isolated green over the cove but is also host to some solid bass. We managed nothing and decided to cruise to the next spot. The tournament is only a four fish tournament so we knew we needed good fish.

Our plan was to hit all of our five next spots for about an hour each, leaving time at the end to scramble and try for the bigger bite. The areas we fished were large flats that dropped from two feet to ten feet and had a slight grass line disappearing with depth. Shakey heads proved to be the weapons of choice, but these weren’t just any shakey heads. We rigged ours with Bagley Shakey Head jigs and Gambler Sweebo worms sauced up with some C.B.’s Hawg Sauce, a sure combination on any lake. The reason that these fish liked the bait so much is that they had never tasted the garlic from the worm and the sauce together. These fish literally nibbled at the bait, bit it, and hung onto it for a long while until we set the hooks.

We would end up catching a quick limit at our main drop offs and we knew we needed some kicker fish. We decided to push off the drops into the deeper water beyond and hooked up immediately on a four pound chain pickeral that disappointed the two of us. Not ten minutes later, my partner set into a six pound fish that had solid pound of eggs in her belly, spawning in ten feet of water three weeks after the majority of the bass had moved off the beds, a real surprise! By now we had about 10.5 pounds in the well with the smallest fish at about a pound and a half.

Knowing we needed at least 12 pounds for the win, we made some late day moves to creek channels coming out of flats and caught a few that wouldn’t cull. With about an hour left in the day, we landed a three pounder that culled the smallest and put us up to 12 pounds. We knew we had a shot and thought there was a good chance to win.

Most of the anglers weighed in and there was a big fish at 8 pounds that had some 12 inchers go with it and those guys were in the lead with about 11 pounds for their best four fish. We loaded our fish into a trash bag (supposedly one of those stretch ones that wont break…) because we had no regular weigh bag. I brought it up out of the well, loaded with our fish and began to motion for my partner to help me support the bottom of the bag. He was in arms length and we were stepping from the boat to the dock, about a two foot gap between, and the bag broke! Fish flopped and exhaustively tried to flip their way off the back deck of the boat. I dropped immediately on the six pounder and managed to elbow two others but one was out of reach and inching toward the reservoir of freedom. My buddy, who had come to watch the weigh in, was standing on the dock and saw the incident evolve. His quick reaction to dive on the back of the boat and tackle the last fish to safety certainly saved us the tournament.

We would survive the ordeal and weigh the heaviest weight. It truly amazes me how quickly things can happen. Luckily, it was meant to be this weekend. Often, it isn’t. We learn from every tournament we fish, slowly becoming the wise and experienced angler that we strive to be. This is the beauty of fishing. When you think you have seen it all, something else catches your eye and impacts the way you do things in the future. Isn’t that the same way in life? Yes, cliché I know, but growing up playing sports, I had a lot of coaches relay this same message and it speaks true for almost every competitive activity that people are passionate about. Fishing is mine.

Putting It All In Perspective

(Posted 4-30-2008 by Charlie Machek)

On April 26, two VT teams traveled to Smith Mountain Lake for the Anglers Choice Team Tournament Trail event.  Scott and I made up one team, and Chris Fiore and Billy Bernier were the other.  If you read last week’s blog, then you know that Scott’s boat was not running.  The control box was fried, and it needed a new.  So there we were, waiting on a part, not fishing.  I called Anglers Choice on Friday morning, praying that the boat was ready to go so we would have at least a half day of practice.  Go figure the part didn’t come in time.  I called Scott and basically told him, we got no boat, no part, no practice, and the tournament is tomorrow.  Thanks to the great support that we get from Anglers Choice, they used an old control box and forced it to fit, so we were back up and running, its now about 2:00 the day before the tourney, and we have to drive to Martinsville to get the boat and then we can finally head up to the lake. All in all its about a 4 hr ordeal.  We drop the boat in about an hour before dark, just to see what the water conditions were.  We fired the motor up, and it ran better than ever, but if you recall last week, we used the trolling motor all day, and hadn’t had a chance to charge the batteries.  We cruised around the big lake for a while to find that since the last time we had been there the water temp had risen at least 10 degrees and the water visibility had probably tripled.  Now its time to try and put together a plan.  Even though we did’t know if our spots that produced 3 weeks ago still have fish, and we hadn’t located any beds, we were still confident.  Our first move was to run 20 minutes up lake, and we got two good fish in the box by about 7:45.  We were pretty excited and thought it was going to be a pretty good day.  We caught a couple of 13 inchers (14” limit) in that same cove and then made a move further up lake, mistake #1 (All of the events up until this one were not really in our control).  We stopped on a deep rock ledge that we had pulled a lot of good quality fish off of 3 weeks ago, mistake #2.  All we got were nibbles from small fish.  Then we headed further up, mistake #1 revisited.  Caught a couple more short fish, and then lost a small keeper at the boat, mistake #3.  Next we found a couple of beds, and one of them had a nice fat 5 pounder sittin on it.  She saw us, didn’t bite.  Move further UP lake, #1 again.  Mistakes #4 through #6, miss hookset on 3 good fish.  Go back to our 5 pounder, still wont bite, waste too much time, mistake #7.  At this point there was probably a little over an hour left.  Move DOWN lake.  Switch my Gambler Ace to a baitcaster, don’t tighten the drag, miss 4 pounder, I am tired of counting.  Tighten drag, throw back to the bed and catch a short fish.  See another solid keeper, but don’t have enough time.  Needless to say we didn’t place very well in this tournament.  Since Scott was teaching lessons with his blog I figure I can give a lesson as well.  I called my dad to let him know how we did, and I was upset at how the day went.  He said, “how many fish did you catch?”  Me: “probably about 15, but we only had 2 keep.”  Pop: “That sounds like fun!”  Me: “We were terrible out there, we weren’t even close.”  Pop: “I’d rather have been catching fish than being here at work.”  I didn’t want to hear it at the time, but that really puts thing into perspective.  Next time you are out on the water, and that big ones gets away, or you’re hung in a stump, just be thankful you are out on the water and don’t worry about it.  Lesson learned, next time we’re going to be prepared, and it was fun catching those fish.

