The Light and Champion (Center, Tex.), Vol. 138, No. 91, Ed. 1 Friday, November 13, 2015 Page: 15 of 20
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Friday, Nov. 13,2015 I3B
The Light an
Sam Rayburn, Fork produce fall lunkers
Collins comes from
behind to win on
Ouachita River
11-
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Courtesy Photo
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Courtesy Photo
Fishing report
From Page 2B
Dragons
From Page IB
PIGSKIN PROGNOSTICATORS
Ute/ 1____11
1. Center vs. Emory Rains
Center
Center
Emory Rains
Center
Center
2. Shelbyville vs. Big Sandy
Shelbyville
Shelbyville
Shelbyville
Shelbyville
Shelbyville
3. Oklahoma at Baylor
Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Baylor
Baylor
Oklahoma
4. Arkansas at LSU
LSU
LSU
LSU
LSU
LSU
5. Memphis at Houston
Houston
Houston
Houston
Houston
Houston
6. Georgia at Auburn
Georgia
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
7. Houston at Cincinnati
Cincinnati
Cincinnati
Cincinnati
Cincinnati
Cincinnati
8. Dallas at Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay
Dallas
Dallas
Tampa Bay
Dallas
9. New England at NY Giants
NY Giants
Giants
New England
Patriots
New England
10. Arizona at Seattle
Arizona
Arizona
Seattle
Arizona
Arizona
rtfc
Light and
Champion
Pick Rox
Games for
Nov. 13
ATHENS - Water level is eight
inches high and stained to clear. Wa-
ter temp in the low 70s, upper 60s..
Fishing guide Jim Brack says
bass anglers are reporting some
solid fish on weightless Flukes and
Ultra-Vibe worms worked around
shallow grass in 2-5 feet of water.
Crappie anglers reporting some par-
tial limits around brush piles using
jigs. Brack says the marina is now
open Friday through Sunday.
‘PINES - Water level is about two
feet low and stained to clear. Water
temp in the low 70s.
Fake regular Jim Tutt says bass
fishing has been excellent on Flukes
and small swim baits fished around
shallow grass beds up north. Also
some fish hitting Chatterbaits and
spinnerbaits. Farther south anglers
are picking up some solid fish on
points and around bridges using
Carolina rigs and cranks on points.
Catfish are good on windy shore-
lines and points using punch bait
Roy Euper of Lufkin landed a 13.2 pounder at Sam Rayburn on Nov. 2. and donated
it to the Toyota ShareLunker program. The big bass regurgitated a six-inch crappie
soon after it arrived at the program headquarters.
By Matt Williams
Outdoors Writer
more
Fake
NTERN
BANT
Jason Chlapek
Sports Editor
Steve Snyder
Managing Editor
Darrell Martinez
Pressman Supervisor
Sidney Bean
Prognosticator
Extraordinaire
Jody Matthews
Football Writer
tvkt
B/l
R|
and night crawlers. No report on
crappie.
HOUSTON COUNTY - Water
level is about six inches low and
stained. Water temp in the low 70s,
upper 60s.
Crockett Family Resort is report-
ing fair bass action on shad pattern
medium diving crankbaits worked
in about 15 feet of water. Crappie an-
glers reporting limits on live shiners
around brush piles in 15-17 feet of
water. No report on bream or catfish.
Outdoors
www.lightandchampion.com
season program. In fact, the Drag-
ons’ offseason program might the
main reason for success.
“Championships are won in the
offseason,” Ferguson said. “Our off-
season has shown up in every game
this season, especially in the fourth
quarter.”
Big Sandy finished in a third-
place tie in 9-2A-DI, but earned the
fourth-place seed because of a 16-12
loss to Union Grove in the district
opener. The Wildcats then lost to
Ore City, 31-7, to fall to 0-2 in league
play before winning the next three,
which included a 14-6 win over Har-
leton - the district’s No. 1 seed.
While Shelbyville’s record is 9-0,
Ferguson is treating the postseason
as a new season.
“We are literally trying to go 1-0
each week,” he said. “We are like
any other team that wants to win
this thing. We have to continually
improve on blocking and tackling,
minimize mistakes and at this point
in the season, you can’t turn the ball
over.”
The winner of tonight’s game
advances to the area round to face
the winner between Anderson-Shiro
and Carlisle.
a playoff game since 2001 when
they defeated East Chambers, 13-7.
