Kemps take Saturday Shootout

Thirty-two boats fished a Saturday edition of the weekly Sabine River

Shootout and posted some very solid numbers in spite of the weekend

fishing pressure.Seventeen teams finished the day with a reason to weigh

in and fourteen of their fish topped the three pound mark!

Brent and Chad Kemp enjoyed the day about ten ounces more than the

second place team of Gavin Deshotel and Dagan Bradshaw.The Kemps weighed

16.46-pounds while the second place team finished the outing with a

15.83-stringer.The third place team of Kenny Fusilier and Nathan Paul

cashed the third place check with a solid 14.81-pound bag.

Dehotel and Bradshaw eased a little of the sting of their narrow loss by

taking home the big bass pot as well.Their winning bass weighed in a

very respectable 5.49-pounds.The duo hadn’t lost in a month making their

second place finish something they were unaccustomed to.

The weekly team events continue to grow and that fact has not been lost

on local sponsors.If you would like to try your hand at a little

competitive bass fishing this is a great place to start.

Mary Lynn LeJeune celebrated her tenth birthday Sunday afternoon fishing

the river with her Uncle Saul and it turned out to be a very special day

for both of them.“We caught enough goggle-eye to have a fish fry that

night,” said Mary Lynn, “and I caught the biggest bass of my life!”

Saul said they were fishing the Burned Out bridge area with small

crawfish under a cork when she hung the big fish.“I thought it was a

grinnel until it jumped.When I saw it was a bass I got more excited than

little Lynn.”

Her birthday fish weighed 6 pounds 4 ounces on the grocery store

scales.“I knew I was going to get the fish mounted the minute it landed

in the bottom of the boat,” said the very proud Uncle.“We’ll never

forget this birthday!”

The annual CCA S.T.A.R. tournament is in full swing and while nearly

every category is still wide open, a couple of them will be hard to

beat. Eight year old Rowdy Hanks of Kountz put a 6-pound 12 ounce

gafftop on the board early and will now have his parents sweating out

his possibility of winning a $50,000 scholarship all summer.

In the 11 to 17 age division, Andrew Larson of Danbury is in the lead in

the Upper Coast Trout Division with a 7-pound 10 ounce speck.Because big

trout have been a little hard to come by on the upper coast the past few

years that fish could also be hard to beat.Don’t tell that to his little

brother, however, as he is currently holding down second place with a

lot of summer remaining.

Curtis Widener of Sargent has also posted an early flounder in the Teen

Division that just may win him $25,000 in college money.His flounder

tipped the scales at 6 pounds 5 ounces.

In the adult division, Mike Fesco of Sour Lake may well have already

have laid claim to the gafftop prize money with a whopping 8-pound

2-ounce fish. Of the few leading fish at this point, Mike’s gafftop will

undoubtedly be the hardest to beat.

A double digit trout is leading the lower coast and an 8-pound 7-ounce

fish is leading the Upper Coat.Any of these weights can be bested over

the summer and there is a ton of money still up for grabs.Only two of

the tagged redfish have been caught thus far.

The white perch bite is still strong on both Rayburn and Toledo Bend.

Milton and Ronnie Carrol apparently don’t know what the hell they are

doing when it comes to catching crappie over a brush pile, but they had

a good day in spite of themselves last Friday.

“We only caught two white perch,” said Milton, “but we filled up an ice

box with bream and catfish.” That could only happen to the Carrols.There

problem could have been that they thought they found some brush in eight

feet of water and they were fishing with crickets!

The folks that are doing it right are catching pretty easy limits of

crappie up to a pound and a half.On both lakes the reports I got were

that shiners were working much better than jigs.