Another great State Championship at an awesome lake.
Thanks to the CAT Board of Directors for holding things together with a trying year and putting on a great tournament.
Special thanks to the Lake O the Pines Chamber of Commerce for the fine food at the awards banquet Friday night and more food at the weigh in Saturday.
And thanks to the Bait Shop for helping sponsor the tournament
And a big thanks to Chris at Slab Syndicate, (Slabbedsilly) for the great door prizes and special hand tied jigs to the participants. Awesome jigs by the way.

Pre-fish days were Wed and Thur and the fish bit better Wed than Thur. Tournament days were Friday and Saturday. Everyone wondered how the hurricane would affect the weather, but we were spared any rain or high winds. Friday was solid overcast with light NE winds and Saturday dawned almost clear with W winds at 8-10 for the first 3 hours of the morning. Almost had white caps forming but the wind began to slack off about 10:30 and improved the rest of the day.

The fish were cooperative Friday but didn't seem to hold on the timber as they do when the sun is out. Saturday was not an easy day with the wind change early that morning that seemed to put the fish on the move. As usual in October the fish do a lot of moving as they are beginning the heavy feeding cycle preparing for winter. No particular pattern was better than any other and bait choice and color didn't seem to matter. The trick as usual is find the fish and put a bait in his strike zone. With the fish on the move, you had to cover plenty of water and not spend time at any one spot. Those fishing Livescope are able to pinpoint that strike zone and determine if the fish is ready to bite. For the rest of us, fishing old school is still fun.

Pines didn't disappoint with plenty of heavy stringers weighed in and fish over 2 lbs. The leader board shows 43 fish over 2 lbs but more were caught, just the biggest weighed in.
DIV I had 16 teams and DIV II had 22 teams entered. You'll see from the leader board, the race was close with a come from behind win in DIV I and DIV II.
And big fish of the tournament was landed by Jimmy Mathis, DIV II fisherman, with a giant at 2.70 lbs.


DIV I




DIV II

Congrats to the champions! Looks like a lot of teams did really well. I’m sure that was a lot of fun. Congrats to Jimmy too on that big fish

So you still Fishing old school 😳😳😳.Great job saw y'all on video.Darrell

LOP is an amazing place! Not many lakes I can catch a 14 pound stringer and be disappointed with it but that’s one of em!! Congrats to Jerry and Paul and Jason and Jordan on the wins! And a thanks to the LOP chamber of commerce for the grub and pavilion! Ashley Mountain was awesome!!

Still old school DW. Not bad for two old codgers feeling their way along.
Actually the good Lord smiled on us both days.

For a novice, whats the difference between Div 1 and Div 2 ???

D2 is where most folks start out. It’s a good place for folks getting started in tourney fishing. No guides and can’t win over a certain amount of money in tourneys to be eligible. D1 is open for anybody who wants to pony up! Guides. Wally Marshall. Even Kevin Rogers fished Millwood with us last year. I say it all the time but if your interested in becoming a better crappie angler there’s no better way IMO than tournament fishing.

Slew

Thanks,..

Jim, another difference is the entry fee; DIV I $200, DIV II $75. If someone wants to fish more for fun and learning, DIV II is a good place to start. At the weigh-ins, sharing of information is given rather freely. When we started, plenty of good fishermen helped point us to better fishing than where we were headed on a new lake.

For example: our first tournament on LOP was in April 2008 I believe. Had never seen the lake. We headed to shallow water looking for spawning fish. Caught plenty of nice fish. But the vets told us you won't win a tournament on LOP fishing shallow. The big fish are out in 20-30 FOW spawning on trees. Didn't make sense to me so we headed to where we caught fish on practice day. Put 7, what we thought were nice fish in the boat. About noon, Max said well what do you want to do now. I said lets head out to that deep water and trees and see if we can upgrade. First fish out there was 1.90. We proceeded to upgrade 5 fish and came in 4th in DIV I.

After fishing tournaments for several years, I learned info about crappie fishing that I was completely wrong about before. As Slew said, if you want to become a better crappie angler, there's no better way than tournament fishing.

Wowsers, what a leaderboard!

Ken/Slew, good idea on tourney fishing. i might be embarrassed to show my weigh in, but gotta start somewhere! $75 is bargain to participate and learn something.