A very successful day at Lake Wheeler placed the N.C. State club bass fishing members first out of six places, which has the team excited for a chance to showcase its skills in the upcoming Collegiate Classic tournament in March.

“It was a tough day Saturday, but the fish they caught were big fish. It was one of those days when you don’t have a lot of fish but you have a lot of really big fish,” Bryce McClenney, the club president, said. “It was kind of a unique day because the warm weather in January had put the fish in spawn mode. The ones we caught had rubbed their tails completely raw, so the ones that we caught were the females that were up spawning, and we just happened to catch on to what they were biting on and got a few of them.”

The 32-member club has modeled itself after Big-10 schools like Purdue and has gotten generous help from sponsors, like Ranger Boats, to get it going.

“We’ve got several sponsors that have been really good to us,” McClenney said. “The host of the upcoming Falls Lake Tournament is Roscoe’s Outdoor, which is in Wake Forest. Of course Ranger, Yamaha and a group called Pure Fishing help us, too — they provide us with a lot of things.”

Though the club was formed just more than a year ago, it has wasted no time getting started trying to compete in the national spotlight. On March 18, the team will host teams from Eastern Kentucky, South Carolina and Kentucky in the Roscoe’s Collegiate Classic held on Falls Lake.

“We feel pretty good about it — we have the home lake advantage,” McClenney said. “It’s set up on an even playing field though because we’ve got local guys from different clubs and local pros [who] are going to be lending their boats to people from the other schools so they don’t have to pull a boat all the way here. It’s a lot of fuel expense, so they can just ride on with a guy [who]’s local, and they’ll be fishing out the back of the boat there.”

The winning team will be determined in the contest by weighing the heaviest five fish from each of the four-man teams, then adding the total weight. The team with the heaviest total load prevails. Due to state laws, there are restrictions, however, on the fish a team member can enter into the contest.

“Its North Carolina state law that you can’t possess a large mouth bass that’s less than 14 inches, so our rule is all fish have to be 14 inches long,” McClenney said.

A small prize will also be given out to the person who catches the heaviest fish overall.

“This tournament is more for fun,” McClenney said. “There are tournaments that Fox Sports and ESPN are starting that are for scholarships and money, but ours isn’t going to be like that, ours is just for fun.”