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May 30th, 2009
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THE FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES
1st ANNUAL BASS ANGLERS CLASSIC
INGALLS HARBOR - WHEELER LAKE
SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009
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Not only do members of Bassmasters of North Alabama engage in tournament activity within the club, but we also have individual members that fish in B.A.S.S. weekend series tournaments; as co-anglers in Bassmaster Open tournaments; Alabama B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Regional and State tournaments, and various charity event tournaments. Recently three of our anglers (Jay Stackhouse, David Giudice, Greg Maxwell) and one of their friends (Keith Speegle) participated in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes 1st Annual Bass Anglers Classic sponsored by Long-Lewis Ford of the Shoals which was held out of Ingalls Harbor, Wheeler Lake, Decatur, Alabama. Here is a couple of photos and the description of this event and their participation as described by BMNA Bassmaster Jay Stackhouse:
"The day started with us reaching our first hole and not at all expecting to get to be on it. But as luck goes there was no one there. My third cast I caught the first keeper of the day. I was throwing an XR75K one knocker over a rock / dirt transition in about 5 foot of water. About 10 minutes later Keith cast near the bank with some grass right next to a rock wall and caught a nice 2 pound smallmouth.
After that our hole seemed to die off. So we decided to leave it and come back later. We went to our second spot and goose-egg'd. That was very disheartening as we figured it was done and we were really counting on that hole. So we moved further to our next hole. We really wasn't wanting to go there until around the middle of the day but we ended up there only an hour into the tournament. As we entered the slough, we started throwing a white / chartreuse spinnerbait with small Colorado and medium willowleaf blades.
Before we reached our hole we started working the edges and I caught the third keeper. A nice 2.5 pound largemouth. This was encouraging since we weren't even on our hole yet. That was all we caught as we reached our hole. Once there, Keith made a single cast and landed a nice 4.5 pound largemouth. That was the only fish caught in that area. We were really struggling at first just to get our limit. But as we started working around our area, we found some grassbeds that looked good. We started throwing our spinnerbaits in there and things just went crazy. We caught over 20 fish in that one grassbed. We culled about 7 or 8 times.
As we decided we needed to get closer to the launch before weigh in, we stopped back at our first hole and fished it. Caught a few more small ones. As we were leaving, I caught a nice largemouth. We checked it with the other two largemouths and it was smaller so I threw it back.
At the weigh in, Keith pulled out the smallmouth and made the comment that the one we threw back was much bigger than the smallmouth. If we had kept it, we probably would have won the whole tournament. We had 14.5 pounds and the winners had 14.9. A great day of fishing."
By the way, David and Greg did not do so well. I think they weighed in but due to their low weight, departed the area before the media could interview them.
BMNA - "Working to Make a Difference....One Cast at a Time"
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