Traditionally a tournament sends off participants from a specified location, but for this tournament teams could spread out and be on the water near their spots prior to the 7pm start time.
In a sign of the times we now live in, Backwater Outdoors used social media as a way to com-municate start times and win-ning weights while other bow-fishers were still on the water.
On Friday night we got onto the water around 5:45pm and “claimed” our starting spot where we had seen promising signs earlier in the day.
The rain stopped just minutes before we got there and one
thing we noticed immediately is the water temperature dropped a few degrees. In addition to the less than ideal weather, we now had dirty water conditions to contend with as well.
At 7pm we received the Face-book send-off message and it was finally time to start shoot-ing. Under our high-pressure sodium lights we started to see a lot of small bass and shad. Kurt was our shad man, shooting well over 50 times in the first hour at shad alone. The rest of the team kept our eyes peeled for large common and grass carp.
After the first couple hours we all couldn’t resist shooting at
longnose gar, shortnose gar,
shad, bowfin, and catfish, how-ever we were struggling to find those sneaky commons.
Our first spot was a huge backwater with mixed vegetation around the shorelines off the main river channel, but it wasn't producing the results we were hoping for.
Wanting to find more carp we headed to the river channel
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Obscure Adventures Magazine
LEFT: Caitlin, Justin and Kurt survey the water looking for signs of life just prior to the 7pm start time on Day 1.
ABOVE: Backwater communicated to participants throughout the tournament through social media.
RIGHT: Justin Wilke with a monster gar.
Team Lethal Injection = Chas Higdon, Daegon Phillips, Trent Green and Matthew McCrary cashed in throughout the night with their outsized carp. Chas (far right) took top honors with a 33.30# common carp and over $14,000 in cash and prizes. Only .14 ounces separated the top three fish.