Ben Milliken booked his ticket to the November BASS Nation Championship at Lake Hartwell after a 23 lb Championship Friday at the Bass Nation Regional on Toledo Bend, finishing 8th overall on a 62 lb 4 oz three-day total and openly conceding he'd been schooled by a field full of teenagers running modern forward-facing sonar.
Milliken started Day 3 in 39 lb 4 oz with a familiar problem: the leader had 32 lb and the second place had 34 lb, and only the top 18 of a much larger field were going through to the championship. He filmed himself launching the boat that morning sounding genuinely unsure whether his usual recovery script would work in this lineup.
"I'm just trying to figure out how the hell we're going to catch the next fish, cuz yesterday we got to mix it up. Do something different today," he said before lines in.
The field, dominated by qualifying college and youth anglers, made an impression. "A bunch of damn teenagers out here. Screenagers, as Pat Renwick would call them," Milliken said. "No disrespect to them. They're freaking ruining them. And these guys are phenomenal. I'm very impressed by the caliber of fisherman out here. These guys are really freaking good."
Day 3 itself was a slow build. The bite was scratchy through the morning until the boat scoped grass clumps on secondary points and started picking off fish on minnow imitations slid into drains.
"It looked like a sketchy day for a while until probably 11, 11:30, and we finally started putting some together," Milliken said. "We started on some of that grass clump stuff, scoping around the edges of it and got a couple decent ones. Actually caught them on a minnow today. Figured out they were kind of more slid off in some of the drains and on bait."
One brush pile that had reloaded from his earlier bedding bites coughed up the day's biggest fish, with several quality bass getting blown off the bait by a stalking fish before he weighted up to a 3/4-ounce bait to drive it past competitors. He weighed five fish for 23 lb on the dot, climbing from outside the cut to 8th and into the championship line-up.
For a former Elite Series pro who has since stepped back from the full tour, the result felt like a vindication of a different approach. "I feel like I crashed a college tournament today," he said at the wrap-up. "All these guys are so impressive, so talented out there."
Milliken was honest about the script he keeps falling into in multi-day events. Big Day 1, ugly Day 2, then settle in and let the fish come on Day 3. "Day two sucks. I'm kind of - that's kind of my deal. I feel like in Elite Series, I'd do that too, and the open. Have a good day one, shitty day two. And then if I made the cut day three, I'd always just like chill, kind of settle in. And that's what we did today."
His on-camera thanks went to his wife Bonnie at home with their three children. "Family is everything in this sport," he said.
Next stops are a packed summer schedule that he says will be heavy on largemouth and smallmouth events, with a championship slot already locked at Lake Hartwell in November - one finishing-line at a time, beginning with a battery-jump on a dead truck in the Toledo Bend car park.