Shelbyville already made history
this season with its first undefeated
regular season record. Ferguson
believes such a feat should’ve al-
ready happened.
“(It was) long overdue,” he said.
“There’s no reason Shelbyville
shouldn’t have achieved this kind of
success in the past. The difference
in this bunch and years’ past is the
dedication and leadership to accom-
plish the task.”
Another thing Ferguson believes
has helped this year’s team is its off-
caught. According to
fisheries biologist Tony
Owens, Euper’s bass re-
gurgitated the six-inch
crappie shortly after it
arriving at the Texas
Freshwater Fisheries
Center in Athens.
Robert Morton of
Houston knows all about
the affinity big bass have
for crappie when the din-
ner bell rings.
On Nov. 5, Morton
was on Fake Fork prac-
ticing for an upcoming
bass tournament when
he caught a 12.36-pound
bass that inhaled the
Strike King 10XD crank-
bait he was working in
relation to the under-
water support pillars of
the State Highway 154
bridge. He was using six
pound test line.
“I had heard from
some crappie fishermen
that the big bass eat a lot
of crappie around those
bridges, so I tied on big-
gest, darkest-colored
bait I could find. It was
a bar fish pattern, and it
worked.”
Interestingly, Morton
does his fishing from a
Hobie Pro Angler pedal
drive kayak. He was prac-
ticing for Capitial City
‘Tournament of Champi-
ons” kayak tournament
on Nov. 7-8 when he land-
ed the monster bass.
It is arguably among
the biggest Texas bass
ever caught from public
waters by a kayak fisher-
man.
MONROE, Fouisi-
ana — Albert Collins’
victory in the 2015 Old
Milwaukee B.A.S.S.
Nation Championship
was a year in the mak-
ing. The Texas angler
lost his bid to the Clas-
sic by 1 1/2 pounds on
the Ouachita River in
November 2014; he’s
been planning for his
next chance ever since.
Collins ended the
2015 championship
with 44 pounds, 15
ounces over three
days, and he earned a
berth in the 2016 GEI-
CO Bassmaster Classic
presented by GoPro.
He also won the Bryan
V. Kerchal Memorial
Trophy and a Skeeter
ZX200 with a Yamaha
motor, a Minn Kota
trolling motor and Low-
rance electronics.
Collins has qualified
for the Classic before,
back in 2013 when he
won the Toyota Tundra
Bassmaster Weekend
Series Championship.
But he really wanted
to make it through the
B.A.S.S. Nation.
“It means some-
thing special to qualify
through the Nation,”
said Collins, who has
tried several times to
qualify through the
Nation Championship
and, like one year ago,
fell just short.
“What I learned last
year was that I need-
ed an aluminum boat,”
said Collins. “East year,
I used my fiberglass
boat, and it’s just not
made to go through
those stumps and all
that shallow water. So
I bought an aluminum
one for this tourna-
ment.”
It paid off. The Tri-
ton 18 TX he bought,
equipped with a 115
Mercury Pro XS, got
him into Bayou D’Ar-
bonne, north of the
launch area at Forsythe
Park. It topped out at
47 miles per hour, but
it let him slip into areas
most of the other an-
glers couldn’t.
“It all revolved
around last year,” said
Collins, a member of
the Nacogdoches Bass
Club he helped found
several years ago. “I
knew where I wanted
to go and what I want-
ed to do; I just needed
to get the details.”
The details are what
he focused on in pre-
fish and practice. He
liked that D’Arbonne
area because it fits his
style of fishing.
“I like to flip and
throw spinnerbaits and
crankbaits, and that’s
what you do there,”
he said. “There’s a lot
of backwater, a lot of
stumps and a good
channel, and you can
fish multiple ways up
there.”
He did flip and he
did throw crankbaits,
but the standout for
him was spinnerbaits.
“I used a Stanley
spinnerbait, white/
chartreuse with sil-
ver and gold willow
blades,” said Collins. “I
was fishing a medium
retrieve, 6 to 10 inches
underneath the sur-
face.”
That’s how he start-
ed out the final day, too,
when he was behind
the leader, Jamie Laic-
he, by nearly 2 pounds.
After no fish in the first
hour, he changed his
tactic.
‘They were not as
active today,” said Col-
About B.A.S.S.
