Tournament News

Tarleton State Takes Second Collegiate Title in a Month

The team of John Anderson and Tanner Morgan claimed the FLW College Fishing title on Falcon Lake. This is the second win for the Tarleton State Bass Club in less than a month. The team of Tanner Morgan and Chris Michels just recently claimed Stephen F. Austin Bucketmouth Bass Tournament (an ACA sectioned event) on Sam Rayburn.

Anderson and Morgan said that they felt confident going into the Falcon event. "We fished the lake once before and we found the spot that we fished in the tournament. It was one of those spots that we looked at and thought there has to be fish on this, or they will defiantly move to it," said Anderson. When discussing strategy for the event, Morgan and Anderson contemplated running to the dam "to catch a quick limit". "But we decided against it because we knew that they would be smaller fish and not weigh very much. Also, we heard that the morning bite was better and we thought that would be important and wanted to be on our best water. We pretty much thought that you would need over 20 pounds to be in the top five and over, or around, 30 pounds to win," explained Morgan.

The team put all their eggs in one basket as they spent the whole day on one spot. The spot was an old road bed that they stated, "There was a lot of dozer work done to it when the lake was low." To enhance the spot was an old fence row that ran parallel to it. To top the spot off, it was covered with brush. The team said that in the morning the bite was better and the fish seemed to be up on the road more, but by the afternoon the bite had slowed and the fish moved to the brush. "We caught around 20 fish and lost two that were about six pounds," exclaimed Anderson. The Texas team used texas rigs to catch all of their fish, and their primary bait was a Lake Fork Tackle Hyper Freak. They said that they thought the color played a big roll, because the green pumpkin gold/purple flake matched the tilapia. Their bites were extremely light and hard to detect, and they also said that they had to drag the rigs, that they weighted from 3/8 oz. to ½ oz., slowly or they didn't get bites.

After all the line starching action was over at Falcon, Anderson and Morgan found themselves with five fish that weighed 29 pounds 13 ounces and a fish that was close to 10 pounds as a kicker that was wrestled to the boat by Anderson. This was more than enough to claim the title, as the closest competitor was almost five pounds back. As a closing thought, the team said the fishing was just awesome and as many anglers say as they leave Falcon Lake, "It was the biggest bag I have ever caught!"

Date: 1-20-09