These Ducks sit on the pond for glory of the green and yellow.

Byline: INSIDE THE OUTDOORS By Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Chris Parks and friends look to make a big splash, Kaylea Colley bags a big ram, and the state says big lines for hunting licenses should soon be a thing of the past - all that big news in this edition of "Hooks and Bullets."

If you thought it odd that the University of Oregon is adding a competitive cheer team, meet Chris Parks, Carter Troughton, Tanner Messner and Gregory Crowl - four students who this week are representing the Ducks in the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship.

Yep, we're talking hooking some big ones for the good ol' green and yellow.

While not an NCAA-sanctioned athletic event, bass fishing is an official club sport at the UO. That means Parks and his fishing buddies were able to get themselves, 20 rods and a hundred pounds of fishing gear to Dallas, Texas, in green (hybrid!) vehicles checked out from the state motor pool.

The four anglers representing the Oregon Bass Team were scheduled to do some practice fishing on Lake Lewisville outside Dallas early this week. The tournament runs Thursday through Saturday.

As of last week, 87 teams representing 48 colleges and universities were registered for a crack at the $35,000 in scholarship money in the prize pool (first place is worth $14,000).

After the first two days, the field will be whittled down to the top five two-person teams. The finalists will be sent out in hot new Ranger Boats decked out in their school colors, and each will be accompanied by a film crew. The Fox College Sports Network reportedly plans to air a 13-episode series next year.

According to Parks, a 23-year-old senior economics major who is the club's vice president and one of its founders, the Oregon Bass Team has about 20 members who competed in several local tournaments over the past year for the right to represent the UO at nationals. Most members of the club don't have access to boats, so members of the local Emerald Bass Club help get the Ducks on the pond to fish.

This will be Parks' second appearance in the collegiate championship event.

"We didn't do all that well," said Parks, a 2002 graduate of Sheldon High School. "Out of 41 teams, I think we got 30th ... but we didn't get to pre-fish at all last year, and this year we're getting down there early so we can get our full two days of practice."

The Oregon bass team knows it will be up against stiff competition in Texas, Parks said, because bass fishing is so much bigger in other parts of the country.

"Oregon and Arizona are the only Pac -10 schools entered," Parks said. (And the only ones hailing from west of the Rockies).

"Most of the guys are from the South and Midwest ... We're definitely out of our element a little, but it's fun."

I say it would be even more fun if the UO anglers had a mascot to cheer them on. ("Hook-em, Ducks, hook-em!)

Rather than Donald Duck, of course, you'd want someone dressed up as a merganser, Oregon's most prolific fish-eating duck...

To follow the action in Texas, log on to: www.CollegiateBassChampionship.com.

Kaylea Colley, a 22-year-old Oregon National Guard recruiter who comes from a Creswell family of hunters, now has bragging rights over her father, grandfather and brother - all of whom she grew up hunting with.

On Sept. 9, Colley bagged a bighorn ram that scored 171 and 6/8ths points on the Boone and Crockett scale. She got the ram hunting in the rugged Hurricane Divide area of the Wallowa Mountains, where she drew one of only two tags available in this year's controlled hunt lottery.

Bighorn sheep tags are, by law, literally a "once in a lifetime" opportunity in Oregon.

What makes Colley's successful hunt a bigger deal at family gatherings is that her father, Ed, drew a tag for the same Hurricane Divide sheep hunt "about 20 years ago," Colley said.

Ed Colley did not take a ram on his hunt.

However, Kaylea Colley diplomatically pointed out that the ODFW biologist who scored her ram, said Hurricane Divide "is the toughest hunt, probably, in Oregon ... there's such a huge area to cover and only like 30 rams in the whole unit."

Ed Colley and Kaylea's younger brother, Kellen, accompanied her on the hunt, as did family friends Mike Plummer of Creswell and Shane Byerly of Salem. The group went over five days prior to the season opener to scout the high country for sheep.

"We packed up camp and moved it about 10 miles" after Byerly returned and reported spotting a large ram following one scouting hike, Kaylea Colley said.

The next day "we actually stumbled on to him, standing about 30 yards away and staring at us," she said.

Colley plans to have a shoulder mount made of the trophy ram to remind her of "the best hunt of my life."

Meanwhile, she's headed back to Eastern Oregon for this weekend's opening of the mule deer season, for which she also drew a tag.

Human nature being what it is, a certain percentage of hunters will always wait until the last minute to purchase their licenses and tags. But the lines should never be as big - or as slow-moving - as they sometimes got with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife's old "Point of Sale" (POS) computer network, which was installed in 1994.

The system worked fine most of the time, but could get bogged down and very slow to respond during peak periods.

The POS system was turned off on Sept. 14, and all but a handful its 450 online agents are up and running on the ODFW's new "iPOS" (for internet-based Point of Sale) system.

ODFW will pay about 70 cents per fee-based transaction to Outdoor Central, the company that is providing the hardware, software, paper supplies, and agent training.

That cost will be partially offset by savings in equipment maintenance, supplies, and maintaining a dedicated network.

License and tag fees are not being increased to pay for the new system, an ODFW spokeswoman said.

ODFW officials still say hunters should purchase their buck deer, fall bear and general season cougar tags well before the Sept. 28 deadline if they want to avoid lines. Even though the new system is faster, it does take time to process each transaction.

The new, state-of-the-art recreational licensing system will provide some new benefits, including:

Barcode readers that will make purchasing a new license faster and more accurate.

Licenses and tags will be printed on waterproof paper, meaning tags no longer have to be put in plastic pouches.

The combined angling harvest tag has been redesigned for easier recording of harvest data.

Certain licenses, tags and other documents will be available for purchase online. Plans are to phase-in this feature sometime in 2008.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at [e-mail].