KISSIMMEE, Fla. (March 4, 2015) – The Citrus High School team of Hunter McPherson and Laramy Strickland brought a five-bass limit to the scale Saturday weighing 29 pounds, 3 ounces to win the 2015 Florida State High School Fishing Championship on Lake Toho. The win earned the team the title of state champions and qualified the team to compete in the High School Fishing Southeastern Conference Regional Championship tournament on Lake Lanier in September.
“We had a spot that we found in our pre-fishing yesterday that we thought was holding some good fish,” said McPherson, who won this same event last year with graduated partner Brandon Branch. “We started our morning there and caught our biggest fish of the day – a 9-pound, 12-ounce toad – on a Z-Man Chatterbait.
“A light went off right then,” McPherson continued. “We realized the fish had moved up a little bit, and soon we picked up an 8-pound, 10-ounce beauty on a jig just a short time later.”
The Hurricane duo said that green pumpkin was the most effective color that they used and that their key to victory was realizing that the fish had moved up shallow from where they had found them early in the week. The top four teams on Lake Toho that advanced to the Southeastern Conference Regional Championship were:
1st: Citrus High School – Hunter McPherson and Laramy Strickland, five bass, 29-3
2nd: Auburndale High School – Jackson Williams and Bryce Goff, four bass, 14-6
3rd: West Nassau County High School – Colby Cowart and Cody Hadden, four bass, 14-1
4th: Bartow High School – Jeremy Morgan and Steven Singletary, four bass, 12-10
Rounding out the top 10 teams were:
5th: Florida Student Angler Federation – Travis Conrad and Bailey Hines, five bass, 11-8
6th: Bartow High School – Hunter Gadd and Shane Schmucker, five bass, 10-10
7th: Pine Ridge High School – Trevor Brown and Nicholas Sutton, five bass, 10-6
8th: Monteverde High School – Jake Carter and Will Thomas, three bass, 10-0
9th: Taylor High School – Austin Murray and Brayden Robinson, three bass, 9-13
10th: Florida Student Angler Federation – Tyler Woolcott and Parker Meadows, three bass, 9-8
The 2015 Florida State High School Fishing Championship was a two-person (team) event for students in grades 7-12. The top 10 percent from each TBF/FLW state championship field will advance to a High School Fishing conference championship. The top 10 percent of each conference championship field will then advance to the High School Fishing National Championship, coinciding with the TBF National Championship and an FLW Tour stop in the spring of 2016. The High School Fishing national champions will each receive a $5,000 college scholarship to the school of their choice.