As he steered the boat back toward the shore of Kinkaid Lake in Southern Illinois, Jimmy Morrow slammed his fist against the dash.
It was the final day of the FLW College Fishing Central Regional Championship and Morrow and his teammate Matt Kestufskie were heading back to the dock practically empty-handed.
“We thought we messed up big time,” Morrow says.
While football is a game of inches, bass fishing is apparently a game of ounces. When the rumors of another team’s highly successful day proved untrue, the pair of Weinberg seniors finished four ounces ahead of the second-place competitor.
They returned to Evanston $50,000 richer, with a brand-new boat in tow. In the months that followed, Morrow and Kestufskie garnered the respect of big-time fishing schools like Indiana and Purdue en route to the National Guard FLW College Fishing National Championship.
The friends’ travels took them to places like Missouri, Arkansas and South Carolina, proving through a series of top-five finishes that Northwestern’s fishing program was to be feared and respected.
“All the top names in the country know who we are,” Morrow says, speaking hurriedly as he packs for a weekend hunting trip with the Northwestern Sportsman’s Club. “They know we’re a threat.”
Still, Morrow and Kestufskie’s rise to fishing glory did not occur overnight. Just a few years ago, they were far from champions. When Morrow arrived at Northwestern and enrolled in a fly fishing freshman seminar, he was no novice. He had been tossing out a line since he was a little kid standing on his grandfather’s dock. His family didn’t share his interest in fishing, but he remained interested enough to compete in bass fishing competitions during his senior year of high school.
So when Morrow and Kestufskie met, after discovering they were hallmates and enrolled in the same seminar, the two figured success would come naturally.
They were wrong.
“When we started out ... we realized that we sucked,” Morrow says. “We needed to find a way to get around this big disadvantage of not having any information.”
Morrow and Kestufskie began using a strategy that helped carry them to a win and three top-five finishes. Before each tournament, Morrow emails a group of more than 300 fishermen who use the lake where the competition will take place. The responses he receives give details on everything from which baits to use to which spots to fish. The team narrows down the suggestions to a list of 10 possible spots during scouting trips, which they take up to a week before each tournament.
“This has really been the turning point for us,” Morrow says. “We’ve got that local, inside knowledge of the people who grew up on the lake. It’s kind of like data mining for fishing spots.”
The team gathered enough information to land a 10th place finish at the national championship. Perhaps more importantly, after fishing in tournaments all over the country, the two believe they have gathered enough information to help Northwestern’s team succeed after they graduate.
“We want to make sure the two people we get are the best fishermen we can find,” Morrow says, making sure to emphasize the need for balance between skill and research. “It’s not like you just sit out there and throw out a bobber. It involves a lot of practice.”
Whoever they pick will certainly have large shoes to fill. Morrow and Kestufskie have won $58,000 while fishing at Northwestern, almost $15,000 of which they have donated to the university.
As the new team members board the boat, eager to get out and catch the biggest bass possible, they will carry with them the legacy of the two founders. Northwestern has long been a premier academic institution, but now it is something more: a fishing school.