Big fish, cold, nasty weather, old friends, new friends and friendly competition characterized the popular Winter Blues on Wheeler catfish tournament (WBW). The 3rd annual WBW, presented by Fishlife Fish Care, attracted 78 teams from 19 states to the highly-touted Alabama lake near Rogersville, AL.
The weather affected more than the anglers during the New Year’s Eve event. “We had computer problems that kept us from using our leaderboard and printer due to the weather,” reported weighmaster Jody Harrison.
“The best way to describe the weather was unpredictable. When we arrived onsite about 4 am it was about 42 degrees with light rain and sleet. It cleared up while we were getting everyone in the water, then right before blast off it started raining. It rained on and off all day and of course the wind blew all day. I don’t believe it got out of the 40’s all day.”
“It was an awesome day at weigh in, with the top 11 teams breaking the 100-pound mark. I can’t tell you what a blast it is doing this tournament. Great people, huge fish, and a level of excitement that can’t be beat!”
“We made a few changes from last year to help the overall flow of the tournament and it worked out great,” reported Harrison. “For safety and more control, we added a safe light start time, an orderly blast off according to boat number, and we staggered weigh in times to 25 boat flights set at 15 minute intervals so we didn’t have all of the boats coming in at one time. This helped with traffic flow, was safer for the anglers coming in, and most of all was safer for the fish because they were not sitting in the live wells for an extended period of time.”
“Fishing seemed to be tough for a lot of the field, but for the guys that locked to Wilson, their gamble paid off. I was talking to the winners and they had been there all week and were struggling to catch unders (fish less than 34 inches – 3 needed in 5 fish limit). They said all they caught was big fish and their biggest worry was being able to catch some small ones to make their 5-fish sack.”
“I just can’t say enough good things about the anglers and sponsors that participate in catfishing,” continued Harrison. “They are a great bunch of people. The smiles, comradery, and the friendly personalities speak loads for the sport. I am so glad that the Good Lord saw it in his plan to put us where we are. We are truly blessed to be here and I look forward to doing my part to help the sport grow. We have some great plans in store for next year’s tournament. It is only going to get better.”
Tournament Director, Daniel Parsons, also mentioned the tweaks that were made to improve the tournament. “We tried a couple of new things, which the anglers seemed to like. The city of Rogersville really showed out in support this year, feeding everyone at the captains meeting. Going forward competitors can expect much firmer scheduling and tighter, more focused advertising. We have pride in the fact that this event has become a family/vacation style venue for many, as well as highly competitive.
At the end of the day Gary Taylor, Dale Smith and Chad Seals won the 3rd Annual Winter Blues on Wheeler. They battled the weather and fishing conditions to weigh in 177.43 pounds to take the crown. Their bag included a 76.5-pound blue to earn big fish honors too.
The three-man team experienced some epic fishing on Wheeler Lake on their way to the championship. “We fished on Wilson for a while, and then decided to move back to Wheeler, reported Dale Smith. “We anchored up using fresh skipjack for bait. We actually had 2 fish on at one time. Once in the boat we had to throw a 50 pounder back because we already had the 76 in the life well and the 50 was the smallest of the 2 we caught.”
“After that we had to go looking for our unders. We had a terrific time catching big fish all week. We actually caught a 75 and a 85 earlier in the week. We plan on using our qualification to go fish the championship tournament in 2018. We will also be back to Winter Blues next year. It is one of our favorite places to fish, The tournament is run so well and the people are so friendly, ”concluded Smith.
David Shipman and Brooke Wilbanks weighed in the second-place bag on what they described as a slow bite. “It was very nasty out on the lake Saturday,” reported Shipman. “Cold rain with sleet mixed in and lots of wind! We decided to fish up river in the nuclear plant area so that was about a 30-minute ride in the cold rainy conditions.”
“The bite was very slow,” continued Shipman. “We only had 2 fish, about 10 pounds each, by 10:00 am. “Sometime around noon, and after a couple anchor moves, one of the pigs decided to bite. We moved again around 1:00 pm. In a few minutes, we got the other pig on. We caught another fish about 10 pounds during all this to give us our third under fish.”
Before we headed in Brooke hooked up with one more about 40 pounds, but we had to release her as we had our two fish over 34 inches. That made fish number 6 for the day. We had a great day but the bite was not at it’s best.”
We love this tournament,” concluded Shipman. “Daniel Parsons and Jody Harrison have done a great job! Brooke and I want to thank everybody involved with Winter Blues on Wheeler.”
Third place honors went to Roger Willey and Chris Stout with 120.69 in their 5-fish limit.
The father son team of Wade and Howie HartFourth place went to the father son team of Wade and Howie Hart with 126.19 pounds. It was their second time to fish Winter Blues. Knowing the importance of good bait, they stopped in TN on the way to Alabama to catch bait. “Catching the skipjack was a real pain for us,” stated Wade. “We managed to catch enough. We just did our best dragging our cooler around to keep our bait on ice from the second it came out of the water. I feel like fresh bait is really important.”
