NEWARK — There have been several firsts for the Cedar Ridge High School bass-fishing team this season. For example, this is the first year the high school has had a fishing team. It is also the first high school bass-fishing team in Independence County. Most impressive of all, two of the fishermen on the team took first place in the 2015 Arkansas State High School Fishing Championship, which was held on Lake Dardanelle and included 120 two-person teams.
Coach Danny Brustrom — who also coaches several other sports, including football and wrestling — said he has always enjoyed fishing and was excited to start the team this year.
“I knew there were a bunch of high schools in the state doing it,” Brustrom said. “I’ve been bass fishing my whole life. I love it, my kids love it, and all the other kids in the school here are outdoors-type kids. Fishing and hunting are big here, so I wanted to be the first one in this area to start [fishing] at school.”
It takes awhile to get to major lakes from Newark, Brustrom said, which is probably why other schools in the area have not started bass-fishing teams. This, of course, makes it difficult for the team to practice.
“We don’t [practice],” Brustrom said. “We actually fished a tournament in Fort Smith in the blind. We’d never been on the water up there. On our way back, we stopped and practiced at Lake Dardanelle two weeks before the tournament. We actually found a pocket that had some good fish in it, and we were just hoping that those fish would stay in there for two weeks until the tournament.”
Cedar Ridge’s C.J. Brustrom and Will Carpenter won first place in the
tournament, and Layton Lovell and Jordan Bumpous came in fourth overall. Cedar Ridge also had two other two-person teams that ranked 45th and 55th.
The tournament had a five-bass limit, and the winner was determined by the total weight of the catch. C.J. and Will brought in five bass with a total weight of 16 pounds, 12 ounces, and Layton and Jordan brought in five bass with a total weight of 13 pounds, 15 ounces. The top 12 teams in the tournament are qualified to compete in the High School Fishing Southern Conference Championship on the Arkansas River in October.
The top two Cedar Ridge teams had very different experiences when they got on the water. Brustrom was in the boat with Layton and Jordan, and they went to the spot the team had scoped out two weeks before.
“It started off pretty good,” Layton said. “Jordan caught two right off the bat when we first pulled up. We caught a few small ones there in the middle, and we caught a few more as we moved closer to the weigh-in. Jordan was on. He was catching big ones left and right. We got our five and got in.”
C.J. and Will witnessed a different day on the water. While Jordan caught some fish right when they arrived to their location, C.J. said it took a little longer for Will and him to get on the fish.
“It started off pretty slow, not catching much,” C.J. said. “It picked up in the middle of the day, and then it just quit. We only had four keepers all the way up until the end of the day. In the last 30 minutes, we caught our final picture.”
Brustrom said the Cedar Ridge teams were some of the first ones out on the lake, which meant they were the first ones back in. The students said it was nerve-racking to know they had high weigh-ins yet had to wait to see what the other teams brought in.
The Cedar Ridge High School bass-fishing team exceeded Brustrom’s expectations, he said, and he looks forward to continuing next year with more students.
“My expectations were not for us to win the thing, but to compete and have some teams bring five fish in,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking. Once my boat started catching fish, I started telling them that one big fish could push for us to win it. I knew that 16 to 20 pounds was going to win, and we had about 13 to 14 pounds in the livewell. I knew we were close.”
Layton will graduate this year, but the other anglers said they will be back next year to compete again on the bass-fishing team. Brustrom said he has had several other students from the school express interest in joining the team.
“Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had 20 to 25 kids fishing,” he said. “I do put stipulations on our kids. Our average GPA on the team is 3.5. They have to have a 2.5 GPA, no office referrals, no disciplinary problems at school or in the community. We’re also going to do a community service project,
which will probably [be to] clean a lake, a pond or a creek.”
The school year is coming to a close, but fishing is one sport that many people enjoy without being on a team. Brustrom said he knows that several of the students on the team will be fishing every day possible this summer, and they will be ready next school year to reel in more Cedar Ridge bass-fishing awards.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.