$13,555 Total Winnings!!!!

No, that's not what Frank and I did! But that was the total payout for the Texas Bass Couples Championship that we have been attending this week. This is an amazing total for our club for several reasons. This is the forth year for this circuit. Tommy and Pam have really worked hard to get this club up and running. There are tournament trails that have been around for years that that are still not having that large of a payout.

Also, this is a small circuit. We only had 37 couples fish for the championship! That's right!!! 37 couples! Seven places were paid out so you do the math! That is an awesome amount for total payout!

Congratulations to Tim Reneau and Judy Churchill who won it all with 42.60 two day total!

We have lots of stories to tell and more winners to tell you about but right now we are all sitting in the little country store sharing more stories and eating some breakfast. And I am using Tommy's laptop and I am really slow on it. Frank bothering me to hurry up is not helping. Hopefully I will get the rest to you tonight. Until then,

God Bless you all.

We have some results (unofficial, of course) for day one!

Tim Reneau & Judy Churchill 21.40
Charles & JoAnn Bradley 17.58
Ronnie & Jeanne Wallace 14.84
Jay & Kathy Driscoll 14.08
Barry & Janice Bennett 12.72
Waylon & Karla Bullard 12.70
Floyd & Tonya Kaerwer 12.56

Also, Meghan O'Bryant and her dad Jerry are sitting in 8th place. This is very exciting because she is twelve years old and caught 3 of their 5 fish that were brought to weigh in! Way to go Meghan!

Frank & I did officially have the smallest legal stringer today which makes us winners of some hard cold cash! Yeah us!

We plan on having a great day on the water tomorrow, and are so thankful we have been blessed with such great friends!

I will post official results tomorrow as soon as I can.

What a day! Blessings and disappointment. Started the morning with some awesome artwork provided by God, but got lost on the lake in the dark! Finished the day with a disappointing one fish, but was blessed by having the smallest leagal stringer! Now enjoying fellowship with wonderful friends! Yeah! The good always outweighs the bad!

Thank you Lord!

Countdown Almost Complete!

WOW! Looking at my countdown clock we are down to the final hours before we get there! I am sooo ready! We will leave here tomorrow morning traveling with the McGuire's and the Hutchinson's. We are all ready!

All the packing is done and sitting by the front door waiting for Frank to get it all loaded. He asked me if I had forgotten anything and I don't think I did. I have nothing left in drawers or the closet so I'm pretty sure it's all packed! LOL

It is really hard to pack this time of year because you never really know what the weather will be. Yes we look at the long term forecast but all that gives you is an educated guess. I like to be prepared!

Actually, I didn't pack everything we have. Earlier this summer, we found the neatest shirts at Bass Pro and got them planning to wear them to the awards dinner on Friday night. We loved the Texas flag look they have.

Even on the back.

Pretty aren't they? Frank and I both really liked them. So we got them to the cleaners to be starched and pressed, picked them up and put them in the closet. This has been several months ago. They have just been hanging there, waiting.

Well, I got everything out to start pressing and getting the closet wrinkles out and realized that the shirts didn't match. I was heart broken! So these two shirts will hang around the house alone all week while we are gone. I really can't believe neither one of us didn't notice the difference. It's not like it's a little thing that could be easily overlooked. Can you see the difference?

Yep! It's missing on the back too!

See you next week!

God Bless

We Interupt this Fishing Blog...

For some hunting!!!

September brings bird season and they are thick this year. We got to go back to the Duda for part of the long Labor Day weekend for some fun, family, fellowship, and hunting. It was a blast!

I didn't hunt, just the guys. I am a firm believer that if your going to shoot it you better eat it and I don't eat birds. So I don't hunt. They limited every day and had a great feast on Sunday night.

The Three Amigos

I just love that place and wish we could spend much more time there.

I hope everyone that has been hunting has been doing well.

The "Camo Country Club"

Be safe but have fun!

Now back to our regularly scheduled fishing - State Championship in 14 days! Watch out Del Rio!!!

WHOA! I am Way Behind!

I just realized I never finished my post from our final TBC Panhandle tournament that was August 9! Probably because there wasn't much to report. Seven couples, fourteen people and only four fish weighed in! It was terribly brutal! Hot, windy, and muddy water that would put Lake Ft. Phantom to shame. The four fish weighed in didn't even break ten pounds! I'm telling you it was awful! Floyd and Tonya Karwer won with two fish weighing 4.83. Robert Rains and LeAnn Rains had one fish weighing in at 2.74 and Frank and I had one fish that went 2.26! Floyd & Tonya also had the big fish of the tournament that was a whopper at 2.85! So do you believe me now?

We really were looking forward to fishing this tournament because Frank had fished there the weekend before with Stillwater. He didn't weigh a single fish in, didn't even have a nibble! But after the tournament, he did a little more fishing and snagged a nice 9+ pound fish!