B.A.S.S. is the world-
wide authority on bass
fishing and keeper
of the culture of the
sport. Headquartered
in Birmingham, Ala.,
the 500,000-member
organization’s fully
integrated media plat-
forms include the in-
dustry’s leading mag-
azines (Bassmaster
and B.A.S.S. Times),
website (Bassmaster,
com), television show
(The Bassmasters on
ESPN2), social me-
dia programs and
events. For more than
45 years, B.A.S.S. has
been dedicated to ac-
cess, conservation and
youth fishing.
The Bassmaster
Tournament Trail in-
cludes the most pres-
tigious events at each
level of competition,
including the Bassmas-
ter Elite Series, Bass
Pro Shops Bassmaster
Open Series presented
by Allstate, Old Mil-
waukee B.A.S.S. Nation
events, Carhartt Bass-
master College Series
presented by Bass Pro
Shops, Costa Bassmas-
ter High School Series,
Toyota Bonus Bucks
Bassmaster Team
Championship and the
ultimate celebration
of competitive fishing,
the GEICO Bassmaster
Classic presented by
GoPro.
lins, “so I started slow
rolling it.” That meth-
od accounted for 90
percent of his catch-
es on Day 3, when he
brought in a 16-pound,
6-ounce bag.
By winning the tour-
nament, Collins also
won his division, edg-
ing out two-day leader
Jamie Eaiche of Lou-
isiana by 1 pound, 13
ounces. The winner
of each of the six divi-
sions earns a Classic
berth. Joining Collins
at the Classic will be
Charles Sim of Ontario
in the Eastern Division;
Fabian Rodriguez, Del-
aware, Mid-Atlantic;
Greg Vance, Iowa,
Northern; John Proc-
tor, South Carolina,
Southern; and Eevi Mc-
Neill, Wyoming, West-
ern.
None of those five
anglers has ever qual-
ified for the Classic
before. Most of them
couldn’t even find the
words to express their
excitement.
“I’m speechless,”
said Sim. “I’m only the
second Canadian ever
to make it! This is phe-
nomenal.”
Overall, the catches
on Day 3 were signifi-
cantly lighter than on
the previous days. Still,
the biggest bass of the
tournament was boated
on the final day by Mat-
thew Roberts of the
Missouri B.A.S.S. Na-
tion. It was a 5-pound,
6-ounce largemouth,
the first 5-plus-pounder
anyone had seen during
this event. Roberts won
$500 for catching the
tournament’s big bass.
Jamie Eaiche won
the other award, the
Eivingston Eures Lead-
er Award, for leading
on Day 2. He earned
$250.
The biggest bag of
the tournament was a
tie between Eaiche and
Collins. Eaiche brought
in 16-6 on the first day,
and Collins brought in
the same bag on the
third day.
Robert Morton was fishing from a kayak at Lake Fork on Nov. 5 when he landed
this 12.36 pounder. The fish hit a bar fish pattern Strike King 10XD crankbait on
six pound line.
IF
O'
Big bass were on the
prowl at lake’s Sam Ray-
burn and Fork last week.
And they were munch-
ing deep diving crank-
baits, hard body lures
equipped with large nose
bills that cause them to
dive deep into the water
column.
On Nov. 2, Roy Eu-
per of Lufkin reeled in a
25 1/2 inch largemouth
from Sam Rayburn that
reportedly hit a crank-
bait in about 30 feet of
water.
Euper took the fish
to Jackson Hill Marina,
where it weighed 13.2
pounds. He subsequent-
ly donated the fish to the
Toyota ShareLunker pro-
gram.
It’s the first Share-
Lunker of the current
season for the Texas
Parks and Wildlife De-
partment’s spawning
and genetics research
program. The 25 1/2
inch bass is Sam Ray-
burn’s 26th Sharelunker
since the inception of the
program in 1987.
Only one other lake
has produced
ShareLunkers,
Fork with 257 entries.
Interestingly, the Eu-
per bass wouldn’t have
qualified as a Sharelunk-
er (the minimum weight
is 13 pounds) had it not
eaten a 4.8 ounce crap-
pie shortly before it was
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Snyder, Steve. The Light and Champion (Center, Tex.), Vol. 138, No. 91, Ed. 1 Friday, November 13, 2015, newspaper, November 13, 2015; Center, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1278959/m1/15/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Fannie Brown Booth Memorial Library.