MCC Eagle Lake Tournament Winners

Congratulations to Jeremy Aldridge and Clint Egbert Eagle Lake Tournament and Big Fish Winners. Man did they blow the field away. On a day when other teams were struggling to just catch a fish, these guys caught almost two weigh-in limits. Jeremy says, “We had 13 bites and we caught 13 fish. We never caught a small fish. Eagle is my favorite lake. I’ve fished Eagle 3 times and won 2.” Not too bad for some newcomers to Eagle.

“We checked the pressure Saturday morning, it was extremely high. We know the fish would be deep and sluggish. We used the smallest minnows we could find and found the deepest holes we could find. If I had to say the main thing that caused us to catch our fish considering the light bite would be B’n’M 16’ BGJP poles. They were ‘GAME CHANGERS’. We tied our own minnow rigs and used 3/4 oz. weights. Our spread was around 3 feet. We fished 16’ deep in 19’+ water. Most of our bites came between 8am and 9am.” says Aldridge.

“Our big fish came about 20 minutes till quitting time. We started caching fish a little before 8am, everything in the boat was frozen, we had to dip water with our minnow bucket and a coffee cup to fill our livewell, even the plug was frozen. Clint did this while I manned the poles. We had 5 fish that were 2#’s plus, we had to weigh a 1.5 and a 1.75 pound crappie. We had no idea our fish would win.” says Clint.

Well unless something drastic happens to Clint and Jeremy the Points Race is over. However Jeremy has another boy coming in January. Looks like Clint will have it all alone.



Eagle Lake 2nd Place Winners

Finishing in the 2nd place slot again was Vic Finkley and Kim Gray with 10.30#’s. Vic and Kim gladly gave me an interview. I asked Vic what their setup was, “We used extremely small minnows on B’n’M 16’ PST poles with Capps & Coleman tips. We use the tips because you can see the bite so easily. If the fish breathe on the bait it will show on the tip. We fished 16’ deep in 17’ feet of water. We put our drift socks and chains out to slow us down. We moved about .2mph with the wind. We would pick up a fish every so often. I think
we caught about 10 for the day.”

This is Vic and Kim’s 4 top 5 finish and their second 2nd place finish. Kim and Vic fish extremely hard during any tournament. They put the time in on the water. This is what’s required to stay on top. Team Finkley and Gray has made it a lot easier on me, I don’t have to change photos or my write-up on them too much.

Currently they’re in 2nd place in the Points Race, heading up north to their home lake. I know it’s going to be hard to beat them on the COE lakes and to be truthful on any lake. Let’s not forget, they won Okatibbee last year. I remember where they caught their fish last year and you can be sure I’ll be sitting on that spot first thing on tournament day. Knowing my luck that still won’t help my situation. When you’re hot, you’re hot, and that is the bottom line.



Eagle Lake 3rd Place Winners

Congratulations to David Thornton and Shelton Culpepper with a 12.79# sack of specks and a 2.44# kicker. I hear these guys didn’t have but 2 fish at 1pm. I can hear David saying, “Shelton, Shelton, this ain’t going to get it. We gotta move or we’re going to get our butts kicked”. Then they make a b-line to their top-secret pier.

See, these guys live on Eagle, they know it like the back of their hand. Between them and Roger Womack, nothing gets left to chance. I just hate the way they mislead Roger. What I mean is, all week long they tell Roger, “We ain’t catching any quality fish”. I’ve warned Roger over and over, don’t believe anything that comes out of their mouth, especially during tournament week. I can remember one time Don and I pulled up to Shelton just to say hello, he was acting kind of bizarre. I told Don, that guy is up to something. Come to find out, he had 3 fish on his poles at one time and refused to pull them up in front of us. All I can say is, “Two can play that game, Mr. Culpepper”.

“We pull up to a pier on the north end of Eagle, I flipped a jig under the farthest post and it didn’t stop. Bam, get the net Shelton. It was on for the next 30 minutes. We caught 7 or 8 good fish, then the 2.44#. I felt a lot better going to the weigh-in with 12+ pounds instead of 3+ pounds. Our main objective was to beat Cat Walker. That’s been our goal all year long. We got overwhelmed last year listening to his stories about winning Washington (largest MCC tournament in history) and the MCC Championship (largest payout ever). I told him it was his partner, Will Clark and not him that was winning. Guess he sees it now.” says Thornton. “We’ve been lucky this year so far, but we’ve got long ways to go. Our approach this year is to fish our style, catch every fish that bites. Not listen to what others are doing and be quiet about our catch in practice. We’re well versed in keeping that between the two of us.”, says David.

I have to admit, Culpepper and Thornton are two of the most consistent crappie tournament fishermen I’ve seen. They’re superb slow-trollers and jig fishermen. They’ve even mastered power-trolling. They have the best of equipment and they study the game. By that I mean David will ask questions and then try it till he makes it work.

To Shelton and David, all I ask is, back off on Johnny Walker. He’s a senior citizen, don’t be so hard on him. Oh, I forgot, y’all senior citizens too, in that case, lay the wood to him. Before long he’ll have a Triton Crappie Boat like y’all. I keep telling him it’s the boat, that yacht he fishes out of, needs to be in the ocean. Bernard