Carolinas Bass Challenge SC Division Qualifier #2 – Lake Wylie
Nathan Webber and Paul Rigsbee brought in 20.85lbs – Good for a First Place and a check for 10,000!!
Keith Porter and Jason Threatt Bagged the $5,000 Top Finishing Skeeter Bonus with 18.28lbs good for 4th Place and a Total of $7,300 in Winnings.
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Thomas Hardwick and Tommy William brought in 23.67lbs – Good for a First Place and a check for 10,000!!
Charlie Sansbury & Kevin Banks Bagged the $5,000 Top Finishing Skeeter Bonus with 18.28lbs good for 4th Place and a Total of $7,300 in Winnings.
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Gary Pilkenton and Tim Smiley took home the Berkley Big Bass Largemouth Award with a Largemouth weighing 5.11 lbs and a check for $930.00 plus (2) Berkley rods. The Berkley Big Bass Smallmouth Award went to Randy Brown and Greg Burrell with a Smallmouth weighing 3.77 lbs good for a check for $930.00 and (2) Berkley rods.
A total of 50 Skeeter boats were in contention for the Morristown Marine/Skeeter/Highest Finishing Skeeter Bonus Program. Brian Dortch (Skeeter owner) and Brad Warfield claimed the highest finishing Skeeter for a $3000.00 check. 2nd highest finishing Skeeter was Ricky Shepherd (owner) and Darby Dye. They received a check for $2000.00. 3rd highest finishing Skeeter was Randy Rigg (owner) and Rod Colyer . They received a check for $1000.00 (See www.morristownmarine.com for complete results).
The next tournament will be on Norris Lake on March 29, 2014. The Blast-off will take place at Brogans Ramp at safe light. You may come by the dealership or call in to sign up. Entries will be taken at Rigsby’s Bait and Tackle in Tazewell, TN on Friday from 12 Noon – 6PM prior to the tournament. The entire staff of Morristown Marine Team Trail Invitational would like to THANK the anglers and sponsors for their continued support. We look forward to a great 2014 Season.
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Derrick Blake and Clint Harrison took home 1st place $10,000.00 with 18.26 lbs.
1st Place Derrick Blake / Clint Harrison
Gary Pilkenton / Tim Smiley – Big Largemouth 5.11 lbs $930.00 and 2 Berkley Rods
Randy Brown / Greg Burrell – Big Smallmouth 3.77 lbs $930.00 and 2 Berkley Rods
Highest Finishing Skeeter $3000.00 – Brian Dortch / Brad Warfield
Justin Hanold is a pretty good stick. And catching big bass is not really anything new to him. But he has to be impressed with his recent feat. We sure are.
Adam Ross and Matt Thorton won the Alabama Bass Trail’s first South Division tournament on the Mobile-Tennesaw River Delta on Saturday with a five bass limit weighing 15.24 pounds to take home the $10,000 top prize in the amateur team bass fishing tournament series started this year by Kay Donaldson and the state of Alabama.
It seems Randy Howell’s Bassmaster Classic victory on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville a week earlier affected Thorton’s bait choice for the Mobile Delta tournament.
Randy Howell’s victorious week at the 2014 Bassmaster Classic was filled with hard-to-explain inner voices predicting positive outcomes.
And it seems he heard the first hint of success on an escalator at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center complex prior to Tuesday’s official angler registration meeting.
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Close but no Cigar
This past weekend my father and I fished the first Bobcat’s Team Tournament of the year at Occoneechee State Park. Within the first 45 minutes of the tournament we had three fish in the boat pushing twelve pounds. If that don’t warm your heart and spirits in a hurry, please stop reading this and quit fishing. At the time an immediate thought of winning this tournament became a real possibility, even this early in the game we both knew we had a kicker in the box and two solids to go along with it. Two long hours of hunt and peck and we had finally caught the two fish to make up our limit. Now it’s around 10 am and we got the rest of the day to make this happen, can we do it? After a couple more hours of culling for ounces we make the move of the day, up the lake to a few areas we knew had fish from Thursday evening’s three hour trip. Upon arrival to the first stop, the very first cast produced a nice 5 lber and a cull of more than 2.5 lbs. We looked at each other and felt like it was over, done, we had it!
