As they once did in the professional circuits, Arkansas anglers dominated the major youth bass fishing championships over the last two weeks.
Fisher Davis, 14, of Mount Ida outfished 36 other anglers Aug. 5-6 to win The Bass Federation Junior World Championship at Lake Guntersville, Ala.
On Aug. 2-3, Beau Browning and McCoy Vereen, both 14 and of Hot Springs, won the Bassmaster Junior National Championship on Carroll County Thousand Acre Recreation Lake at Huntingdon, Tenn. It is a 1,000-acre lake that hosted anglers in eighth grade or younger from 28 states, and one team from Canada.
Davis is the son of Mark Davis, a three-time Bassmaster Angler of the Year and winner of the 1995 Bassmaster Classic.
Beau Browning is the son of Stephen Browning, a 10-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier.
The Bassmaster Junior National Championship is a team tournament, and each team has a coach in the boat. Browning and Vereen qualified in 2015, and Stephen Browning was their coach. They failed to catch a single keeper, but the team stayed intact and qualified for the championship again this year.
It was on the same tiny lake, but Beau Browning said that last year's sour experience prepared them for sweet success this year.
"We redeemed ourselves," said Browning, now a ninth-grader at Hot Springs Lakeside Junior High School. "Everybody called us 'The Redeemers.' After zeroing both days last year, it feels real good to come back. Of course that was in our minds, but we came back and put that behind us and used what we could to help us this year."
Such a small lake has fewer than a dozen good places to fish, so Browning and Vereen needed a little luck. They got it when they drew the first launch position on the first day, which enabled them to reach their preferred spot before anybody else.
Stephen Browning said they determined that the big fish they needed to win were 15-20 feet deep.
"People knew about where we were going, so getting there first was definitely a great advantage," Beau Browning said. "It took us 10 minutes to get a limit. Before all the boats had taken off from the ramp, we had a limit, and a pretty solid one at that."
Quickly, Browning and Vereen found themselves sharing that spot with five other boats. Naturally, the fishing slowed down, but Browning and Vereen were off to a great beginning with a limit that included one fish that weighed 5 pounds, 10 ounces.
"It was a huge reliever," Browning said. "That was a lot of momentum right there."
Near the end of the day, they fished a shallow, grassy spot where Vereen caught a 4-pounder. That boosted their first-day weight to 14-9. That gave them a cushion they needed to survive the drama that happened the next day.
First, they launched later in the rotation, by which time all the good places were taken. The possibility of not catching anything seemed real.
"Of course, when you catch a 14-pound bag in a tournament like that, people saw us," Browning said. "You can't hide out there in a wrapped boat. That spot was covered in people."
Ninety minutes passed without a keeper bite, but the pair struggled to keep bad memories at bay.
"It was almost frightening," Browning said. "We had to try some new stuff we had in our minds in the first days of practice."
When you target big fish in a tough tournament, sometimes one is enough. The pair went to a secondary spot they fished late the first day. It was open, and Vereen caught a fish that weighed 5-6.
"It was one pocket that had standing timber," Browning said. "It produced most of our keepers and big fish. It was just the way we were fishing it with big magnum shaky heads in that big timber underwater you couldn't see. Not a lot of people saw that."
Vereen, a ninth-grader at Hot Springs High School, caught that fish on a Zoom Magnum Trick Worm in junebug color on a 9/16-ounce jig.
Just when Browning and Vereen seemed to have the tournament in hand, a mental lapse almost ruined everything.
Stephen Browning, who was in the boat, said the boys had a five-fish limit in the livewell when one of them caught a keeper. Tournament rules stipulate that one angler must stop fishing while Stephen Browning measured the fish to see if it could replace one of the other keepers.
Both anglers continued fishing, which meant they were fishing with six fish in possession. That's a rules violation. Stephen Browning immediately reported it to the tournament director, who said they would be assessed a 2-pound violation at weigh-in.
"It happened in about the last 30 minutes," Stephen Browning said. "It took a lot of wind out of their sails, and they lost focus."
Mental fatigue and heat can have that effect on seasoned pros, too, Browning said. He said it was a valuable learning experience for all of them.
"As a coach, I probably should have told them to wait until I measure the fish before both of you start fishing again, but it was hot, and all of us didn't stay focused," Stephen Browning said. "We got kind of relaxed, and that's just something you can't do when you're in heat of the battle. You've got to stay focused until the last cast. We did not do that, and it almost caught up to us."
That wasn't the end of it. They also took an additional 3-ounce penalty for checking in a dead bass.
Even with the penalties, they finished the tournament with 21 pounds, well ahead of a New Hampshire team that finished second with 15-13.
Browning and Vereen won a $2,000 scholarship, which they will split.
Sports on 08/14/2016