Before last week, Ben Dziwulski and Ethan Cox had only fished together once before. It was during last year’s Kentucky Lake Collegiate Bass Fishing Open. Despite an 11th-place finish out of 38 teams, Dziwulski was quick to call it one of the most valuable learning experiences he’s had in fishing.
“We didn’t do very well because we would look at the (sonar) graph and any time we’d see anything cool, we’d fish it,” Dziwulski said. “We still finished 11th, but that wasn’t good by our standards.”
Adhering to a new strategy was the key element to breaking down Lake Pickwick for the duo from North Carolina State University en route to their victory at the BoatUS Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. Their 45.60-pound total over 2 days included a tournament-best 25.67-pound stringer on day 2 as well as the event’s big bass -- a 6.56-pound brute caught by Cox. Their total was more than 4 1/2 pounds better than the runner-up team from Tennessee Tech (Joe Slagle/Matt Clay) and nearly 9 pounds heavier than 3rd-place Auburn University-Montgomery.
“We applied what we learned, which was to not fish what looks good, only fish where the fish are,” said Dziwulski (pronounced Jah-wulski). “I don’t care if it was a straight ledge with brush piles and even bait. If you don’t see bass there, it’s not where you want to be.”
It’s the third such championship for N.C. State. Here’s a brief rundown of their triumph for the BassPack, the fishing brethren of the school’s WolfPack:
In Their Words
> “It’s huge. It means everything right now,” Cox said. “I was actually going to start looking for sponsors and with this on my résumé, I think it’ll put me ahead of some other guys in the minds of potential sponsors. That’s one of the very best bites I’ve ever been on. I’ve never been on a bite like that in a tournament. It was just a 40-yard stretch and they were just stacked in there. I want to thank my dad and family for their support. Without them being there with us all week and taking care of all the off-the-water stuff, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did. They were a real big part of it."
> “For me, it’s a huge boost. With the fishing industry being as tough as it is, it’s very hard, especially coming out of college, to have any sort of momentum or prestige to acquire any sponsorships and make that transition from college to the big leagues,” Dziwulski said. “I’m hoping to use this and the exposure and renown that comes from this to really make a name for myself and my sponsors to hopefully acquire additional sponsors so I can take the next step and jump into the semi-pro or pro ranks.”
3 Keys To Victory
> “On Monday, we pulled up on a school we’d found in the middle of nowhere near a tiny little ditch or depression,” Dziwulski said. “We made a couple of casts and I had a 5-pounder and Ethan caught a 3-pounder. That moved to the top of our list and since we didn’t have anything else to convince us otherwise, we went there on day 1 of the tournament never left it the entire tournament. It was two ditches that ran parallel to the bank and in between the ditches was a ridge with some shellbeds and a little bit of grass on it. That’s where the fish were holed up, gorging themselves on shad that were moving off the flats. It set up like one of those elite winning areas. It was a very subtle spot and I’ve never been so dialed in in my entire life. As the sun kept rising, the fish kept getting bigger.
> “We initially started throwing Strike King Series 5 crankbaits and moved to Series 5 XD to start dredging a little more,” added Dziwulski. “Halfway through day 1, it slowed down so I switched to a silent Series 6 XD and I think the combination of the bigger profile and the silence, they just started eating it. Almost every fish we weighed in came on the Series 6 XD. We were burning them, too. We’d cast perpendicular into the first ditch and it would work its way down into the middle of the first ditch and then up and down the ridge and we’d try to bang it off of every piece of structure we could find.”
> “We were fishing 12- and 14-pound Hi-Seas fluorocarbon and I know people usually crank with pretty light line, but one thing I’ve learned from Kevin VanDam and a bunch of the other good crankers is you can put the bigger line on there and it’ll still dive to the depths you need,” Dziwulski said. “Especially since we were fishing shallower water, the 12- and 14-pound line stayed durable both days. We didn’t break anything off and we were fishing around all kinds of heavy cover.”
> Crankbait gear: 7’11” medium-heavy JB Custom Rods Missile and 7’11” medium-action JB Custom Rods Missile Light crankbait rods, unnamed casting reels (6.3:1 and 5.4:1 ratios), 12- and 14-pound Hi-Seas fluorocarbon line, Strike King Series 5, Series 5 XD and Series 6 XD crankbaits (citrus shad and sexy shad).
> Main factor in their success – “It wasn’t rocket science,” Dziwulski said. “We just had it dialed in. We made the right adjustments when the fish stopped biting. When they turned off on the rattling bait, we switched to the silent bait. When they slowed down on that, we’d change the angle of the cast we’d make depending on the wind. We had a prevailing current. We were fishing so our baits were moving with the prevailing current and then we’d turn around and throw a different direction and that would fire them up.”
> Performance edge – “Our electronics were key and the Navionics Platinum chip was huge,” Dziwulski said. “We could find the ditches just looking at the map. We didn’t even have to idle. The lure, the line and the rod, too. Without one of them, we couldn’t have caught that many fish.”
Notable
> Dziwulski is a native of Woodbine, Md., and is scheduled to graduate in December. He’s majoring in agricultural business and minoring in economics. He’s a certified CrossFit trainer and intended to pursue that as a career out of college, but fishing has supplanted that as his top priority.
> Cox hails from West End, N.C., and graduated earlier this month with a degree in business administration. He’s also planning to puruse fishing as a career. He finished 3rd among co-anglers at the Lake Norman Bassmaster Southern Open this year.
>BassFan columnist Miles “Sonar” Burghoff teamed up with Central Florida teammate Casey O’Donnell to finish 18th with 27.34 pounds. They won the event in 2011.
> For the complete results, click here.
