The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater duo of Jared Mataczynski of Wausau, Wisconsin, and Steve Nebel of Whitewater, Wisconsin, won the YETI FLW College Fishing Central Conference tournament on Lake of the Ozarks Saturday with a five-bass limit weighing 19 pounds, 5 ounces. The victory earned the Wisconsin-Whitewater bass club $2,000 and the team will now advance to compete at the 2018 FLW College Fishing National Championship.
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“It’s awesome to finally get a win,” said Nebel, a senior majoring in business. “Jared and I have been fishing together all four years of our college career, but we haven’t had the right breaks that we needed to put it all together and get a win. We thought this tournament was going to be an umbrella rig slugfest, so we’re pretty excited to finally qualify for the FLW National Championship.”
“It was a crazy day,” said Mataczynski, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship. “Since we’re from Wisconsin, we don’t have much experience with fishing umbrella rigs. But, after doing our research before the tournament we knew that was going to be the deal.”
The duo said that they caught their winning limit by fishing what they called “channel swing bluff wall ends”, where the bluff wall ended as it narrowed into a cove. They said that they fished umbrella rigs all day, rigged with Keitech Swing Impact FAT swimbaits. They used 3.8-inch swimbaits on the outside and a 4.8-inch swimbait that they had dipped in chartreuse dye in the middle, to trigger the bites on that swimbait.
“We wanted the bass to hit that bait, because that was one that had one of the three hooks allowed in it,” Nebel said. “We dipped the tail in chartreuse to differentiate it from the others.
“The majority of our pattern was all new water,” Nebel continued. “We just ran the lake and fished different channel swing bluff walls. We ran probably 20 different spots and caught six keepers – about one an hour.”
“The key for us was just trying something different,” Mataczynski, went on to say. “A lot of the bluffs we were fishing did not have a ledge or a shelf, just a steep wall. We tried them anyways and managed to catch some good fish there.”
The top 10 teams that advanced to the 2018 College Fishing National Championship are:
1st: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater – Jared Mataczynski, Wausau, Wis., and Steve Nebel, Whitewater, Wis., five bass, 19-5, $2,000
2nd: University of Evansville – Blake Knies and Lee Knies, both of Jasper, Ind., five bass, 19-5, $1,000
3rd: Southeast Missouri State University – Luke Brozovich, Minooka, Ill, and Reid Millburg, Glenarm, Ill., five bass, 19-2, $500
4th: Kansas State University – Hunter Whiteley, Springfield, Mo., and Tyler Nekolny, Manhattan, Kan., five bass, 18-2, $900
5th: University of Wisconsin-La Crosse – Eric Ulry, La Crosse, Wis., and Colby Wolff, Shawano, Wis., five bass, 17-15, $500
6th: Illinois State University – Tyler Rocke, Peoria, Ill., and Justin Schick, Morton, Ill., five bass, 17-15
7th: Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville – Zach Hartnagel, Edwardsville, Ill., and Dalton Wesley, Worden, Ill., five bass, 17-8
8th: Kansas State University – Joshua Schraad, Sabetha, Kan., and Quinn Fowler, Manhattan, Kan., five bass, 17-0
9th: University of Wisconsin – Ben Wanke, Slinger, Wis., and Spencer Hahn, Appleton, Wis., five bass, 16-15
10th: Moraine Valley Community College – John Neubauer and Andrew Jensen, both of Oak Lawn, Ill., five bass, 16-10
FLW also advances one additional team to the National Championship for every 10 teams over 100 that compete. A total of 151 teams participated in this event, so also advancing to the 2018 College Fishing National Championship are:
11th: University of Nebraska – Jackson Ebbers, Cambridge, Neb., and Charlie Deshazer, Fremont, Neb., five bass, 16-10
12th: Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville – Sean Clarkson, Edwardsville, Ill., and Alex Nail, Springfield, Ill., five bass, 16-8
13th: McKendree University – Jacob Louis, Pinckneyville, Ill., and John Russell, Marion, Ill., five bass, 16-5
14th: Northern Illinois University – Ryan Moser, Elgin, Ill., and David Warme, DeKalb, Ill., five bass, 16-4
15th: Missouri State University – Quinton Booth, Ozark, Mo., and Clay Cooper, Columbia, Mo., five bass, 16-3
This YETI FLW College Fishing Central Conference at Lake of the Ozarks was the first regular-season qualifying tournament for Central Conference anglers in 2017. The next YETI FLW College Fishing event is the third annual FLW College Fishing Open, scheduled for April 7-8 on Kentucky Lake in Gilbertsville, Kentucky.
YETI 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, along with an additional qualifier for every 10 teams over 100 that compete, along with the top 20 teams from the annual YETI FLW College Fishing Open advance to the 2018 FLW College Fishing National Championship.
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.
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.
By: Joe Opager, Director of Public Relations
