OKEECHOBEE, Fla. — University of Tennessee at Chattanooga duos took first and third places in the FLW College Fishing Southeast Division season opener Saturday on Lake Okeechobee, led by Nicholas Pratt and James Childers with 13 pounds, 13 ounces of bass.
They received $7,500 for the UTC bass club and $2,500 for the school, and Alex Craw and Casey Murray earned $1,500 for the club and $500 for UTC with their third-place total of 12-7 in chilly, windy conditions. A Clemson team was second with 13-2. The top five teams qualified for the Southeast regional tournament.
Tennessee Wesleyan’s John Higdon and Ben Graves finished 27th out of 40 teams, one spot behind Tennessee.
Childers, a sophomore finance major, said in an FLW release that he and Pratt “were fishing a lot differently than anyone else. We went to the deeper water in the canals near the dam and the Kissimmee River and used DD 22s and spinner baits.”
Pratt, a senior, said they believed the cold front would chase the bass from the big lake’s well-known shallow grassy areas, “so we headed for deeper water.”