ESPN Tournaments

TYLER, Texas — When the 34 teams competing in the 2009 College Bass West Super Regional on Lake Palestine take to the water Saturday morning, two hazards will loom large: stumps and thunderstorms.

Lake Palestine is a 25,000-acre impoundment on the Neches River and is known for being particularly hazardous, especially to the collegiate anglers that are coming to northeast Texas for the first time.

Even for local stalwart Kyle Turner from Stephen F. Austin State University who has been fishing the lake for his whole life, Palestine has been a tricky beast to navigate.

"I have idled and idled and idled this week, spending over an hour straight idling on Monday when I was down here practicing," Turner said. "I know where to run, but I had to relearn some of those areas."

His time on the water spent in the driver's seat coupled with his lifelong knowledge of this body of water might give him a considerable advantage over the rest of the field.

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"This lake is very stumpy — you have to know where you are running," Turner said. "The only advantage for me is that I know I can probably get to places on this lake faster than any other angler here."

Navigation difficulties aside, many of the anglers expect to see heavy sacks and big bass cross the scales on Saturday and Sunday regardless of the heavy rains that have been pounding the Tyler area for the past 24 hours. Saturday's forecast calls for a 100-percent chance of precipitation and a possibility for over an inch.

"This rain could muddy the lake up really fast, especially up in the creeks," Turner said. "With the given conditions, I expect that 17 to 18 pounds will be leading after Saturday, with the team that can average 15 to 16 pounds taking the top spot. Consistency will be important with the water and weather that we are seeing."

Northwestern State University's Zach Gagnard disagreed with Turner's prediction, offering that College Bass records will likely fall over the course of competition.

As a point of reference, the heaviest bag brought in during College Bass competition was 21.07 pounds, caught in the 2008 Under Armour College Bass National Championship by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Bragging rights for biggest bass belongs to Penn State University with an 8.55-pound Clarks Hill behemoth at the 2009 East Super Regional held earlier in the year.

"Records will get broken," Gagnard said. "The deal here is that there are pre-spawn, post-spawn and spawning fish. Even all this rain shouldn't hurt things. I'm expecting 21 to 22 pounds a day to win this thing."

Gagnard and his teammate Paul Rini were so confident after having a great practice on Monday, they slept in on each of the last few days of practice.

"Today we slept in until 11:00," Gagnard said. "We don't want anyone to see us on our best spot, so yesterday we just went fishing and still had a great day. We caught one fish over 4 pounds and probably 10 fish over 3 pounds and that was just for fun. We're not even going to go back to those fish during the tournament."

Two-man teams from 16 colleges and universities from as close as Nacogdoches and as far as Edwardsville, Ill., will be headed out in search of a five-fish limit of at least 14 inch largemouth, smallmouth or spotted bass. The winning team will be crowned Sunday after combining scores for the two days of competition.

If Stephen Pineau can be believed, Palestine is shaping up to be an even bigger slugfest than most other anglers realize. Pineau fishes for the University of Texas at Arlington and had such a great practice, he was hesitant about revealing any specifics about his fishing other than it was phenomenal.

"If you don't see someone catch over 25 pounds, I would be shocked," Pineau said. "The only thing that concerns me slightly is boat traffic tomorrow. We have two local tournaments aside from this one going out tomorrow."

Pineau is less concerned about the severe weather system that has spread across eastern Texas, holding out hope that the area of the lake that he and his partner Bryan Lewis have been fishing "will not be subject to an influx of rainwater."

Lewis missed out on the great practice that his partner had and had to sit in class while Pineau text messaged him about catching an 8-pounder. He had to wait until Friday to get out on the lake and even then was only able to practice a few hours.

"I got out of class Thursday night and drove two and a half hours to get here…on my birthday," Lewis said. "I finished a test, loaded the boat and headed straight down to Tyler."

The full field launches from The Villages Marina on Lake Palestine at 7:45 a.m. ET. Weigh-in on Saturday and Sunday will be streamed live on CollegeBass.com from the Academy Sports + Outdoors in Tyler, Texas, at 4:00 p.m. ET.

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