Auburn Guntersville Tournament

While I am in the process of creating a club here at school I still plan to compete in some college tournaments. I invited one of my good buddies, Will Foster, who has never been bass fishing before, to join me for the tournament. Auburn's Tournament trail is a series of three tournaments followed by a championship, all of which take place in Alabama. I wasn't able to attend the first tournament because of the BBQ trip. I made it to the Guntersville tournament, but I just missed the third tournament at Wheeler because the boat was getting worked on. Each tourament they put on is a friday/saturday tournament with practice on Thursday. It's really hard for me to miss that much school. It's amazing how the Auburn guys, for instance, get to travel and fish almost every weekend. With the academic rigor of Birmingham-Southern that would almost be impossible for me!!

Anyways about the tournament. Practice went pretty well with me catching a couple of four pounders in two spots where I thought fish should be holding. Day one would prove to be different as I scrambled around on the Northern part of Guntersville and only managed to catch four all day. I weighed in almost 9lbs. It was okay for me pretty much fishing solo but I expected more.



Day 2 would prove to be even tougher. With wind gusts touching 25mph and keeping steady 15mph all day, my spots were ruined to say the least. I only had one fish and only one cast left on the day. I had made a run back to a small pocket shielded by the wind. When I arrived I found myself sharing the 50 yard stretch of rip-rap with about 12 boats. All of them were fishing right up against the bridge so I decided to move back off a little, upsize from my Xr50 to the Xr75 lipless crankbait, and try my luck in about 7-8ft of water. On the very last cast I ripped the bait free of the grass and hooked into a toad. She felt like a rock pulling her into the Ranger.

I got her inside the boat and went nuts. What a way to end the weekend. I am glad Will had a good time. He only caught three shorts, but he still really enjoyed the lake. We ended up 13th out of 51 teams, which is not to shabby for my partner having never been before. Check out the story at the story, pictures, and results on the Auburn Website.


God Bless,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

January

As you might already know I attend Birmingham-Southern. It's a small liberal arts school in Alabama. We have a 4-1-4 semester system which allows students to take the full month of January to take a single class, travel abroad, or contract their own course. Well, me and three of my buddies decided that we should study BBQ in the South. You might be wondering how in the world this could be academic... It was going to be a writing intensive course and my main job would be to design the website. We took off on our trip and made it to 19 restaurants in 17 days, traveling to five states, and over 3500 miles. It was awesome. Little did we know how much media attention we would receive... We have had the pleasure of being on Good Day Alabama, Fox 5 Atlanta, and even Fox and Friends in NEW YORK!!! We have also been in over 200 newspapers worldwide... Crazy.. I know right. Just a few days after getting back to Birmingham, school started again. On top of that I have been working on a final barbecue paper, trying to balance a budget as Treasurer of my fraternity, and trying to start a fishing club. And on top of that, trying to find some free time to fish, update my website, and keep up with my blog.

I apologize for me neglecting the blog. Totally my fault! I'll do a much better job from now on.


You can check out me and the boys' BBQ adventure on our website!