The duo moved from catching bait to prefishing on Wheeler Lake. “The conditions on Thursday were brutal,” reported Wade. “We managed to catch a few decent fish, even though the waves were 3 foot or better in most areas.”
Team Hart moved down to Wilson on Friday. “We were fishing Wilson Lake for the first time,” revealed Wade. “We saw several things that were similar to our home lake of Truman in Missouri.”
“Also, while on the water we met longtime friend Roger Breedlove and newly acquired friends Larry Muse, Mr. John Stevens and Keven Breedlove. They stopped by and we shared stories and chatted while Mr. John looked over my equipment and help with some adjustments to help me see better in the deeper waters. Then we checked out several areas including drop offs, islands and creek beds. We caught a few fish and marked some real promising ones.”
Their experience on Wilson set their plan to lock down to Wilson on tournament day. “We had an area that we really wanted to fish. We was nothing but grins, from ear to ear, when Larry Muse and his partners came to same area,” joked Wade.
“We were like, well we must be on them now. Us and the other boats in area sit down on them and tried to pick some fish off ledges and submerged trees. After about 2 hours, boats started leaving. The weather had changed overnight and the fish got lock jaw. So, we decided to go on the move. The fish were just not in the areas like the day before.”
It was back to square one for Team Hart. “We checked the north bank that the waves had been crashing on all night,” conveyed Wade. “On our home lake those conditions would have produced bait and feeding fish. Due to the deeper waters this was not the case, so we headed to the other side of the lake to escape the wind.”
“We started marking fish that looked to be feeding,” stated Wade. “We found them on a drop off. We dropped lines baited with fresh skipjack and started drifting through them using a rig pretty similar to the Larry Muse Draggin’ Tail. We started getting bites immediately. This was about 11:30 am and was the first bites of the day.”
Wade and Howie dedicate their tournament to their recently passed Grandpa. “We dropped his Ole Red Hinkle pole, just as I had said we would, revealed Wade. “We didn’t drag this one, but suspended it about 10 feet from the bottom where we saw several of them hanging out.”
“We got a few strong hits on his pole but no fish. My belief is this pole helped spread the scent and get the fish really going and we boated every fish in this one drift. We were really busy for about 1 hour and then the fish stopped as quickly as they started. We happened to be in a feeding area at dinner time and filled the area with the aroma of fresh skipjack to catch our fish.”
Wade described his day as using a combination of techniques. “We were doing what we do at home, using some knowledge from friends on their stomping grounds, and using Grandpa’s pole to keep the memories and spirit of fishing going our way.”
Wade was very pleased to be fishing WBW with his son Howie. “I am a huge fan of taking my kids fishing,” concluded Wade. “Seldom will you see me on the water without one of them in the boat.”
Richie and Bryer Blakley, along with Keith Tarrence rounded out the top 5. “We fished most of the week down here and caught good fish,” reported Richie. “The fish were really scattered.”
As good catfish anglers do on a tough bite, Blakely and his team tried something totally different from what they normally do. “We started scanning some shallow water,” said Blakley. They began finding some isolated wood in 5- to 20-foot water. “We set up and didn’t even get all the rods out and caught a fish. We did the same thing on 2 other trees, so we knew we had a plan for tournament day.”
“We went to our first spot tournament morning where we’d caught a couple nice fish early in the week. We sat for a bit. Only caught a 12-pound blue. So, we decided to hit our shallow trees. Pulled up to the first one, threw the rods out and one went down in seconds. Caught 2 overs around 20 pounds in just a couple minutes. While all that was going on another rod went down. It wound up being a 40-pound blue.”
Things slowed down so the team decided to move to the next spot. “We moved, set up, and the same thing,” said Blakley. “We Caught another 20-pound over and another 40-pound blue. Went to the third spot and things went crazy. In just minutes we had a mid-50s and 2 more 40s. Then, another 20- to 30-blue. All this happened before 9am. We tried some other spots with a lot of brush, but there was nothing but channel cats in there. The better places were definitely isolated trees for us.”
Blakley concluded by thanking Daniel Parsons, Jody Harrison and the whole WBW crew for the hard work they provided while putting on the tournament. He also thanked his sponsors, John Adams with Warrior Cat rods and Jessie Simmons with Elite Rod Holders
Special congratulations to the top five teams as the first to qualify for Catfish Weekly National Championship Tournament. “WBW is the 1st tournament to qualify anglers for the Catfish Weekly National Championship,” said Harrison. “We will also be the last tournament to qualify anglers in 2017, because of the way the dates fall.”
So there you go whisker whackers. Mark your calendar for the last day of 2017. You can fish Winter Blues on Wheeler, probably catch some pigs, and if you place in the top 5, be qualified for the National Catfish Tournament in 2018.
Fish with passion.
