On September 6th and 7th youth anglers from around the state converged on Lake Erie’s Presque Isle Bay to compete in the 2014 Pa BASS Federation Jr State Championship. The winners receiving the opportunity to represent the Federation at next year’s TBF Jr World Championship.
Saturday’s weather was cloudy and rainy but the kids were still able to catch some real nice limits of large mouth. After day 1 there were 3 anglers from the Jr Bass Busters that were able to distance themselves from the rest of the field. With River Mertz taking the lead with 4 large mouth weighing in at 10.89, Jake Jones in second place with a weight of 9.56 and Austin Gaab in third with a weight of 9.36.
Sunday morning the weather completely changed with sunny blue bird skies. Most of the anglers showed why they belong at this event by catching more fish than they did the first day.
Drew Finkey from the Lancaster County Hawg Hunters brought in a 4 fish limit with a beautiful small mouth weighing in at 4.51 pounds to take Lunker for this event.
The 3 leaders all brought limits to the scale with Austin Gaab bringing 4 large mouth that weighed 13.01 pounds to give him a total weight of 22.37 pounds, edging out River Mertz by less than 3 ounces to claim the state Championship.
The top 10 were:
1) Austin Gaab 22.37
2) River Mertz 22.08
3) Jake Jones 19.02
4) Drew Finkey 15.31
5) Tyler Gavlick 14.48
6) Brent Engleman 14.09
7) Kyle Divzio 12.22
8) Ken Katelan 8.75
9) Isaac Glidewell 7.91
10) Levi Inman 5.39
