The month of October found the Hawg Hunters fishing at Miller’s Ferry. This tournament also served as our yearly "Fish-off Tournament"and is also our last regular tournament of the fishing year. The November tournament will be our first competition for the coming year. Back to the Oct. Tournament... We had 12 boats and 24 fishermen in the competition. This is always a 2 day event. Most of the guys went up and pre-fished on Friday and as always, found the fish biting. As usual, they were harder to catch on Saturday and Sunday.

The weather was absolutely wonderful with cool mornings and warm afternoons. The water color was really good and the fall colors over the surrounding hills were beautiful. The pool level seemed to be about a foot or so low which came as no surprise as we haven’t had rain for months.

My partner for this month was Brian Metcalf.. Brian wrapped the "Fisherman of the Year" honors last month with his win at Delacroix. About the only place up for grabs was 6th place as the guys finishing in the top 5 spots sewed up their yearly standings last month and were out of reach in the point standings for any of us to catch them. I had a wonderful time fishing with Brian and really enjoyed fishing from his boat. Brian and I started the morning working points and immediately he
boated a keeper on a crankbait. There was a lot of activity around the point, but we never really found the ticket to get the bites we needed. We continued to work points basically the rest of the day. We switched to Carolina rigs after the sun came up and proceeded to catch a lot of small fish, both largemouths as well as Kentucky spots. We moved to the coves around mid-morning but soon found that the fish were just not there, and returned to the main river and concentrated on the points
again. We caught a lot of fish throughout the day but were only able to muster a few keepers. At the end of the first day we found that most of the guys came in with only a few fish or none at all. Everyone told tales of catching numbers of small fish. It seems that when we go there the story is always the same.... when are the small ones going to grow up? When day one of the tourney was done, Mack Cramer was in 1st place with a nice limit of 5 bass. Although Mack had a nice stringer, he was not out of reach of the pack. Mack also had the lunker on Saturday a 3.40 lb bucketmouth. The stage was set for the next day as everyone was within striking distance of the lead.

Saturday night the gang sat around the table at the restaurant at the Southern Inn eating "all you can eat" catfish and stuffing ourselves silly. Stories were swapped and lies were the rule of the evening. We all had a good time as a club and as fishing buddies should. With Cramer on his last week of freedom (getting married in a week), he was the deserving butt of many jokes and laughs. He took them in stride and even threw a few barbs of his own in response.

As day two dawned we had changes launch sites and moved to Ellis Landing which better served the ease of launching than did Bridgeport. Mitch Gardner who had burned up a new trolling motor and lost a gear in the foot of his big motor showed up at the landing with another rig he had borrowed from a friend in Camden. I’m not even going to speculate what he and Rich Renner had to do in order to get someone to loan them a boat. Knowing them.....one can only imagine!!!!!! Brian and I started out working guts and points first thing, and I was able to boat 2 short fish and then a keeper. As we worked up the river we caught small fish at every stop. We managed to catch 5 keepers between the two of us by the weigh-in time. We caught them on Carolina rigs.

Back at the scales, Pete Potter was proudly showing 2 beautiful spotted bass. Both were over 3 lbs with the larger getting lunker honors at 4.15 lbs. He said he caught them on a popping lure. Two other Hawgs showed up with nice stringers. Wally Casiano and Jeff Weaver both had nice bags of fish. Seeing these, Cramer had a look of concern about him. However, this was to be his weekend. Despite a late charge by Wally Casiano and Jeff Weaver, ( Both of them tied for 2nd place with 11.55 lbs.), Mack YW Cramer was able to hold on and capture 1st place with a total weight of 13.20 lbs. I was lucky enough to take a distant 4th place finish and managed to squeeze into the one
available slot in the "Top Six" for the year.

The Hawg Hunters "Top Six" fishermen for the year are listed below. Congratulations to each of the "Top Six"......

1st Brian Metcalf ....Fisherman of the Year

2nd Mack Cramer

3rd Dave Dyess

4th Neil Springstead

5th Lee Brannon

6th John Buck

I want to thank the out-going e-board members for their work for the club this past year (Pres. Jack Maher, Secs. Rich Renner/Dwayne Mills, Treas Jere Jailette, Tour. Dir. Neil Springstead, and Asst. Tour. Dir. Mack Cramer). The new e-board takes over this month. Our new officers are Pres.
Wally Casiano, Sec. Dwyane Mills, Treas. Kevin Simmons, Tour. Dir. Brian Metcalf, and Asst. Tour. Dir. Mack Cramer. Congratulations guys and good luck!! Our new fishing season begins this month with a tournament on the Tensaw River. The club participation has really been great these past several years. This is the time to get started on those points for the next year, so make plans to fish!!! ‘Til next month...!!!

Keep your hooks sharp.......Creek Chub