Finance sophomore Jake Sobania and fisheries and wildlife junior Brett Riser, right, both members of the MSU Fishing Club, practice their craft Monday at Round Lake. The club won the Collegiate Bass Anglers Association Big Ten Championship on Oct. 11 over Indiana University and the University of Michigan.
For eight hours Oct. 11, about 36 boats filled Lake St. Clair as Big Ten anglers battled heavy winds and 35-degree weather to catch the most bass and claim the Collegiate Bass Anglers Association Big Ten Championship title.
For MSU, the day ended in a tournament victory. The team of 10 MSU anglers caught 49.08 pounds of bass, beating second place Indiana University, which weighed in at about 32 pounds.
The annual bass fishing tournament returned to Lake St. Clair for the first time in five years and was co-hosted by MSU and the University of Michigan. The tournament hosted 72 students from eight Big Ten schools, including U-M, Indiana, the University of Illinois, Penn State University, Purdue University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Iowa.
“Lake St. Clair is a huge body of water with a lot of fish,” said Ben Cummings, the MSU Fishing Club captain and marketing junior. “There were volunteers that chauffeured us around the lake; every team had about five boats because we could only fit two to a boat.”
The team went home with a gold trophy — held by the tournament’s winner until the next year — and plaques for individual efforts, finance sophomore Jake Sobania said.
During the tournament, the anglers were limited to using only lures, not live bait, civil engineering senior Ryan Kussmaul said.
“I’ve fished a lot of tournaments,” he said. “When you catch a fish on a lure, you feel like you accomplished something, like you tricked the fish. The conditions are always changing (and) you need to learn how to change with them.”
During the tournament, about 93 bass were caught, weighed and released back into the water. The biggest bass caught by an MSU student was an almost six-pound smallmouth bass caught by Sobania, Cummings said.
In order to qualify for the tournament, each MSU angler had to be in the fishing club.
The fishing club has about 20 members, Sobania said.
“Being in the fishing club is the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been at MSU,” applied engineering sciences freshman T.J. Rumpf said.
The fishing club has weekly meetings and attempts to get on a lake for practice once a month, Cummings said.
“We try to practice when we can,” he said. “We practice on Lake Lansing, Round Lake, we have even fished on the Red Cedar. And we aren’t just about bass fishing — we fish for walleyes, steel heads (and do) a lot of different fishing.”
The club isn’t designed for expert fishermen, Sobania said.
“You don’t have to be a serious fisherman to join the club,” he said. “We are all willing to teach people so they can learn, because someone took the time to teach us. It’s nice to spread the sport.”
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