K-State junior wins national bass-fishing championship
Ryan Patterson is an advertising major, but there’s not a course at Kansas State University that can teach him how to create as much attention as he’s gotten the past few days.
Nor are there any that can help Patterson earn more money than he did last weekend.
A junior from Garden Plain, Patterson brought about $100,000 worth of cash and prizes back to Kansas by winning the 2012 FLW College Fishing National Championship on South Carolina’s Lake Murray.
Even more impressive, he won the team competition by beating 24 of America’s best two-man college bass-fishing teams fishing alone.
His partner/brother, Brandon, was disqualified from the tournament process after he transferred from K-State to take less-expensive junior college classes.
“It’s been absolutely amazing,” Ryan Patterson said. “I was on the phone (Monday) for about seven hours.
“A lot of newspapers and stuff have really picked up on the Cinderella and Lone Ranger vibe. It’s been amazing exposure for me and my club.”
The Patterson brothers are two of the about 20 members of the Kansas State Fishing Team. The bass club has about seven tournaments for members annually, mostly on reservoirs and lakes near Manhattan. Patterson said at least five other Kansas colleges have bass-fishing teams.
All have the same goal of fishing toward the national championship.
Patterson and his brother took their first step toward the 2012 championship tournament by placing well in a qualifying tournament in March 2011 at the Lake of the Ozarks. He had to finish fourth out of 20 boats fishing by himself at the next qualifier in Illinois in October.
Tournament officials said because he had started the process fishing with his brother – who by then had switched schools – Patterson could not select a new partner. He was the only solo angler going against teams from some of the largest schools in the South, which led to a David vs. Goliath setting.
Teams from schools like Clemson and Alabama are well funded, have great bass lakes nearby and are populated with kids who grow up with competitive bass fishing.
The Pattersons have spent a lot of their summers and weekends fishing at a family cabin on Table Rock Lake in the Ozarks. They fish a wide variety of tournaments in Kansas and Missouri. They spent their spring break on Lake Murray, looking for places Patterson might try in the tournament that ran last weekend.
Patterson said he decided to “go for broke” by concentrating on places where he might catch really big bass, which he said were schooling where they could feed on blue-backed herring. Fishing potential spots with 5-inch plastic lures, he caught four bass totaling about 11 pounds and was in 13th place Friday.
Confident he was on a good pattern, he caught a five-fish limit that weighed more than 17 pounds on Saturday. That pushed him into second place going into Sunday, when only the top five boats were allowed to fish.
At Sunday’s final weigh-in, he brought five fish that weighed a tad over 18 pounds, putting this three-day total two pounds bigger than the second-place team.
“I can’t tell you what that was like when I realized I’d won the national championship by myself,” he said. “It literally was a dream come true.”
Though he has the title, most of the winnings have to be shared. K-State gets $25,000 for his win and the fishing club gets a new Ranger bass boat and $50,000. The latter will come in handy when Patterson and others travel to future tournaments.
His win also qualified Patterson to fish the FLW Forrest Wood Cup in August, a Super Bowl kind of tournament that carries a first prize worth about $600,000.
“Numerous times I’ve gone to tournaments and slept in my truck because (the club) really couldn’t afford motels,” he said. “It’ll be nice not to have to worry about that.
“I’ll be fishing against the best professional anglers in the world, and I won’t be sleeping in my truck.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State junior wins national bass-fishing championship."