St. Simons Island, Georgia - What started out to be a bad weekend for the Cat Daddy team actually turned into gold.  “We caught and scaled a 24.43 on the first day,” explained team captain Danny Mathis from Gonzales, Louisiana. “We knew we had to have a big one if we were to do anything in this two-day aggregate event.”

“You’ll want to hear what happened,” said teammate Bobby Schoenfeld, another Louisiana fisherman. “We were on our way south after checkout. Danny was taking us 175 miles to where we thought we could get a good fish. About thirty miles out we lost a lower unit. Plans changed. We looked at the charts for some numbers close to where we were and picked one.”

“Jack, you know I’ve caught a lot of kings in the forties but never a fifty,” said Harry Thomas, the third member of the Cat Daddy team. Thomas hails from Florida’s west coast and is considered to be one of the best. “Now I’ve got one,” he added.

Their big king weighed 53.50 and combined with a 24.43 from day one gave them a 77.93 aggregate and the forty-thousand dollar first place check.

“You know I’d rather be lucky than good,” Mathis added. “For some reason we’ve been struggling, now maybe we can get back on track.”

The Cat Daddy team also signed up for the local event, the Golden Isles Kingfish Classic. They won that too and picked up a 21’ Yamaha powered Contender boat complete with a Loadmaster Trailer. All told, it turned out to be a hundred thousand dollar weekend. I think I would have taken that 53-pound king home and hung him on the wall. Just so every time I looked at that fish I would remember that exceptional day.

Danny and Harry shared in the Top Senior Angler honors.

Earning second place and $9,500 was a local team fishing their first year on the Yamaha Pro Tour.  Pete Harper, Buddy Webb, and Jamie Souter, were the most consistent team this weekend. The Mr. Magoo team scaled a 35.54 on day one and came back on day two with a 37.87 for a 73.41 aggregate. “We really wanted to do good in our home waters and we did,” said Webb just before the awards ceremony.

“Both days Pete did the rod work with Jamie gaffing. We were close to J-Reef and caught our 35 at one-thirty off a blue runner deep. It was the only fish we saw all day.”

On the second day the team went back, caught a couple of dinks, then at one-o’clock their 37.87 ate a runner on top.”

I believe this great finish should give this team the confidence to continue at this level. This is not an arena for mediocrity. You have to be on your game plus constantly gaining information and confidence. This team proved they can hang with the best of them!
With these two fish Mister Magoo moves into fourteenth place in the standings.

Rat Pak won this event last year and earned third this year. Do you think they’ve got this fishery nailed down? The Captain Darren Ratley had to leave after day one to go back to South Carolina after scaling a 19.13 leaving John Mott, Jay Robertson, Jimmy Stecki, and James Eddie Fisher to run the Mercury powered Yellowfin into victory lane. This speaks volumes of Ratley's ability to keep and trust the people he chose to be a part of the team.

The Rat Pak is now in eleventh place with a seven fish aggregate of 34.36 pounds per fish. With a 19-pound drop fish they can still win it in their home waters at Little River.

Steve Hays and Perry Warner won fourth place with a 59.25 two fish aggregate. They weighed a 26.44 and a 32.81 on the Mercury powered Fountain named Surreel.  They now have a seven fish aggregate of 240.22 points, which equates to a 34.32 average. Like the Rat Pak they too have a shot certainly at finishing in the top ten if not winning it all at the final event of the season.

I talked with Arik Bergerman after the event he just finished fifth in. “We fished hard this weekend looking for that one big fish to propel us to the top of the Angler of the Year standings,” he said. His Caliente team, John Smith Sr., Paul Rogers, Brian Hasson, and Mike Howes, scaled a 30.34 and a 26.82 and are now in seventh overall, just twenty pounds out of first. With two twenty-six pound drop fish they are still in the hunt. Arik is one of those very positive people who does not accept anything but number one. I for one will not bet against them.

Arik fishes a Mercury powered Yellowfin.

Steel Fishing was sixth. Randy Spainhour, Joe Buie, Ethan Hedrick, and James Gunter, fished Gray’s Reef both days and caught 27-pound kings. “We had a shot at a big fish but missed him,” said Spainhour. Their first king caught on day one ate a ribbonfish down and used a goggle eye on the surface on day two to entice their fish.

Seventh fell to Andrew Hinton III’s Hot Grits. Andy fished with David Stallings, Ward Whitfield, and Ned Grady and scaled a 34.41 and a 19.39 for 53.80 points. What’s great about this team not including their fishing ability is they take the kids with them. Drew Hinton, Zack Whitfield, and Thomas Grady, earned top junior angler honors for the Pro event.

Another Louisiana team earned eighth this weekend. Bill Butler, Michael Butler, Donald Bourgeois, and Steve Jenkins, scaled a 26.28 and a 25.60 fishing the Yamaha powered Invincible named Crawgator.

Ninth place went to the day one leader, Dave Workman and Rick Stinson fishing Strike Zone. Dave and Rick weighed a 37.03 and I thought they had a great chance of winning the event but on day two they could only find a 13.08.

They fish a Mercury powered Yellowfin and are in nineteenth place overall with one event left.

Tenth place went to Jeff and Greg Weathers on the Triple Gobble with a two fish agg of 49.05.

The Top Lady in the event came from Jim Vaughan’s Old Blue, Stephanie Matlock.

Ron Mitchell’s Bandit team scaled one fish, a 31.21. “I didn’t come to win the event but that would have been nice. We needed a mid thirties to get a lock on first in the overall standings,” he said. “My team really wants another title.”

The Bandit has a 269.54 seven fish aggregate or a 38.57 seven fish average. Their smallest king in that aggregate however is a 31.20. They’ve caught bigger in Little River so they have to be the odds on favorites to win the title of Angler of the Year again. Who can catch them? There are about twelve boats that have a good shot and others who still have their sights set on a top ten finish. Little River will have all the drama one could hope for!