Konnor Kennedy and I qualified for the 2016 FLW College Fishing National Championship by placing second at the FLW College Fishing Open on Kentucky Lake last spring. Once Lake Keowee was announced as the site of the 2016 National Championship, we turned our attention toward preparing for the biggest tournament of the year.

The University of Alabama, where we attend school, is about five and half hours from the tournament site. At that distance, we could only afford to make one practice trip to the lake, which we did over Christmas break.

We did do some fishing while we were there, but with the trip so far in advance of the tournament we knew that any fish we caught would be long gone by March. So we mainly looked around to get a feel for how Lake Keowee lays out.

After that, instead of spending a lot of money and time driving back and forth to Seneca, S.C., our strategy has been to practice the style of fishing we plan to do during the National Championship by fishing on our home waters of Lewis Smith Lake.

Smith and Keowee have some important similarities that make Smith a great place for us to prep for the championship. Keowee has blueback herring and both spotted bass and largemouths, and in the last five to 10 years, herring have been established in Smith Lake and have really become the dominant food source for its spotted bass.

Konnor and I are both from Cullman, Ala., which is right by Smith, and we grew up fishing the lake. The herring have definitely changed the game there. The weights at tournaments have gone up, and we see more largemouths weighed in. Having seen those changes, we’re interested to see which species will dominate at Lake Keowee – spots or largemouths – or if it will be a mix of both. We also hope that the last few years of knowledge we have gained from fishing on Smith since the herring have taken hold will help us at this tournament.

We would like to thank FLW and all of its sponsors for having these college tournaments. They provide great opportunities for us student fishermen and women to compete in the sport we love.