Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507310020
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Scott chuckled, but as it turned out, Dudley was dead serious. He isn't the champ - not yet, anyway - but Thursday through Saturday he will be one of 40 competitors in fishing's biggest show, the 25th BASS Masters Classic at High Rock Lake near Greensboro, N.C.
Just being there is victory in Dudley's eyes.
``It's always been my goal to be the youngest to ever fish the Classic,'' he said. At age 19, he is that. Gary Klein, now a B.A.S.S. superstar at age 37, was a teen-age tournament wonder, but he was 20 before he earned a berth in the Classic.
How can a youngster expect to fare in a competition that often lavishes its spotlight on well-known anglers whose age and girth have grown in unison, guys like Roland Martin?
``I feel like he will be able to compete very well,'' said his dad, James, who fished in the 1982 Classic, finishing 30th on Lake Montgomery in Alabama. ``David is subject to go down there and win it. Kerchal proved that is possible last year.''
The 1994 Classic, also held at High Rock Lake, was won by 23-year-old Bryan Kerchal, who shocked the fishing world as the first amateur to win, then shocked it a second time in December when he was killed in an American Eagle plane crash in North Carolina.
Kerchal, from Connecticut, was viewed as part of a new, and needed, youth movement in B.A.S.S competition. Wilt Browning of the Greensboro News & Record described him as ``the little boy in all of us, a Norman Rockwell painting of the kid with his worn baseball glove caressed to his side looking up to his big-league hero who doesn't know he has an admirer.''
The same description fits Dudley, another youngster who has dreamed big dreams. That means if Dudley does well early in the Classic he could become a favorite of the more than 20,000 spectators expected to crowd into the Greensboro Coliseum for the weigh-ins.
But that would require blasting past the home-lake favorite, David Fritts, who lives about 15 minutes from 15,750-acre High Rock. Fritts cranked out a Classic victory in 1993 at Lake Logan in Alabama and was heavily favored last year. Then came torrential rain that covered his favorite holes with gobs of muddy water. What wasn't shrouded with dirty water often was plastered with his fans. At one point, 64 boats were following him. He finished a dismal 21st.
This time, the lake is down a foot or so, and that favors the deep-cranking skills of Fritts.
``Everything is going in his favor, with his crankbait bite and his home lake,'' said Dudley.
``Right now, conditions favor deep-water fishing, because everything is so hot down here,'' said Bodie McDowell, of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. ``Like it is now, Fritts should have a better tournament.''
Even so, McDowell picked TV fishing show host Roland Martin to win. ``He is a deep-water fisherman, too,'' McDowell said.
Dudley's confidence lies in the shallows. It was shallow-water sight fishing that vaulted him to third place in the Virginia B.A.S.S. Invitational on Kerr Lake in late April.
In his bid for the Classic, Dudley finished first in the BASSMASTER Eastern Invitational Tournament division. His parents had wanted him to go to college, (his oldest brother, Paul, is a senior at Liberty University), but Dudley persuaded them to give him one year to prove himself on the tournament trail.
During practice days on High Rock in late June, Dudley concentrated on probing deep-water bass haunts.
``I really didn't practice much on the shallow bite,'' he said. ``That is something you can just read without practice. I went down there mainly to find more structure holes. That's why I didn't catch as many fish.''
Dudley said he wanted a bevy of deep-water fishing spots to fall back on in case the lake level is low.
``With the water down, you have to get on the structure holes, and it may cause some people a little bit of trouble - maybe me,'' he said.
Contestants will get Tuesday as a practice day, but a single day won't be much time to case a lake. Last year, Kerchal caught most of his bass while fishing a 100-yard stretch of boat docks that were enhanced with brush.
Dudley will be the only Virginian in the Classic. Absent is Woo Daves of Spring Grove, who has fished 13 Classics. He failed to qualify this year.
``I am going to miss it,'' Daves said. ''I just had a couple of bad tournaments. I fished the Eastern [division], but I really didn't fish them hard like I should have. I didn't put the time into them, because I just didn't have the time. I worked 40 or 50 shows this year and have done 126 seminars.
``Hopefully, I will have time to adjust my schedule where I can practice two or three days on the tournament lakes, but it makes it hard when you have sponsor commitments. You have to do those. They are the ones who pay the bills.''
Pressures on Dudley are destined to build next season as he attracts needed sponsors and expands his tournament fishing to include the Top 100 circuit, as well as the Eastern division.
``But pressure doesn't bother David that much,'' his dad said. ``He just goes out there and puts his fishing skills together.``
As for the Classic, ``I am going out there and compete against that fish more than the other guys,'' Dudley said.
by CNB