Of the 71 boats on Lake Harris the weekend of Saturday, April 8, few had tighter lines than four Durant High School students.
Cole Hanson, Kobee Thomas, Matthew Prather and Caleb Howell represented the school’s fishing team that weekend, competing in Leesburg in the Florida B.A.S.S. Nation State Championship. The team of Hanson and Thomas placed fifth overall, while the team of Prather and Howell finished in the top 15.
With help from local organizations, such as Brewington’s Towing, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, CFI and WQYK, three of the four boys — Prather excluded — were able to compete in their first state tournament.
“Our mindset was just kind of open,” Hanson says. “We didn’t really know what to expect.”
The boys went to the Leesburg lake a few weeks early for pre-fishing, getting a feel for Lake Harris and its scaly inhabitants. They also pre-fished the lake the day before the tournament, and the boys found various degrees of success.
“After the third fish I caught there, we were like, ‘Alright, we need to go, Caleb,’” Prather says. “He was like, ‘No.’ He would not leave until he caught a fish.”
Though it took some time, they eventually figured out the best way to get the bass to bite: “flipping the grass,” getting as close to where fish could be in a grassy area as possible and, rather than casting, essentially dropping a line into the water.
“You’re trying to put the bait right in front of the fish’s face,” Prather says.
The only problem was that, with 70 other boats in the water, the fish had plenty of other bait dancing around the water to choose from. Catching them wouldn’t be so easy come tournament time.
But things did go well for Hanson and Thomas, who made the most of the five-fish limit with 17.25 pounds of bass on board — good enough to end the day in second place overall. Prather and Howell finished with just under 10 pounds on board.
On day two, Hanson and Thomas finished with 9.12 pounds on board, which brought the duo down to fifth place, and Prather and Howell picked up seven pounds of live fish.
Durant’s B.A.S.S. Nation season came to a close without a trip to regionals at Lake Kentucky, Tennessee, as Hanson and Thomas would have had to remain in the top two spots to qualify.
Prather and Howell, though, still have a shot: both boys are a part of the Lakeland Junior Bassmasters, and can qualify for the tournament with a good finish in one more tournament.
Currently, Prather and Howell are seventh in the Junior Bassmasters standings with 32.82 points. Should the boys clean up at the Junior Bassmasters’ Saturday, May 6, tournament at Lake Okeechobee, they could springboard into Lake Kentucky from there.
“If we go out to Okeechobee and do pretty well, we have a chance to make it,” Prather says.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.