He was by himself and only had his cell phone so he did the best he could.

So, yes, we were a bit excited to be going back the very next weekend knowing we were fishing with one of our smaller clubs! But that didn't do us much good! It was a totally different lake the next week!

So now we just wait for our next tournament which is not until September. But it is the big one, our Championship tournament. We are looking forward to seeing some couples that we haven't seen since last year and having a great time in Del Rio. Just 29 days to go! That's about 28 to many for me!

And speaking of Del Rio, check out the link in my side bar for the Open Texas State Couples Championship! I am sure we will be there and are planning on having a lot of fun. You don't have to be a member of either of the club sponsors. So grab you partner and head that way in early November! Hope to see you there!

Final Tournamet for TBC West - It was Hot!!

Frank had been to Ivie the past two weekends with no luck. Some times pre-fishing gets you discouraged instead of helping you out. So Saturday, I actually went with him. I didn't do much fishing. I hate pre-fishing the day before a tournament. I love to fish tournaments, I love to pre-fish at least two days before, and I love to just go fish for the sake of fishing, but please don't make me pre-fish the day before a tournament. So when I wasn't sleeping, I was taking pictures. It was a good thing I did, because I sure didn't take any today! It was just to hot and we were fishing hard.

We hit the lake a little later than what we intended, but we sure did enjoy our breakfast at Concho Park Marina and the visitation with our friends. We did make it out early enough for sunrise, so of course I had to take a few pictures of that. I tried to get Frank in some to change them up a bit.

If I had a dollar for every sunrise picture I have, I could probably fund our fishing habits! You just never know what your going to get when you aim the camera into the sun and can't see what you are actually looking at.

These next two pictures are reversed and I am just too tired to fix them!

We don't fish up in the creeks much. Why? I don't know. We used to fish creeks all the time. So we headed up into Elm Creek just to see what was going on. I can't remember if he was throwing a Texas or Carolina rig, but I do know he was throwing a brush hog, watermelon with the tail dipped in chartreuse. He pulled out this nice little guy probably between one and two.

He threw a buzz bait most of the morning, actually more like most of the day which is odd for this time of the year! He caught this nice little keeper about 9:30 yesterday morning. He had a few more blow ups on it, so we marked this spot and headed on out into the main lake.

We marked a few new humps we hadn't seen before and headed up into the creek. This young lady couldn't decided weather to run off or come on down and check us out. She posed long enough for me to get a couple of pictures, then she was off. We see deer around the park all the time, but not very often when we are out on the lake. Isn't she an odd orange color? All the deer are this color right now. Usually they are more brown before the turn sort of grey during the winter. They sure do show up in the brush!

After loading up and getting our showers, we headed over to Elm Creek for registration. On our way over Frank said he saw a plane on the lake. And sure enough he did. We tried to get to a good place to take pictures before they took off, but didn't make it. We could tell it was a Coast Guard plane, but couldn't figure out what they were doing. Some of our friends were still on the lake when they landed and they went over and talked to them. They are based out of San Francisco and just came over to check out the lake. Pretty neat if you ask me. It's not every day you get to see a CG plane land on a lake in west Texas!

After a wonderful dinner and some strange happenings at Big O's in Valera, we headed back to Concho and of course had a bit more fellowship with our friends before we hit the sack. Had to get up at five this morning! Two days in a row just kill me!

Most of the morning on Sunday, we threw our buzz baits into stick ups. Not these kinds of stick ups, that would be to easy.

These kinds of stick ups! What you can't see is the grass just below the surface of the water. Chunk, wind, pick off the grass! That gets old after awhile! I think you can see Frank's buzz bait in this picture. This was right at sunrise. Remember, I didn't take many pictures today.

I bet Frank threw that buzz bait until 11:30. I changed over to a spinner bait after a bit. It's easier to get the grass off one of those. And it's what I caught my one little keeper on. Frank caught four of his on the buzz bait I think. I kind of forgot some stuff today - I am sure it is the heat wiping out my brain cells!

We stayed here most of the morning then headed over to the dam to fish some of the new humps we had found with no luck. Then headed into Elm Creek. And after that we headed closer to weigh in where we finished out the day. We were going to keep fishing until about 3:10 because we were so close to weigh in, but after a check on the fish and finding we had some stressing out, we decided to call it a day. We finished the day with five fishing weighing in at 12.16. Points but no money! The story of our lives.

This was the last monthly tournament for the West Region before the Championship (being held at Amistad) and Pam said we may have made it into the top six. After checking out last months standings and estimating the points today, it will be a push. It would be nice but I am not getting my hopes up. We have one more tournament for the Panhandle region. It's in two weeks at Lake Stamford. Maybe we can catch enough there to end in the top six. I'll let you know!

Have a great week!