YETI FLW College Fishing Western Conference Opens on Lake Havasu
LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. – YETI FLW College Fishing is heading to Lake Havasu Feb. 11 for the first of three regular-season stops in the Western Conference. A full field of college fishing clubs will be competing for the top award of a $2,000 club scholarship and a berth into the 2018 College Fishing National Championship.
“The fish are still in their winter patterns at Lake Havasu,” said Costa FLW Series pro Joe Uribe, Jr., of Surprise, Arizona, who won at Lake Havasu when the Series last visited in 2015. “The lake has been fishing pretty typical for this time of year. The fish are still out staging, but we’ve had pretty warm weather lately and if it continues the fish should start to move up and think about starting to spawn very soon.
“At Havasu, the fish tend to stay shallow year round. I don’t fish anything deeper than 20 feet,” Uribe continued. “There is a lot of habitat and man-made structure in the lake – cages, brush piles, plants, pipes, tubes. The bait fish and bass hunker down in that stuff.”
Uribe said that anglers targeting the structure would likely be finesse fishing, using jigs, drop-shot rigs and tubes. He said that anglers would also be found up the river, flipping a jig, throwing spinnerbaits and ChatterBaits in the backwaters.
“My advice for the college anglers would be that they aren’t going to have to venture too far from the takeoff to catch fish,” Uribe said. “The Windsor basin is where we launch and there is a lot of current there from the river dumping into the basin. There is a lot of habitat and bait there, and plenty of stained water. If I was fishing in this event I’d hit the coves and points with crankbaits and jerkbaits in the morning, then as the sun comes up I’d throw a drop-shot rig or a tube on the points and shallow reefs.”
Uribe predicted that the winning team would bring a five-bass limit weighing right around 20 pounds to the scale.
Anglers will take off from the Windsor Beach ramp at Lake Havasu State Park, located at 699 London Bridge Road in Lake Havasu City, at 7:30 a.m. MST Saturday. Weigh-in will be held at the launch beginning at 2 p.m. Takeoff and weigh-in are free and open to the public.
Schools are allowed to register up until the morning of the tournament. Entries may be made either by phone or at CollegeFishing.com.
Schools registered to compete in the Lake Havasu tournament, which is hosted by the Lake Havasu City Convention and Visitors Bureau include:
California State University-Chico – Tyler Firebaugh, Danville, Calif., and Chad Sweitzer, Chico, Calif.
California State University-Chico – Michael Woods, Olivehurst, Calif., and Travis Bounds, Roseville, Calif.
California State University-Chico – David Griswold, Oroville, Calif., and Nicolas Fortino, Chico, Calif.
California State University-Long Beach – Rick Zatarain and Andrew Serar, both of Long Beach, Calif.
California State University-Long Beach – Cole Thomas, Lakewood, Calif., and Via Thao, Long Beach, Calif.
Grand Canyon University – Joseph Dwyer, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Cody Blood, Galt, Ariz.
Northern Arizona University – Marcus Green and Jake Hartzler, both of Flagstaff, Ariz.
Northern Arizona University – Jim Herrero and John Herrero, both of Kingman, Ariz.
University of La Verne – Landon Moore and Daniel Vazquez, both of San Dimas, Calif.
FLW College Fishing teams compete in three regular-season qualifying tournaments in one of five conferences – Central, Northern, Southern, Southeastern and Western. The top ten teams from each division’s three regular-season tournaments and the top 20 teams from the annual FLW College Fishing Open will advance to the 2018 FLW College Fishing National Championship. Additional teams will qualify for the National Championship if the field size in regular-season events exceeds 100 boats.
College Fishing is free to enter. All participants must be registered, full-time students at a college, university or community college and members of a college fishing club that is recognized by their school.
For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow College Fishing on Facebook at Facebook.com/FLWFishing and on Twitter at Twitter.com/FLWFishing. Visit FLWFishing.com to sign up or to start a club at your school.
About FLW
FLW is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, providing anglers of all skill levels the opportunity to compete for millions in prize money in 2017 across five tournament circuits. Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, with offices in Minneapolis, FLW conducts more than 274 bass-fishing tournaments annually across the United States and sanctions tournaments in Canada, China, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. FLW tournament fishing can be seen on the Emmy-nominated “FLW" television show, broadcast to more than 564 million households worldwide, while FLW Bass Fishing magazine delivers cutting-edge tips from top pros. For more information visit FLWFishing.com and follow FLW at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat: @FLWFishing.
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