Bryan Humphreys and Maurice Oakes Win Fishing For Friends Benefitting Dale Wilson with 20.14lbs SML Sept 30,2018

Fishing For Friends Benefitting Dale Wilson

By: Matt Harrup

[print_link]

CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL RESULTS

The first annual Fishing For Friends is in the books and many more are to come. This year we decided to help out our own in the fishing community Dale Wilson who is an avid angler know around the Smith Mountain Lake area. This past January Dale had a scheduled back surgery and shortly after surgery, he became very sick. Due to complications after surgery Dale was not able to get going home for six months. You can only imagine the financial nightmare this can cause. For more on Dale, you can log onto thebasscast.com where you can find the original story for Fishing For Friends Benefitting Dale Wilson.

Sunday, September 30th,2018 started off cool and foggy as we all headed to the boat ramp at Parkway Marina where the tournament was being held at Smith Mountain Lake. Upon arrival at the marina, two boats were in line ready to be launched eagerly to get out on the water first to lay claim to their first spot of the day. Seeing this we had a feeling a good turnout was about to happen. Registration opened at 5:30 am where 34 boats were registered by 6:45 am. Some came with a partner while others came by themselves all to show support for Dale. A few sat around the store at the marina telling stories about fishing with or against Dale in the past years while others readied their boats and tackle. Most of the time at the ramp you can hear everyone talking about how the fishing had been the last few days but this day was different as everyone was asking how Dale had been doing lately and if he will be fishing again soon.

As registration continued a concern came up that we might not launch at 7 am because of cloud cover that had come in overnight with very little light making it through the clouds, meaning we might have to delay launch until safelight. A few boats came in at the last few minutes but were in the water and registered by 6:45 am. For some unknown reason at the same time, the clouds thinned out enough to allow for some extra light to have blasted off on time. Five minutes till 7 am the first boat was called up for livewell check and launched in hopes to have everyone out by 7 am. As the boats passed by for livewell checks it was clear everyone had brought their “A” game as you could see the ice or some form of additive already in the livewell to help keep their fish alive. By 7:01 34 boats had been launched safely under cool cloudy skies.

With the last few weeks being rainy and flooding conditions it was uncertain to how the bite would be. The day before was sunny and produced a decent bite, but the weather on this day was cooler and overcast skies. Throughout the day you could see several different strategies being used such as fishing main channel points, slowly picking apart a lay down or brush pile and even some went to the shallow water looking for that next big bite. The temperature did rise into the lower 70’s as the day went on with the sun finally peeping through around 2pm. The big question, of course, was how did everyone do and what kind of bags will we see at the weigh-in.

Thebasscast.com personnel arrived around 2 pm to set up the weigh-in and had it completely set up by 2:30 pm. Shortly after setup was completed Dale showed up to watch weigh-in and visit with old friends. It was not long that boats started showing up with some tying their boats up to docks and other boats while some took advantage of the open ramp to put their boats on the trailer. At 3 pm most of the anglers had gathered around the weigh-in station and the big bass stories had started. One story was that someone in the tournament had caught a bass over the 7-pound mark. Finally, a line formed at the tank and weigh-in started. Several nice bags were brought to the scales along with several big fish over 5 pounds. After seeing 19 bags weighed in the scales closed. A total of 78 fish totaling 229.26 pounds came across the scales and were released. Here are your winners;

Overall Weight

1st place; Bryan Humphreys and Maurice Oakes w/ 5 fish @ 20.14lbs

2nd place; Bryant Copley w/ 5 fish @19.80lbs

3rd place; Jason Irby and Steve West w/ 5 fish @ 19.13lbs

4th place; Jay Keyton and Dale Bishop w/ 5 fish @ 18.94lbs

Big Fish

1st place; Jay Keyton and Dale Bishop w/ 7.23lbs

2nd place; Jeff Franklin and Carl Smith w/ 5.55lbs

The Fishing For Friends tournament paid out a little over $2,200 while Dale received over $1,100. We at thebasscast.com would like to thank each and everyone who participated, donated, helped spread the word and volunteered to make this event a huge success. A special Thank You to Parkway Marina for allowing us to register/weigh-in at the store and to Printworks in Lynchburg for donating the flyers. This was the first annual event for Fishing For Friends and we hope we can continue giving back for years to come. If you have a person or a family that could use a little financial help in 2019 please contact us at thebasscast.com or on our facebook page. We hope to see everyone again next year but until then stay safe out on the water.