As we received our third place check for 18.87 lbs of fish reality sunk in, we got beat. Not by one team but by two teams! As bad as I felt I couldn’t help feel for Lemar and Owens, they weighed in 20.02 lbs and finished second. Since everyone cares only about first place, Morgan and Colwell had 21.83 lbs, amazing catch for this lake! As Brandon handed us our check he said, “It’s not over, til it’s over, right Jason?”. Man he was 100% right and it didn’t help a thing that we had just boated a bigger bag than any team had in the last year on this trail, today is all that mattered and we got beat. Hey that’s fishing and it just goes to prove that you always need to think that you never have enough.
After we caught that last good one, I kind of relaxed and thought we had won. If you don’t win this can be a hard lesson to learn in tournament fishing. This was a lesson that I know better than most, yet I still made the same mistake. I don’t want to say we quit, but the sense of urgency was gone. We relaxed and lost focus of the task at hand, and didn’t push to the end. Now I don’t think we could have eclipsed 21.83 lbs, but I feel like I didn’t give it my all the last hour for sure. Consider this, in my many years of tournament fishing on Buggs I have only eclipsed the 20 lb. mark with 5 fish on 3 occasions. Each one of these bags were caught almost 10 years ago, so of course we would think that victory is in our grasps. I had never fished here during the hay day of the 90s when 20 lb. bags were common, so in my defense, I was pretty confident. But one positive from my view is, this tournament weigh in sure says a lot about this lake and a possible rebound from recent struggles.
No matter what the outcome I can always think of this as a memorable day with my dad tournament fishing. I love the competition on the Bobcat’s Team trail, so many great fisherman, definitely the best on this lake. People like Mark Inman, Larry Inman, Rodney Sorrell, Wally Szuba, Denny Gilbert, and Chris Bullock, people that are the best on the lake. It is known that when you win one of these, you have beat the best on this lake, not just the best fisherman, but the best people as well. It is also known that these guys are veterans that close the deal and bring out the best in you, and really that’s what it’s all about. This is not the first time I’ve said it on this trail and it most likely will not be the last time…. Dad I know you don’t want to hear this but, close but no cigar.
Here are the results and pictures from the open tournament we held this past Sunday. We had a total of 22 boats and did pay $1,000 for 1st place.
1st Place – Charlie Fochtman / Charlie Fochtman Jr. – 15.87 lbs
2nd Place – Mark McFaiden / Nathan Reeves – 13.17 lbs
3rd Place – Curtis Talbot / Joey Talbot – 10.02 lbs
Big Fish – Jerry Elder / Ricky Bomar – 5.54 lbs
Enjoy photos from the event
Smallmouth Bass:
The smallmouth bite is and will continue heating up over the next month. If we get an early Spring warm snap during the first half of the month, expect to see the larger fish make a break from their wintering holes to their prespawn areas. The long Winter is going to have them hungry and feeding earlier than normal. Keep in mind fluctuating water levels and temperatures can slow and reverse these effects, but the efforts to locate these earliest moving fish will pay dividends this time of year. As fish move from their deeper wintering grounds and into the areas they like to spawn, begin throwing jerkbaits, swimbaits, and spinners. If you aren’t moving fish, don’t hesitate to move back to deeper cover and fish a tube or jig along the bottom. March has always produced some of the biggest smallmouth of the year. Don’t let the colder weather deter you, but always be wise on the water.
Musky:
The bite is more than on! Keep in mind when targeting musky that musky fishing is just as much hunt as it is fish. Patience and persistence will be great assets. Not as great however as knowing where the fish live, where they feed, and what they are feeding on. These are the assets that will move you from 10,000 casts, down to 100! On the Upper James River, the structure and depth that holds musky is no secret or mystery. FISH THESE AREAS! They will lurk in the deeper stretches between falls in the river. They will hold both mid river and on the bank. On the banks look for wooded structure or tributaries, and mid river fish deep water chunk rock and shelves. That being said, I have found when musky are feeding they will move into more shallow “non typical” musky waters to eat. Don’t completely discredit these areas at the top and bottom of shallow water stretches. This time of year this is often where they’ll be feeding if you can’t find them holding in their typical ambush locations. Happy hunting!
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