.jpg)
Wlaf1450Campbell County’s own Riley Faulkner in Top 10 in College Fishing National Championship
By Charlotte Underwood
DECATUR, AL (WLAF)- Campbell County native and Carson Newman University Junior Riley Faulkner and his partner Szymon Piton earned a spot in the top ten at last week’s 2025 Abu Garcia College Fishing National Championship held April 9-11th. The tournament was presented by YETI National Championship Presented by Columbia PFG.
The tournament brought together 136 of the best college teams in the country to compete on Wheeler Lake in Decatur Alabama.
Faulkner and Piton earned 10th place overall by the close of the competition on day three.
According to MajorLeageFishing.com– “Final exams had nothing when it came to the pressure the Top 10 teams felt while duking it out on the final day of the Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI National Championship Presented by Columbia PFG on Wheeler Lake. There was a lot on the line for these young-and-upcoming college athletes between the $43,500 prize package, a new Phoenix 518 pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard, an additional $10,000 and the chance to advance to the 2025 Toyota Series Championship and REDCREST 2026.”
Faulkner said the tournament experience was amazing, especially to be competing with other collegiates on this level.
“We fished four MLF (Major League Fishing) events, to take the top 20 or 25 out of every event, there are not a lot of kids that get the opportunity to do what we get to do and to be able to go and travel and do that,” Faulkner said.
He and his partner Piton “started practice on Monday” and had a day and a half of practice before the competition started.
“We had found a little area, a little backwater pond that we practiced the second day of practice and shook a couple off in and me and my partner decided that was where we were going to spend most of our time in the tournament,” Faulkner said.
They only planned on fishing there one day and on the first day of the championship, they had 17 and a half pounds out of it with a six pounder.”
They returned to the same area on day two and “ended up catching about 15 pounds out of there and came out of there with a one and a half pounder.”
“It was just one of those days, I flipped up there with a Ray’s bug and my line was sitting there and I was picking a backlash out and I reeled up and my line was swimming towards the middle of the lake, and I set the hook, and I caught a five and a half pounder. Then we had about 30 minutes left, and we ran out to the main lake on the way to weigh in, we just pulled in on a random offshore hole that we’ve never fished before. We pulled up on it and it just looked right, the current was hitting it right, we caught one that was almost six pounds on it, and we had 19 something (pounds); we were sitting at sixth place after day two,” Faulkner said.
Day three of the competition had winds blowing on the lake around 15 to 20 miles per hour “out of the west, which made the lake really big,” according to Riley.
“We went back in the back water again and the pond we had been fishing in wasn’t big and it had gotten a lot of pressure that week and it didn’t produce the last day of the tournament, and we couldn’t really get on anything offshore, and we struggled the last day,” Faulkner said.
At the close of day three, Faulkner and Piton earned 10th place and took home memories and an experience that will last a lifetime.
“When you’re fishing against those types of guys, those college guys, they’re the guys that are going to make a living out of fishing. Just having the opportunity is amazing. We had 11 teams from Carson Newman down there and only two teams from us got to fish out of 150 boats on the last day, that was just an unreal experience. And then to be fishing for a chance to go to REDCREST is just an unreal experience, I wish everyone got to experience it because you just don’t understand what it feels like until you do it,” Faulkner said.
The fishing future is bright for Faulkner, with multiple upcoming competitions.
“We leave in two weeks to go to Bugs Island in North Carolina, then we have the ACA College National Championship at Anderson, South Carolina, on Lake Hartwell, and then the week after that we go to Chickamauga in Dayton, Tennessee,” Faulkner said.
He and his partner also qualified for the Bass Master National Championship which will take place the second week in July on Cherokee Lake only about 10 minutes from Carson Newman University (Jefferson City).
“We qualified for that tournament on Okeechobee. I’m looking forward to that one a lot because I have fished Cherokee a lot and have had a lot of success on Cherokee,” Faulkner said.
He also said he wanted to “thank everyone for supporting him.”
Top 10 teams 2025 Abu Garcia College Fishing National Championship:
1. Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow – University of Montevallo – 64-15 (15)
2. Nicholas Dumke – University of Montevallo – 59-0 (15)
3. Ethan Fields and Jaxson Freeman – McKendree University – 56-10 (15)
4. Nicholas Dellaporta and Drew Pitts – Carson-Newman University – 55-14 (15)
5. Tripp Berlinsky and Bryce Dimauro – University of North Alabama – 55-6 (15)
6. Cooper Gilroy and Hayden O’Barr – University of Alabama – 53-6 (10)
7. Brenton Goodwin and Hunter Odom – University of Montevallo – 53-5 (15)
8. Stone Smith and Drake Wadsworth – Northwestern State University – 53-1 (15)
9. John Berry and Blake Bullock – Blue Mountain Christian University – 49-11 (13)
10. Riley Faulkner and Szymon Piton – Carson-Newman University – 46-11 (14) (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-04/16/2025-6AM-PHOTOS SUBMITTED)