Bears land trophy bass, bass trophies

Photo: Kameryn Henderson, left, and Tyler Shearin of the LCM Bass Team won last week’s Ford Championship high school bass tournament at Lake Sam Rayburn, with boat captain Lee Shearin. Nearly 400 teams entered the season-finale for the Southeast Texas High School Fishing Association.

Dave Rogers

For The Record

The Battlin’ Bears were Fishin’ Magicians this spring and they proved it with back-to-back days last weekend by earning honors high enough for the nose-bleed section.

On Saturday May 5, the Little Cypress-Mauriceville Schools Bass Team won the first ever “School of the Year” award from the Southeast Texas High School Fishing Association after the first of two days of fishing at the SETHSFA Ford Championship at Lake Sam Rayburn.

On Sunday, 14-year-old LCM eighth-graders Tyler Shearin and Kameryn Henderson, along with boat captain Lee Shearin, beat out more than 300 teams to win the year-end tournament with a two-day total of 42.40 pounds.

“It was awesome. It was crazy. I just had a good feeling it was going to be our weekend,” said Nellie Miller, who manages the LCM Team.

Shearin and Henderson split $10,000 in scholarship money plus all sorts of prize gear for weighing the largest 10-fish limit. Contestants weighed their five biggest fish each day.

Bridge City’s team of Tanner Wilson and Ethan Bourque finished second with a total of 39.81 pounds. They finished second in the same tournament a year ago.

It was the first win in two years of competing for the Shearin and Henderson team but as seventh-graders they had finlshed second in last year’s SETHSFA tournament on the Sabine River in Orange.

Lee Shearin, who piloted the fishermen, said the youngsters did their damage “just running exposed points around mid-lake.” He said, “This was a spot where we had not caught fish at before.”

In the season-long points competition for SETHSFA “Anglers of the Year,” LCM’s Dakota Posey and Jack Burke were the top finishers for their school, 11th place overall. Shearin and Henderson earned 13^th place.

This was the first year the association named a “School of the Year.”

The point totals for each school’s top three teams of anglers were totaled and averaged and the Bears came out on top. Jack Tindle and Colin Currie were LCM’s third-ranked duo.

Miller said she had just under 100 students participating this year. In recent years, as many as 125 had fished under the LCM banner each season, but Hurricane Harvey had numbers down throughout the SETHSFA this school year.

While last week’s event was the “Super Bowl” of the Southeast Texas association, LCM also competes in the Deep East Texas Tournament Series and many of its students will be in action back at Rayburn this weekend.

On June 16, several Bear duos – including Shearin and Henderson – have qualified and will fish in the Texas State Championship, Miller said.