Monster fish helps Adrian College secure national title
Posted Friday, January 19, 2024
Author: Mickey Alvarado
A shiny, golden, lucky lipless crankbait caught the eye and then hooked the mouth of what turned out to be the bass of a lifetime for Adrian College’s tandem fishing sophomore team of Braylon Eggerding and Lucas Washburn, who had never landed a lunker the size of this monster, officially weighing in at 11 pounds, 7 ounces, at the Major League Fishing (MLF) Abu Garcia College Fishing National Championship on January 11, in Kissimmee, Florida.
Had that sow weighed just one ounce less, it would have cost the Adrian Bulldogs a national title. But the giant ultimately helped seal the deal and secured for the young team one of the most sought-after collegiate bass fishing championships in the nation, and a $43,500 prize package that includes a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard, and $10,000.
Even with the big bass helping lift their five-fish limit total day weight to 23 pounds, nine ounces, the two weren’t confident they had enough weight to win it all, after going into the final day of the event in 10th place.
“I felt like we had a shot at the title, but in our minds, we thought we had to catch somewhere around 30 pounds to win it, because we had eight pounds to make up,” Washburn said.
Eggerding and Washburn’s bag of baiting tricks worked like magic on the tropical waters, and they limited out with a weather-shortened, two-day total catch weight of 42 pounds and four ounces, which held up to earn them the national title.
The team’s huge, 11-pound, 7-ounce largemouth bass easily won the event’s Berkley Big Bass honors, weighing 2-1/2 pounds more than the second-largest fish of the event. [The current record for the biggest largemouth bass ever caught in Michigan is 11.94 pounds.]
Eggerding said it was pretty scary when he hooked the big fish. After taking the ’Dawg’s bait, the hawg sped off and went on a long run.
“It started running and we weren’t making up any ground on it,” Eggerding said. “It went into some lily pads, and I thought right then it was going to come off the hook. But it did its course and came out. Then it came up and kind of tried to jump but couldn’t — Lucas netted it right then and there!”
“It was insane,” Washburn said of netting the whopper. “We got that thing in the boat and started hugging each other, screaming, yelling, and jumping around. It was a special moment.”
“It’s like nothing else, I’ve never felt anything like it,” Eggerding said of the big bass’ strike, noting it was the longest fish-fight he’d ever had. “It was stronger and bigger than any bass I’ve ever caught, and to do that in that tournament was amazing!”
The two anglers knew each other well. They were friends from the same high school district in Grand Rapids. “We fished through middle school together and then started a team in our freshman year in high school,” Eggerding said.
With the win, the champions also earned an automatic entry into the 2024 Toyota Series Championship to compete as pros for a shot to win up to $235,000 and the chance to compete in REDCREST 2025 — Major League Fishing’s most prestigious championship.
Adrian College had two teams finish in the top 10 of the Abu Garcia National Championship with sophomores Gerry Brumbaugh Jr. and Mitch Staffon placing ninth with 35 pounds of fish.
With the first-place victory, the Bulldogs’ have secured the two of the biggest collegiate bass fishing titles in the nation, having also won the Bassmaster (B.A.S.S.) College Series National Championship (Hayden Scott, Griffin Fernandes) in 2021.
Adrian College bass fishing team head coach Seth Borton said it takes a combination of factors to build a national powerhouse program.
“First and foremost, my recruits have to have a tremendous amount of high school tournament fishing experience,” Borton said.
Before selecting an angler for his elite team, Borton asks a lot of questions to see how many hours they spend on the water and what type of fisherman they are.
“I have a group of guys that are power fishermen and another group that are finesse fishermen,” Borton said. “Having that mix of both usually creates a scenario where at least one team is on the right pattern. We get kids from a lot of different states with a lot of different experiences on a lot of different lakes around the country. There are really not too many scenarios they get into where they just don’t know what they should be doing.”
Borton said Adrian College is only the second school in the history of college bass fishing to win both the B.A.S.S. National Championship and the MLF National Championship.
“To the average person, fishing just seems like fishing,” Borton said. “But the reality is, there are a lot of differences that exist from one fishery to the next, from a northern fishery all the way down south. The type of forage that exists in those different areas changes significantly. Having kids that have been fishing around the country sure helps.”
Confidence in oneself is another big factor, Borton said.
“Both of these teams pretty much told me, ‘We’re not going there to finish well, we’re going there to win!’ And that’s the mentality you need to have. It’s interesting, when you have that kind of belief and confidence in yourself, a lot of times you can kind of will something into existence.”
After everything was said and done and the MLF national championship trophies were put away for the long ride back home, the Bulldogs released that big, monster largemouth bass and his buddies back into the chain of lakes.
As for that lucky, shiny golden lure?
“I’ll never use it again,” Eggerding said of his prized trophy.
