COLUMBIA, SC – Dalton Anderson and Dawson Lenz of McIntosh High in Peachtree City, GA conquered a 5 team field to win the inaugural High School Fishing National Championship yesterday in Columbia, South Carolina on Lake Murray. The senior duo weighed a whopping bag of 16 lbs 12 ounces to dominate the event, beating the nearest team by over 8 lbs to win a $10,000 Scholarship to a college of their choice ($5,000 each), not to mention bragging rights to be named the first ever High School Fishing National Champions. The event was held in conjunction with the FLW College Fishing National Championship.
“We drove down here by ourselves during spring break and fished 15 hours a day trying to figure something out,” cited the champs. “When we got out to our first location, we realized that things had changed and we had to start all over again. We probably burned 20 gallons of gas checking the points that we had caught good fish on during our practice; by 10:30am we had not even had a bite! Finally we stopped for a moment and just thought about what we had seen the pros do on this lake a couple of years ago when they were here and said hey, let’s try a suspended jerk bait,” said Lenz. Continue reading