Courtesy Anglers Team Trail

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Delabars Dominate at Butler

Ice fishing anyone? Not exactly, but who would have predicted an ice storm for our first event of 2010? Central Florida has been in the grips of the longest cold spell in decades and we’re fishing! The mercury had dipped below freezing every day this week .Usually that kind of weather spells doom for bass but not all lakes are built the same. The Butler Chain, with its deep clear water, is the least affected by the cold. Actually, many of the anglers thought that a dip in water temps might turn on the fish. Several teams braved the cold on Friday for a practice round and did quite well. Ben Carter located some nice fish, and Kim Hebb said he really slayed them. I fished the previous Sunday and had a 14+lb bag. We all had to sleep with the age old question, “Will my fish stay put?”

Terry and Rick Delabar didn’t prefish. They do not know the Butler Chain very well and instead of traveling to the farthest lake, they went to the nearest lake, Pocket. After working ½ the lake, they noticed schooling fish. It didn’t take long to get into a great school of fish. The pair threw chrome, blue backed rattle traps and landed 15 keepers. Terry said that after the cast, it took a very slow retrieve to get them to bite, but that slow approach really paid off. Their best 5 weighed 18.53 and they didn’t have a 5 lber in the bag. Just 5 fatties! This was their first win with Courtesy and hopefully they can keep up the hot start. Never mind the weather.
Kim Hebb and John Kraine ran a bit Saturday morning. They traveled to the Northern portion of Butler and tried to find the nice school that Kim had found on Friday. He found the fish by watching the birds and when the schooling began, hammered them on jigging spoons in 15-20 ft of water. After their initial run, they nailed 2 really nice fish, the first of which was to be the Big Bass of the tournament. The jigging spoon produced a 6.24 lb specimen for Kim. What a great first fish. They followed up with another on in the 5 lb range. Then it took the pair hours to fill out their bag. But the solid start ended with a second place weight of 16.11 lb. After the spoon bite cooled, the pair threw shaky head trick worms in Junebug, watermelon and watermelon /red.
Third place went to Matt Gunn and his new partner Skye Buckner, whom I might add is WAY better looking than his last year’s partner, Ernie. If you recall, Matt & Ernie won our November tournament and he really wanted to make it 2 in a row. This time they traveled to Lake Down and found a nice school of bass feeding in 20-25 ft. Matt threw jigging spoons but he said that Skye out fished him with a Fluke, rigged on a jig head. Matt said she would allow the fluke to sink down near the bottom before reeling it in at a very slow pace. It sure paid off for her first tournament with Courtesy. The pair weighed a limit of 15.27lb.

NOTES: since this year we’re using weight to determine AOY the spread between first and last was very important. Tenth place is now 12 pounds behind…..we can all talk about the day it snowed & we fished in it…….All the fish looked healthy and FAT…….glad we went to Butler instead of Harris, 11 lb won the Fishers of Men event out of Hickory Point…….hopefully we’ll see some bedding fish on East Lake in February.

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