Thread: Experience Pays Off

Saturday November 7th of this year Grenada Lake would host the 2nd tourney of the Mississippi Crappie.com Fruit Jar Series 2015-16 season and the conditions were pretty much the norm for one of our tourneys. Rain and high winds from the NE predicted and for once the forecasters got it right, darn it.
14 teams would brave the elements and if not for the FJ Grenada Landing would have been a ghost ramp, no one else on the lake that we saw. 11 of those 14 teams would weigh fish in but by the looks of the leader board "experience" played a major part as well as a home field advantage.
Big River Marine, Bill Burnett, and his FJ partner Heith Strickland would come to the scales with 7 fish weighing 11.65 and would prove good enough for a third place finish. Grenada Lake locals Vic Finkley and Kim Gray would find themselves in second place with a weight of 13.89, 1.24 pounds ahead of Burnett and Strickland. The tourney winners were local John Harrison and Bird Down, Jeremy Aldrege. When I got a call earlier in the week letting me know these two had teamed up I knew it would be stout but didn't realize just how stout. John and Jeremy would bring in 7 fish totaling 15.29, averaging 2.18 per fish,with a nice Kicker for Big Fish that would turn out to not be good enough for that prize at 2.55. An amazing 3.64 pounds separated first and third places, that's impressive on a tough day.
Victor McGregory (Big Smooth) and Marty Martin (mmartin) would not be denied though, they would bring in a nice 7 fish stringer as well with a very nice Kicker that would tip the scales at 2.58 pounds earning them the Big Fish prize for the tourney.
The top three teams were made up of anglers with a ton of experience, a couple of them fishing Grenada for decades, that helped them to catch fish on a day that was very tough, congratulations guys and gal, yall done good to say the least.
The Mississippi Crappie.com Fruit Jar Series will be headed to Lake Washington next on February 20th after our winter break, hope to see yall there, some pigs get caught out of that hole and it's normally our biggest tourney of the year.

Originally Posted by 27458

Thanks. I was just curious what the most fish caught during that time was. I understand the top 7 are kept. Comparing what "professional" guys are doing in a 7 hour window! Compared to an amateur like me.

Most guys here have jobs and aren't "professionals". Most are weekend warriors that like the competition of tourneys. I've seen lots of "amateurs" that I'm glad don't like tourney fishing.

Fishing is usually for numbers. Tourney fishing is for 7 good ones. 🏼