After a college season that started in January and ended in July, teams had traveled from Louisiana and even to California. One team stood at the top of the 2018 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Team of the Year standings. Tyler Craig and Spencer Lambert of the University of Louisiana at Monroe took the title.
The 2018 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series presented by Bass Pro Shops featured a different format from previous years. Tournament Director Hank Weldon spent most of the 2017 calendar year thinking about how to make the events better for teams and allow them to participate as much as they wanted to.
The regionals morphed into a Tour format, and teams could fish in as many events as they desired – or all of the events. There were four Bassmaster hosted Tour events that competed on Toledo Bend, Pickwick Lake, Cherokee Lake and Clear Lake. Teams also qualified for the National Championship by winning their state Bass Nation tournament against college anglers within their own state.
This provided an ultra-competitive Tour season, and as a reward for outfishing the competition, the top team would be crowned 2018 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Team of the Year. Companies like Carhartt, Humminbird, Abu Garcia and Yamaha all pitched in to reward the anglers with prizes. Craig and Lambert received $1,000 on behalf of Carhartt and B.A.S.S. Other prizes consisted of each winning a Carhartt rain suit, Humminbird Solix 12, five Abu Garcia rod and reel combos a piece and a Yamaha goodie bag that featured a certificate for a Yamaha prop of their choice.
“It was special being the first winners of Team of the Year,” Craig said. “We weren’t sure if we could fish all four Tour events with school obligations, but after coming in second to start the year, we decided to do whatever it took to fish all of them.”
Not only did Craig and Lambert compete in every event possible, they also excelled. They started the year with a second place finish at a fog-shortened Toledo Bend Tour event, 17th at Pickwick Lake, 33rd at Cherokee Lake and then second once again at Clear Lake in California. The duo triple-qualified for the National Championship at Tenkiller Lake.
“I missed my brother’s graduation, and Tyler missed his sister’s as well,” Lambert said. “We traveled quite a bit, but we fared well in two tournaments where smallmouth factored heavily (Pickwick and Cherokee) and then we fished in California, a region we both never experienced. To do well this year with three-record setting fields out of four events, it was special.”
They outlasted a few teams that pushed the duo up to the final day of the Tour season at Clear Lake as well as the 600-plus teams that competed against them over the season. Alabama’s Caiden Sinclair and Hunter Gibson finished second, Sam Houston State’s Dillon Harrell and Colby Bryant took third, Nolan Minor and Casey Lanier of West Virginia finished fourth and Bethel’s John Garrett and Brian Pahl rounded out the top five.
“With the format change to a regular season Tour, we wanted to award teams who fished in all the events,” Tournament Director Hank Weldon said. “We didn’t expect the race to get as competitive as it did, and we also didn’t expect the sponsor participation we saw. Thankfully both those exceeded expectations, and we are excited to take this momentum into the 2019 season.”
The team was awarded trophies and awards for Team of the Year last week at the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series National Championship presented by Bass Pro Shops. After being rewarded, the two spoke on stage and thanked everyone who allowed college anglers to have this platform to compete and meeting industry leaders.
“You hear all the time that when things are going your way that you can’t explain it,” Craig said. “Well, we can now attest to that because there were numerous times an important decision was needed, and we managed to choose the correct fork in the road. That just doesn’t happen all the time.”
