Season at a Glance: 1978 Bassmaster Trail – Part Four

So far, we’ve covered the six Bassmaster Classic qualifying events for the 1978 Bassmaster Tournament Trail along with the mid-season Bass Champs event. Today we’re looking at the 1978 Bassmaster Federation Championship, which was held on Lake Eufaula, AL, in August 1978.

Up to this time, no state team had won back-to-back championships, although the Tennessee team had won twice, the inaugural event in 1973 and again in 1976. Other winners had been Missouri (1974), Louisiana (1975) and Alabama (1977).

The prior year’s event, held on Kentucky Lake, was won by the Alabama team who squeaked out the victory by two ounces over Virginia. This year’s event, though, wouldn’t be close at all.

The 1978 Federation Finals were comprised of 36 six-man teams from states as far west as Washington, as far north as Minnesota and as far northeast as New Hampshire. But what Alabama would do to the competition had the other teams saying that the home team had “too much of an advantage.”

Alabama didn’t just win the event, they owned it. In fact, the six-man team weighed 81-01 the first day and could have called it quits as no other team would come within 15 pounds of that mark over the course of three days.

In the end, Alabama weighed a total of 49 bass that stretched the scales to 144-15, becoming the first team to win back-to-back. The 2nd-place team, Georgia, weighed less than half that amount (both fish and weight) with 20 bass for 62-06. In 3rd place, even further back, was Florida with 14 bass for 48-09. The rest of the 36 teams and their results are presented below.

The box score for the event reveals just how tough Eufaula was that August. Only 344 bass were weighed for 648 angler-days of fishing. Total weight was a little better with 915-05 – almost a 3-pound average. Only one limit was weighed the entire event – Dave Lockhart’s opening 7-fish limit that went 22-08.

Chet Douthit caught big fish for the tournament, an 8-06 bucketmouth that really played into his 5th-place finish. And look at the 40th-place finisher. Another soon-to-be Bassmaster angler, Denny Brauer. Brauer caught one fish that week, but it weighed in at 7-07. Unfortunately he didn’t get big fish for that day.

The top-40 individual scores are shown below.

Editor’s note: This is Part Four of a six-part series on the 1978 Bassmaster Trail. Click the following links to read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Part Five of this series will concentrate on the Bassmaster Classic Qualifiers while Part Six will cover Classic VIII.