BLOOMINGTOM, Ill. – College anglers Austin and Justin Carr are used to cases of mistaken identity when they fish tournaments together.
Tournament directors frequently have trouble identifying the identical twins who fish together for the Heartland Community College team. “We probably get our names mixed up couple of times a day,” Austin said.
Mix-ups even occur when one of them doesn’t fish with the other in a tournament. When Austin won a local tournament and big bass honors in June at Clinton Lake, Justin’s name was mistakenly engraved on the first place and big bass plaques Austin received later.
Getting the two mixed up is understandable considering they are both freshman majoring in construction management and have been fishing together since they were juniors at Bloomington High School. In addition to fishing for their college team in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series, the Carr brothers also compete as a team in a jackpot series at Clinton Lake and in the Ever-Bloom Tournament Trail of Central Illinois.
The twins fish about the same way too. “We mainly fish the same style, but he will mainly flip or something and I will throw a moving bait most of the time,” Justin said.
Hank Weldon, B.A.S.S. senior manager of college, high school and juniors, faced the challenge of keeping the twins’ names straight when he emceed the weigh-ins of the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Midwest Regional at Lake of the Ozarks. The twins finished sixth in the regional and qualified for the 2017 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series National Championship to be held Aug. 10-12 at Lake Bemidji in Minnesota.
The national exposure will help the twins achieve a goal of putting their “names out there as much as we can,” Justin said.
Justin’s ultimate goal after college is to compete in bass tournaments at the professional level. He plans on trying to get a “decent job” to make enough money to eventually fund his bass fishing career.
Austin has his sights set on one day fishing in the Bassmaster Classic. “I am going to see wherever the road takes me,” he said of his post-college plans. “If I can compete well enough to make enough money to fish for a living, it is always an opportunity.”
Follow the twins’ fishing exploits on their Facebook page, Carrbro’s Bass Fishing.
