When Toledo native and Central Catholic grad Josh Kolodzaike traveled to southern Missouri recently, he wasn't there to take in some of the entertainment or country music acts in the vacation haven of Branson, or visit the Silver Dollar City theme park, or see the Titanic Museum, oddly juxtaposed there some 1,500 miles from the nearest ocean.
Kolodzaike and his angling partner, Matt Belletini, were focused on competing for the biggest prize ever offered in a fishing tournament.
They would take on the sprawling Table Rock Lake, a massive impoundment of more than 43,000 acres that straddles the Missouri-Arkansas border.
The lake, which was created more than 60 years ago by damming the White River, is home to strong populations of largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass and not too far south of the world headquarters of outdoors supplier giant Bass Pro Shops, host of the tournament.
There would be three days of intense late November competition against more than 320 teams from across the United States along with those from Japan, South Africa, Romania, Spain, and Germany. The duo caught enough fish to make the first-day cut as one of the top 200 teams, they survived the second day cut to the top 50, and finished the event tied for fifth place overall, winning a cash prize of $37,500.
“It was an incredible tournament, with so much going on that it is almost hard to describe without someone seeing it in person,” Kolodzaike said, adding that the setting and the fanfare compared to that of the Bassmaster Classic, the championship in the professional ranks. “When Bass Pro and [owner] Johnny Morris do something, they do it right. It was a pretty amazing weekend.”
Table Rock's geographic location and its reputation as a fishery made it the logical choice to stage the Bass Pro Shops U.S. Open National Bass Fishing Amateur Team Championships. Kolodzaike and Belletini had fared well in one of the qualifying events held on Michigan's Lake St. Clair in August, earning a berth in the extravaganza on Table Rock, which touted its history-making $1 million payout to the first-place winning team.
Kolodzaike and Belletini arrived at Table Rock early enough to get in five days of scouting and practice on the lake, but with three major arms and more than 800 miles of shoreline, the reservoir can be a tricky riddle to solve.
“I had fished it a couple of times before,” the 35-year-old Kolodzaike said, “but that was in the spring and it fishes a whole lot different in the fall. We had some time to study the lake and it turned out we were finding fish in the [submerged] treetops in 80 to 90 feet of water, with the fish suspended about 35 to 50 feet down.”
After the first day, Kolodzaike and Belletini were in 10th place with a five-fish limit that checked in at 13.09 pounds. “We had an idea where we wanted to go, but we really just kind of went out and went fishing. We were fortunate that we found some fish and stayed on them, but I think if you are good with your electronics, you should be able to catch fish in any lake,” Kolodzaike said.
At the end of Day 2, they had moved up to sixth place after adding 13.46 pounds of bass for a two-day total of 26.55 pounds for 10 fish. The format for the final day put the top 50 teams on the lake, but the previous days' catches were wiped from the board and it became a one-day tournament with the big money on the line.
“It is kind of crazy with the weights zeroed out, but we thought if we had a perfect day then we had a shot at winning it,” said Kolodzaike, who got his start bass fishing pursuing largemouth in the marinas where his uncle and grandfather kept their Lake Erie boats. “We had caught a ton of fish on Day 2, but with bass you never know how the bite will be on any particular day.”
Kolodzaike, who now lives in Ypsilanti and works as a courier for FedEx and considers the smallmouth havens of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River his home waters, said he and Belletini found the fish tight to the bottom on the final day of the tournament, and with only one fish in the live well by 9:30, they were concerned about their prospects for getting a prime share of the prize money.
“But after we changed locations, it was a whole different deal. There was bait all over the place and we had a flurry where we probably caught 10 fish in less than a half an hour,” he said. “We went from having just a couple of fish to where we were culling fish just 30 minutes later. It was a good little flurry of action.”
The bait that proved most effective for the pair was the Damiki Armor Shad, and Kolodzaike said they had made a stop at Netcraft in Maumee before leaving for Missouri to pick up the fluke-tailed swimbait that mimics the baitfish Table Rock's bass target. Kolodzaike and Belletini weighed in 15.12 pounds of bass on the final day.
The event was open exclusively to two-person amateur teams with all entry fees from each of the eight qualifying events and the final donated to conservation. The top prize went to Alabama natives and Auburn University Bass Fishing teammates Logan Parks and Tucker Smith, who landed a five-fish total of 16.41 pounds on the championship day.
They each won $500,000 plus a new 2022 Toyota Tundra and a new Nitro bass boat. “This is the greatest day of my life,” Parks said.
The total purse for the event was $4.3 million, with each of the top 50 teams taking home cash payouts, and the highest-finishing junior angler winning a $250,000 college scholarship.
In addition to funding the record cash and prize awards, Bass Pro Shops owner Morris and Toyota, the presenting sponsor for the tournament, donated $1,578,932 to the National Fish Habitat Partnership to restore bass habitat in America’s aging reservoirs.
“I’m proud of all the anglers who supported this, and hopefully it just creates awareness,” said Morris, the 73-year-old founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops. “I feel like, in many ways, that sportsmen and women are really the unsung heroes of conservation. And hopefully, this tournament will shed some light on the importance of habitat and conservation.”
First Published November 29, 2021, 3:45 p.m.
