Lo, a Marketing Major at Minnesota, weighed a three-bass limit at 6 pounds, 3 ounces, to defeat Texas A & M’s Josh Bensema, who managed just one fish at 2 pounds, 8 ounces, in the championship round of the Classic Bracket.

The win vaulted Lo into the 2016 Bassmaster Classic on Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees near Tulsa, Ok., next March. In addition, he will have a fully-rigged Toyota Tundra accompanied by a sponsor-provided, fully rigged boat-and-motor combo to use for the year. Lo was also awarded $7,500 cash by Carhartt to use for expense money in the 2016 Bass Pro Shops Opens. Plus the entry fees for all nine of those Opens were waived.

Bensema and teammate Matthew McArdle had just won the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Championship on Lake DuBay over the weekend and Bensema rolled into the championship round by defeating Andrew Helms who was a member of the UNC Charlotte team that won the 2014 National Championship.

Although between school and his job as a server in a sushi restaurant, Lo does not have time to fish tournaments other than those in college competitions, he grew up watching pros like Kevin Van Dam and Ike Iaconelli on television.

“I grew up fishing as a little kid and then in my late teens I got into a couple of local tournaments and that really sparked my interest in fishing competitively,” he said. “I always followed the pros on television and seeing them weigh in on the big stage I though it would be really neat to be a part of that.”

Next year, Lo said, he plans to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by the Classic Bracket win. In the meantime he will be fishing the FLW College Series in hopes of qualifying for that championship as well.

“I’ll be a senior this fall and next year I will be fishing the Bassmaster Classic as well as the B.A.S.S. Open tournaments,” he said. “It would be a dream come true,” he added, “to qualify for the Elite Series.”

Like the pros, Lo said he always studied maps to find places in a system that might produce fish.

“I never had electronics growing up. So, I just decided to do Google Earth to see what I liked, what stood out. Fish relate to similar things in river systems,” he said.

So, when the top four teams that were decided by the national championship on Saturday were given the opportunity to go out for an hour and scout the new competition waters of the Wisconsin River Flowage for the Classic Bracket, Lo chose to stay and work on tackle. He’d already researched the water online, using Google Earth.

“I fish a lot of river systems back home, and I did what I know how to do,” he said. “I looked for outside bends in the main channel. I found current breaks and fished deep laydowns. I started with that game plan on the first day and it worked so I stuck to it.”

If they are not already using it, pro anglers might want to add Google Earth to their tournament preparation. It worked pretty well for the college kid.