Alabama Blues

(posted 4-23-2008 by Scott Wiley)

The Southern Collegiate Bass Fishing Series is a brand new collegiate tournament trail. The format requires that each university fish at least two tournaments out of a series of three in order to fish the series championship on Lake Guntersville. All tournaments are hosted on Alabama lakes. The first was on Wheeler Lake, the second was on Weiss Lake, and the third is on Lake Wilson.

Our school did not send any teams to the first event but we did send three boats to the second event on Weiss. It was a dismal performance to say the least. One boat managed one keeper of under a pound, my boat managed two totaling only three and a half pounds, and our third boat only muscled up about six pounds. I would like to say that I did learn two things this past weekend and one has to do with fishing and the other does not.

On Thursday, before the tournament, my partner and I dropped my old 1989 Procraft into Lake Guntersville to do some intense spring fishing only to find the gas lines full of water — an engine destroying situation!  With the 150 HP Mariner not running, we had to rely on the trolling motor to cut through the water long enough to satisfy two college kids hungry to catch some southern bass. Our mission for the day had changed from tearing fishs’ lips to simply trying to learn something new. Neither one of us had ever caught a bass flipping or punching thick grass mats until that Thursday. We rigged our seven feet long J.B. Custom Rods flipping sticks with heavy line and one ounce tungsten weights topped off with Gambler BB Crickets and like creature baits texposed on the hooks. The first mat was massive and would prove to be in trolling distance away from the boat ramp. In the first five minutes of testing out the new fishing method Charlie feels a strike through one foot of grass and says, “Check this out.” He leans back and sets the hook with all the force capable to muscle up a hook set and sticks the fish. Keep in mind, this is dangerous business. I cannot imagine what would have happened if the fish was not there upon the setting of the hook and that one ounce tungsten weight would have been on a direct flight straight toward his head. Fortunately for Charlie, the fish was there. Unfortunately for the fish, the bait was made of plastic and there was a hook down through the center of it!

Charlie beat me to the first fish that ended up weighing about three pounds but not five minutes after his fish came my turn. Nibble, nibble, BANG! I felt the bite and set the hook as hard as he did. Sure enough, instead of the weight coming flying out of the grass, another three pound fish was sent on a beeline toward the boat. I did not even get a chance to reel my 7:0:1 ratio Shimano Curado before the fish ended up in my lap. This was truly the most satisfying fish catch of my career. Charlie and I looked at one another and smiled at the thought that we had just added another deadly weapon to the arsenal of fishing techniques that we have been building upon for the last twenty years of our lives. This was lesson number one for the weekend. If this is at all interesting, read on to find out what lesson number two was.

After catching more fish punching grass mats and running Rat-L-Traps through milfoil, we were still stuck with one problem — no working motor for the tournament on Saturday. As a college student, funds are low at the end of the semester and fixing the boat could be a problem. Thank you Mom and Dad for letting me use the gas card by the way. I will make sure that I am out of town when you receive that bill! Anyways, we took the boat to a local shop in Alabama on the day that we were supposed to be figuring out how to catch fish on Weiss Lake. The mechanic was the nicest, southern guy I had ever met, willing to help us flush the carborators free of water and gas while smoking what was probably his seventeenth cigarette of the morning. Yeah, sounds safe right? Regardless of whether or not we were going to have an explosion on the back of my boat or not, he showed us how we needed to fix the problem ourselves and I proceeded to pay him for his one hour effort and only requested twenty bucks. I gladly paid the man and Charlie and I had learned how to go about flushing water from a gas tank and cleaning the carborators. This was lesson number two for the weekend. If you ever have water in your lines, come see me and I will charge you only twenty bucks!

Still, we had an issue. The boat was fixed by nightfall the evening before the collegiate tournament and we went to drop it into the water to test how she was running. As soon as I turned the key I saw smoke coming from under the driving console. Yup, it wouldn’t crank and I had just fried the starting system somehow. I guess this is what happens when you drop only $2,800 on a 1989 boat and motor. Perhaps this should be lesson number three? Buy nice boats.

The end result left Charlie and I in a similar situation as we were on Guntersville on Thursday, forced to fish with only a trolling motor and an arsenal of baits tied on rods on the front deck of the boat. I was surprised with how much water we covered on the trolling motor that day. I think we probably fished every inch of the two square miles surrounding the launch site. After this story, I think I have finally made a valid excuse for only catching three and a half pounds that day. Not to talk trash, but did I also mention that three and a half pounds was better than over half of the competitors in the tournament? I would like to hear their excuses…

 Mike Bylund showing off his 5.5lb. Largemouth caught on the practice day for the Weiss Lake Tournament. That fish would have put them in the top 3 for the tournament if they had caught it a day later.

Weiss Lake