| | Texas Walleye Association
Canton Lake Tournament Results
The Texas Walleye Association held their first tournament of the Spring Season on Saturday, April 2 at Canton Lake, Oklahoma. In what is now becoming a spring tradition for the TWA, anglers were pounded by howling 40 + mile per hour north winds and rain just prior to the tournament. Thus, the day of the tournament became one of those "all so tough day after a cold front" bites that all anglers dread. In spite of these conditions, every team caught walleye, but the problem was catching fish big enough to meet the Oklahoma minimum 18 inch length limit. As a result, only 9 teams managed to bring from 1 to 3 fish to the scales.
So often during a really tough bite, it is the team that dares to try something unorthodox from the rest of the pack that brings home the first place prizes. This was the case for the local team of Tom Evans of Canton and Curtis Hoskins of Watonga who weighed in 2 fish that weighed 7.77 lbs. to claim the first place plaques and $520. They also added an additional $130 to their winnings by taking the big fish pot with a nice 5.16 lb walleye. After having no success near the dam among all the other boats, Evans and Hoskins decided to go up where the North Canadian River enters the lake. There, they began fishing small cattail surrounded basins off the river with rattletraps. They only caught 3 walleye for the day, but 2 out of 3 were big fish. They also reported losing another big walleye at the boat.
Hank McWilliams of Fritch and John McWilliams of Borger were second with 3 fish weighing 6.54 lbs. to take home $325. With less than an hour and a half before weigh in, the McWilliams had no fish in the livewell before finding a pocket of fish along a small stretch of the dam. They caught their fish on chartreuse jigs by furiously working that little stretch of water with their special swimming jig technique.
Jeff Cooper and Jim O’Connor of Amarillo took third and $190 with 2 fish weighing 5.76 lbs. They caught their fish on blade baits in deep water off the dam.
The other placings were: 4th J.D. Carr and Chuck Weston of Fritch with 4.86 lbs.; 5th Bobby Reining of Panhandle and Brett Mills of Fritch with 4.69 lbs.; 6th Jimmy Gordon of Turpin, Ok and Darrell Calhoun of Liberal, Ks with 3.12 lbs.; 7th Dan Turner of Dumas and David Turner of Bristow, OK with 2.09 lbs.; 8th Jeff Alexander of Fritch and Ron Alexander of Plains, KS with 1.98 lbs.; and 9th Donnie Bell and Arvin Cowan of Fritch with 1.68 lbs. Most of these teams used either jigs and minnows, rigging with minnows, or spinner harnesses.
The next tournament will be on April 30 at Ute Lake, New Mexico with launching at the North Dock near the dam. The remaining TWA Schedule is: May 14 at Lake Meredith; May 27-28 Cabela’s National Team Championship for TWA 2004 Qualifiers; and June 25-26 the TWA Championship at Lake Meredith. For more information, please, call Dan Turner at (806) 935-3176 dturner@xit.net or Kevin Audrain at (806) 857-2508 audheatcool@aol.com |
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