Andy Halford has fished long enough to know some searches prove fruitless.
So when it was time to find a partner for the upcoming college fishing season, the University of Mississippi angler wondered if he would find the right person.
It didn”t take long for Brock Mosley, another fisherman who went to Ole Miss, to send Halford a message on Facebook. When Halford opened the message, he saw a pictur with Mosley holding two fish he had caught at a tournament.
“This guy must be able to fish,” Halford remembers thinking.
In less than a year, Halford and Mosley have proven to be quite a team. In May, they landed a two-day total of 28 pounds, 5 ounces to win the College B.A.S.S. East Super Regional in Montgomery, Ala.
The victory helped them earn a spot in the Collegiate B.A.S.S. National Championship, which begins Thursday. The three-day event will include a day of fishing on the Arkansas River and a day of fishing on Lake Maumelle for the team from Ole Miss. The top teams at the end of the second day will compete on day three at an undisclosed site.
The winning anglers then will get an opportunity to compete against each other for a berth in the 2012 Bassmaster Classic at another undisclosed site.
Halford, who is from Columbus and is the son of Lowndes County Superintendent Mike Halford, and Mosley, who is from Meridian, aren”t thinking that far ahead. They know the conditions and the unpredictable nature of fish can ruin the plans of the best angler, but they feel confident their styles complement each other and will give them a chance to compete for the title.
“The win in Montgomery definitely has given us a boost in our confidence, but we have never seen the water before, which is just like Montgomery when we came in,” Halford said. “We are very optimistic. We have heard it fishes a lot like the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. If it fishes like that we are very optimistic we can pull out a win, definitely a top-five finish. But we can”t focus on a win.”
Halford has fished in the Columbus area since he was 2 years old. He said his father, who is an avid golfer, used to take him to courses and allowed him to fish on the lakes at the sites. He also is familiar with the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which links the Tennessee River in Northeastern Mississippi with the Tombigbee River in Western Alabama.
Despite his experience, Halford said fishermen can”t rely on any factor to stay the same, which is why he and Mosley have tried to spend as much time as possible in the past week practicing on the Arkansas waterways that will be used later this week.
“In fishing, preparation is everything,” said Mosley, who is taking two summer classes to complete his degree in business marketing. “When we fished in Montgomery, we went three days before the tournament started and figured out a routine or a pattern.”
That strategy proved more successful than Halford and Mosley thought. Halford said the team always tries to underestimate the total weight of its catches, so it was surprised when its haul after day one of the East Super Regional put them in a tie for first place. Mosley said the team continued to do its thing on day two to capture the title.
Halford said a key to the team”s success has been the comfort level he has with Mosley and vice versa. He said both anglers are competitive, but they know they have to support each other and that it doesn”t matter who catches “the big one” because they have to work together.
“If it means I an the net man or he is the net man, or if he need a pack of worms and it is in the back of the boat, I can reach down and throw it to him,” Halford said.
Halford said his experience fishing in team formats has taught him not to get mad if someone catches more fish than he does. He admits Mosley can “go out and kick my tail any day of the week” in part because he considers him a “very versatile” fisherman. He refers to himself as a “finesse” fisherman, or a “numbers guy”, and classifies Mosley more of the “big-fish guy.”
Halford uses a shaky head lure with a smaller presentation. He said the six- to seven-inch worms he throws normally fall slower and allow him to catch bass that typically are a little lazy and move slower in the summer and in cold weather.
Halford said he developed his “style” from watching professional anglers like Mike Iaconelli and Aaron Martin. He said he has put a little spin on the bait he uses and he experiments with some things people don”t see a lot to help him be successful.
Mosley uses a faster style that includes more casts. He said his style as a “power fisherman,” as Halford calls it, has worked well with his teammate and has provided exciting results.
“The first time we fished together I could tell he knew what he was doing and he could tell what I was doing,” Mosley said. “We didn”t interfere with what the other was doing and we did our own thing. Like I said, it clicked for us when we fish together.”
Halford and Mosley work so well together that they are equally generous in their praise, saying they each have the “best partner” on their team. It remains to be seen how that teamwork will benefit Halford and Mosley later this week, but they feel they have a chance to contend.
For Halford, who last week accepted a job as a science teacher at Pearl High School, a victory could prove to be a tempting lure that gets him thinking more about what it would be like to be a professional fisherman.
For Mosley, who said he is going to take a few years to pursue a career as a pro, a win would give him a push into a life he is eager to join.
Both anglers look at this week”s event as another opportunity to prove their mettle in a new setting against some of the best competition in the nation.
“Everybody”s goal is to win, but you have to fish to make it to the next day,” Halford said. “You have to fish to survive.”
Said Mosley, “You have to win first as a team. We haven”t even discussed fishing against each other because we know it doesn”t matter if we don”t win. The main thing we”re concentrating on is doing our thing and bringing a national championship back to Oxford with us.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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