IUKA, Miss. (May 20, 2019) – Boater Chris Quaintance of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, won the Bass Fishing League (BFL) Mississippi Division tournament on Pickwick Lake Saturday with five bass weighing 21 pounds, 5 ounces. Quaintance netted $4,119 for his victory. Quaintance said he put between 10 and 15 keepers in the boat during the event and weighed all largemouth.
“I started out the day mid-lake, rotating between a long point that had a little brush at the end of it in 6 to 8 feet of water, and 2 or 3 patches of weed beds 200 yards toward the shoreline,” said Quaintance, who notched his second win as a boater in BFL competition on Pickwick Lake. “I got two good keepers off the point and two from the weed beds. My fourth fish ended up being my heaviest – about 6½ pounds.”
Quaintance used a few different baits to catch his fish – a ¼-ounce, pearl-colored Strike King Swim Jig with a pearl craw trailer, and a 3/8-ounce, green-pumpkin Mean Mouth Pro Rocker Jig with a 3.75-inch Yamamoto Custom Baits Flappin’ Hawg of the same color. He said the 6½-pounder came off a 7-inch, green-pumpkin NetBait T-Mac Straight Tail worm.
“I had a limit by about 8:30 (a.m.) and decided to make a run upstream to an area where I thought I could get a big fish, but someone was on it,” continued Quaintance. “I ended up going to a secondary deal around Koger Island that I hadn’t planned on fishing, but had caught some good ones at before. I caught a 4½-pounder on the Mean Mouth jig, which culled out my smallest fish and really sealed the deal.”
The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:
1st: Chris Quaintance, Muscle Shoals, Ala., five bass, 21-5, $4,119
2nd: Christopher Whitehead, Tupelo, Miss., five bass, 19-15, $2,259
3rd: Jimmy Washam, Covington, Tenn., five bass, 19-14, $1,474
4th: Heath Gilmore, Meridian, Miss., five bass, 19-4, $1,211
5th: Steve Hughes, Mooreville, Miss., five bass, 18-3, $824
6th: Bryan Dowdy, Florence, Ala., five bass, 18-0, $755
7th: Brian White, Pontotoc, Miss., five bass, 16-14, $686
8th: Bryan Waldon, Falkner, Miss., five bass, 16-11, $618
9th: Andrew Clayton, Westpoint, Tenn., five bass, 16-7, $549
10th: Brandon Perkins, Counce, Tenn., five bass, 15-15, $456
10th: Charles Crouch, Waterloo, Ala., four bass, 15-15, $1,021
Crouch caught a bass weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – and earned the day’s Boater Big Bass award of $565. Connor Gable of Belden, Mississippi, won the Co-angler Division and $2,059 Saturday after catching five bass weighing 15 pounds, 7 ounces.
The top 10 co-anglers were:
1st: Connor Gable, Belden, Miss., five bass, 15-7, $2,059
2nd: Randy Hill, Athens, Ala., five bass, 15-5, $1,280
3rd: Keith Whipple, Iuka, Miss., five bass, 15-4, $737
4th: Dalton Steele, Cherokee, Ala., four bass, 14-2, $762
5th: Daniel Corkern, Florence, Miss., five bass, 13-13, $412
6th: Matthew Berry, Florence, Ala., five bass, 13-5, $378
7th: Hunter Beal, Beech Bluff, Tenn., five bass, 13-2, $343
8th: Clint Horton, Falkner, Miss., five bass, 12-15, $309
9th: Ron Creasy, Florence, Ala., three bass, 12-13, $275
10th: Anthony Rasberry, New Albany, Miss., five bass, 12-2, $240
Steele caught the heaviest bass in the Co-angler Division, a fish weighing in at 8 pounds, 15 ounces. The catch earned him the day’s Co-angler Big Bass award of $282.