Canton Lake Tournament Follow Up Story
by Dan Turner

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Unbelievably, for the third consecutive tournament, a cold front with gusty north winds pounded away at the Texas Walleye Association teams participating in the April 24th tournament at Canton Lake, Oklahoma.

During a severe cold front, you can expect to see only a few if any fish weighed in, but Canton is such a good fishery that twelve teams managed to bring fish to the scales.

In pre-fishing, some teams reported catching fifty walleye a day, but on Saturday only the team of Hank McWilliams of Fritch and John McWilliams of Borger were able to boat a 5 fish limit weighing11.71 lbs. to claim the first place prize of $540. Hank and John caught their fish in the upper end of the lake using a spinner harness with nickel and chartreuse blades.

The father and son team of Jeff Alexander of Fritch and Ron Alexander of Plains, Kansas were edged out of 1st place by only .08 lb. with 4 nice fish weighing 11.63 lbs. The Alexanders who won $315 caught their fish on the mid-lake humps on red jigs and minnows.

Donnie Bell and Arwin Cowan of Fritch secured 3rd and $200 with 4 fish weighing 9.84 lbs. They also caught their fish on the humps with jigs and minnows.

Ed Rodriguez and David McWilliams of Fritch caught a fine 6.11 lb walleye to win the big fish pot of $140 and their two fish weight of 8.00 lbs earned them 4th place. Jim Welch of Fritch and Donnie Tolleson of Tampa, Florida won 5th with 7.22 lbs.

The local team of Tom Evans of Canton and Curtis Hoskins of Watonga, Oklahoma came in at 6th with 6.66 lbs. Kelly Jones and William Savage of Fritch were 7th with 5.33 lbs. Kevin and Kalin Audrain of Fritch weighed in at 8th with 5.15 lbs edging out Dan Turner of Dumas and David Turner of Bristow, Oklahoma who weighed in 5.03 lbs for 9th place.

Jim O' Connor of Amarillo and Shane Turner of Dalhart rounded out the top ten with 4.91 lbs. All the teams placing in the top ten received points toward qualification for the 2005 Cabela's National Team Championship.

The next tournament will be back in Texas at Lake Meredith on Saturday, May 22. This should be a great tournament as this is probably the best time of the year to catch walleye at Meredith.

The TWA would like to invite all anglers to come join us for a great cold front free time at Lake Meredith on May 22. For more information, contact J.D. Carr at 857-0084 ( CottonTop@aol.com) , Dan Turner at 935-3176 ( dturner@xit.net)., or Kevin Audrain at 857-2890