Two of Alabama’s favorite recreational staples are college football and bass fishing. The Auburn University and University of Alabama bass fishing teams recently competed for bragging rights in their own “Iron Bowl” on Logan Martin Lake at the Abu Garcia College Fishing Faceoff Presented by This Is Alabama.

The friendly competition on the Alabama Power reservoir took place March 16 while the Bass Pro Shops Redcrest Powered by Optima Lithium was underway one lake down the Coosa River at Lay Lake.

It was a close finish, but Auburn pulled away in the “fourth quarter” and won with a total of 68 pounds, 7 ounces for its four-man, two-boat team to Alabama’s 52-8. Auburn’s four-man team consisted of Sam Harvey and Hayden Marbut in one boat and Blake Milligan and Carson Maddux in the second boat. Both schools wore headsets to communicate from boat to boat throughout the day.

“We talked together all day long and had a good time. It was a lot of fun,” said Marbut, winner of a recent Toyota Series on Lake Guntersville. “We were fishing the same things and communicating about it to stay on the same page.”

Members of the Auburn bass fishing team celebrate their winning catch at the College Fishing Faceoff. (Tyler Brinks)

Even though Logan Martin’s bass are itching to spawn, the Auburn duos decided to stick with open water.

“The bass are on the bank spawning, but there are still a bunch of fish out in the creek mouths, drains and backs of little pockets,” Marbut said. “We were both targeting bait balls and using forward-facing sonar to catch our fish. We caught a bunch, probably 60 in our boat, and only one in three was big enough to count; you just had to weed through them to get a scoreable.”

Harvey and Marbut boated 37-14 on 19 bass and Milligan and Maddux added 30-9 for their 13 scoreable bass.

Alabama’s team consisted of Hayden O’Barr and Cooper Gilroy catching 21 bass for 40-5 in one boat and Patrick McMurray and Dillan Dolvera boating six for 12-3 in the other.

“It got really close there for a while before we pulled away at the end,” Marbut said.

The University of Alabama bass fishing team caught 52 pounds, 8 ounces of scoreable bass on Alabama Power’s Logan Martin Lake. (Tyler Brinks)

The Iron Bowl football series dates back to 1893 and has 88 meetings in total. The budding bass fishing rivalry has a long way to go to match that, but both teams enjoyed the competition.

“It’s not nearly as big as the football rivalry, but we tried to have some fun with it,” Marbut said. “We know a lot of those guys and compete against them in different events. I hope we can do another one of these sometime.”

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