Weather Conditions:

Low – 74

High – 92

Sunny and HOT!!!

Wind – Southwest 5-15

The 7^th tournament of the year took place out of Red River South Marina in Bossier City. This was our last travel tournament and as usual it was a good time for everyone. It’s July in Louisiana so the weather is HOT and HUMID! We did have some relief with a little wind throughout the day. We had a good turnout even though it was July and a long drive. We had 27 anglers show up to fish.

Anyone that has been up to pool 5 in the Red River knows that you have endless choices of what and where to fish. There are backwaters everywhere with wood, stumps, grass and lily pads to fish or you could just fish the main river itself with both rocks and wood. And all these options seemed to have produced fish because out of 27 anglers, 19 had 5 fish limits. Most anglers claimed to have caught between 15-35 fish threw out the day. The problem was catching 2lbers and bigger. That is except for our top 4 anglers. Two time angler of the year Rick Villemarette brought in the biggest sack weighing in at 12.43lbs with a 5.14lb kicker which was also big fish of the tournament. This was Rick’s first win of the year. Rick was focusing on stumps in the backwaters in 4-6 foot of water. He caught fish early on a spinnerbait and once the sun got up he caught fish on a bream colored squarebill crankbait.  2^nd place went to Josh Sikes with 12.16lbs. He began his morning also in the back waters catching a few fish on a frog. Once the sun came out, he caught the remainder of his limit in the main river flipping a craw worm into the reeds. 3^rd and 4^th place went to the White brothers (Ray & Russ) with 10.98lbs & 10.35lbs. Ray (nonmember) got 3^rd while current AOY leader Russ White got 4^th  fishing out of the same boat. These guys caught all their fish in the lily pads on frogs and senkos. Finishing up the top 5 was Curt Paul with 9.85lbs anchored by a 4.71lb toad that was caught on a shad colored 3xd crankbait.

As I mentioned earlier catching fish was not a problem, a total of 112 fish with an average weight of 1.88lbs. This was our most successful tournament ever for limits (19) of fish brought to the scales.

With only 2 tournaments remaining the AOY race and Best Six entries are becoming very interesting.  If you go ahead a drop the 2 lowest tournaments for every angler the standings are as follows (I didn’t do every angler on the ones in contention) :

Russ White – 495

Rick Villemarette – 493

Josh Sikes – 491

Aaron Belgard – 478

Brandon Nugent – 478

Wallace Woodson – 476

Kevin Woodson – 467

Mike Barbat – 463

 

Every point will count in the next 2 tournaments!

 

I noticed we had a lot of dead fish penalities in this tournament. With the water temps in the 90’s, I know it’s difficult to keep fish alive and sometimes they swallow the hook or just die, but we need to do a better job at this. By putting ice, something, and keeping our recirculators/aerators on high we can do a better job of this. Our next tournament is a trailer tournament at either Bayou Louie or the Quatchita River. Hope to see everyone there. I’m sure it will be another scorcher!!

 

Brandon Nugent