Brannon, a junior advertising/marketing major from Gaffney, S.C., and Walters, of Summerville, S.C, who is majoring in business management, qualified for the college championship with an 18th place finish in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Wild Card tournament on Alabama’s Pickwick Lake in early July. In all, 17 of the Top 20 teams qualified for the Carhartt College Series National Championship. Three of the Top 20 teams had previously qualified for the National Championship, extending the Wild Card invitations down to 20th place.
That landmark qualification for the USC club came on the heels of the first significant tournament qualification for Brannon and Walters a month earlier when they finished 5^th in the FLW College Fishing Southeastern Conference event on Lake Guntersville, which earned them a spot in the FLW College Fishing Southeastern Conference Invitational on Tennessee’s Lake Chickamauga Oct. 18-19.

“The Tennessee River lakes have been good to us this year,” said Brannon, who hopes their good fortune on reservoirs in that drainage system holds up in the National Championship as Lake Chatuge is a Tennessee River impoundment.

“We’ve never been to Lake Chatuge, so it is going to be interesting,” Brannon said. “It’s a deep, clear reservoir with an abundance of spotted bass. I believe it will be won on some spots and probably a few largemouths.”

Brannon, who is president of the Anglers of USC, said he expects drop-shotting to be a primary tactic, but he and Walters have some other ideas they want to try, too.

“We’ve fished lakes similar to Chatuge so we’ll try to put together some of those similarities with what we know about the lake itself and then with the limited 2 1/2 days of practice we’ll have before the tournament,” he added.

“Chatuge is not as big as Guntersville and the fish are not as big as those in Guntersville. It’s going to be a tough, really hard lake to fish, the type deal where the people will separate themselves.”

Their goal at Chatuge will be to be in the top four on the last day of competition to get a shot at registering the third major landmark for the USC Bass Club, Brannon said. On the last day the teams break down into four individual anglers who will compete for a spot in the 2015 Bassmaster Classic, which will be held on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell.

“There would be nothing better than to for our team to qualify for the chance to fish the Classic in our home state,” Brannon said. “We are one step closer. If we go to Chatuge and executive well, hopefully we will have a chance.”

 

Carhartt / Bassmaster College Championship

Jul 31-Aug 2, 2014

Lake Chatuge

The Ridges Marina

www.bassmaster.com