7 Boats, All With 5-Fish Limits

It may have been a small turnout today, but none of the 13 anglers were lacking for heart, as evidenced by the fact we all brought limits to the scales at the 2:30 weigh-in.

Leading the pack today was this duo (from left): Mark London and Jeremy Gatewood, whose 1st-place limit totaled 12.93 lbs., anchored by a 4.64-lb. bass.

Finishing in 2nd place was the team of Jared Allbritten and (not pictured) Al Napier, with a limit weighing 11.63 lbs. They didn't weigh a big fish.

Claiming big-fish honors today was yours truly, who boated a 5.26-lb. bass, with the help of his partner, Rob Chatham (not pictured), who netted the fish for him. Their total weight was 11.55 lbs.

The team of (from left) Dave Meers and Ed Balko walked away as winners of the day's mystery-weight drawing. They had a total weight of 6.95 lbs. (with no big fish), which was closest to the 2.70 tab that was drawn.




Here is how everyone else finished the competition:

     * The team of Bob Glass and Randy Conkle, total weight 9.03 lbs., no big fish.
     * The team of John Matyiko and Mark Cable, total weight 8.72 lbs., big fish 3.47 lbs.
     * Jesse Munden, total weight 7.20 lbs. after 0.25 deduction for one dead fish, no big fish.

Overall, the anglers today weighed a total of 35 bass for a total weight of 68.26 lbs. The average weight was 1.95 lbs.

For planning purposes, our last regular tournament of the current season is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 27, from safe light (about 6:30 a.m.) to 2:30 p.m. As noted in an earlier post, I encourage all those who usually fish our Dewey Mullins Memorial Bass Tourney Series but would like to fish the annual Dalton Waters/Tim Weddle Memorial Open out of Bob's Fishing Hole that same date to do so. And, as promised in the earlier post, anyone fishing at Bob's on the 27th but needing one more tourney to qualify for the Dewey Mullins Memorial two-day Classic on Oct. 18th and 19th will be credited accordingly so that they can fish the Classic. My verification will be seeing your names listed in the tournament results posted on the Guestbook page of Bob's website.

Rob and I will be a long time forgetting the moments immediately following my catching that big bass today. Here's why. As Rob was trying to get the hook out of the fish, I glanced up to see his rod going off the back deck of the boat. You see, he just had made a long cast with a topwater bait when I hooked my fish and had laid his rod down to grab the net.

Anyway, I quickly took the fish from him so he could grab his rod. He first thought he had a fish on, but as he kept reeling, he realized he was hung--on what turned out to be a stump nearly 3 feet below the water's surface.

We always will wonder how a topwater floater ended up down there. Our collective thought is that another fish snatched it while we were wrestling with mine, but we'll never know for sure because we never saw anything happening.