Apex’s Joyce Wins T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League Opener on Kerr Lake
Drakes Branch’s Toombs Wins Co-angler Division
HENDERSON, N.C. – Boater Keith Joyce of Apex, North Carolina, caught five bass Saturday weighing 19 pounds, 5 ounces, to win the 2019 T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League (BFL) Piedmont division tournament on Kerr Lake. Joyce earned $7,254 for his victory.
“I was just looking for isolated buck bushes in the back of spawning pockets as far as I could go,” said Joyce, who earned his first career win in BFL competition. “I think I caught 10 keepers total, fishing a shakey-head (rig) all day long. I did have one big fish that I weighed in that came on a buzzbait, but the rest of my keepers were on the shakey-head.”
Joyce said that he fished in the Nutbush area with a Hot Shot Lures Shakey-Head rig with a green-pumpkin KVD Fat Baby Finesse Worm and a white Hot Shot Lures buzzbait.
“It didn’t start off well – I had about 40 fish marked coming into the event, but we had bad thunderstorms and a lot of the creeks had mudslides running into them. So I just went back to the area that I had found the most fish in during practice, put the trolling motor down and just started fishing.”
.The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:
1st: Keith Joyce, Apex, N.C., five bass, 19-5, $5,254 + $2,000 Ranger Cup
2nd: Danny Haire, Yadkinville, N.C., five bass, 17-12, $2,052
3rd: Jack Dice, Lynchburg, Va., five bass, 17-11, $1,267
4th: Chris Baldwin, Lexington, N.C., five bass, 17-9, $988
5th: Keith Roberts, Hurt, Va., five bass, 17-5, $761
6th: Todd Walters, Kernersville, N.C., five bass, 17-4, $1,202
7th: Bryan Elrod, Mechanicsville, Va., five bass, 16-15, $934
8th: Chris Dillow, Waynesboro, Va., five bass, 16-9, $571
9th: Derik Hudson, Concord, Va., five bass, 16-1, $507
10th: Shane Burns, Durham, N.C., five bass, 15-15, $444
Complete results can be found at FLWFishing.com.
Walters caught a 5-pound, 13-ounce bass – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – and earned the day’s Boater Big Bass award of $505.
Tony Toombs of Drakes Branch, Virginia, won the Co-angler Division and $2,057 Saturday after catching five bass weighing 15 pounds, 12 ounces.
The top 10 co-anglers were:
1st: Tony Toombs, Drakes Branch, Va., five bass, 15-12, $2,057
2nd: Thomas Sesco, Greensboro, N.C., five bass, 15-10, $910
3rd: Bruce Pettiford, Roxboro, N.C., five bass, 14-14, $607
4th: Vincent Payne, Mechanicsville, Va., five bass, 14-7, $625
5th: Dexter Andrews, King George, Va., five bass, 13-3, $414
6th: Brian LaClair, Denton, Md., five bass, 13-1, $334
7th: Gray Hackney, Burlington, N.C., five bass, 13-0, $303
8th: Cornell Badra, Clarksburg, Md., five bass, 12-13, $273
9th: Robert Jarrett, Lexington, N.C., five bass, 12-7, $243
10th: Rich Knisely, Disputanta, Va., four bass, 12-6, $212
Toombs also caught the largest bass in the Co-angler Division, a fish weighing in at 6 pounds, 2 ounces. The catch earned him the day’s Co-angler Big Bass award of $237.
The top 45 boaters and co-anglers in the region based on point standings, along with the five winners in each qualifying event, will be entered in the Oct. 17-19 BFL Regional Championship on the Potomac River in Marbury, Maryland. Boaters will compete for a top award of a Ranger Z518L with a 200-horsepower outboard and $20,000, while co-anglers will fish for a new Ranger Z518L with a 200-horsepower outboard.
The 2019 BFL is a 24-division circuit devoted to weekend anglers, with 128 tournaments throughout the season, five qualifying events in each division. The top 45 boaters and co-anglers from each division, along with the five winners of the qualifying events, will advance to one of six regional tournaments where they are competing to finish in the top six, which then qualifies them for one of the longest-running championships in all of competitive bass fishing – the BFL All-American. The 2019 BFL All-American will be held May 30-June 1 at the Potomac River in Marbury, Maryland, and is hosted by the Charles County Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism and the Commissioners of Charles County. Top performers in the BFL can move up to the Costa FLW Series or even the FLW Tour.
For complete details and updated information visit FLWFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow the T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League on FLW’s social media outlets at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
About FLW
FLW is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, providing anglers of all skill levels the opportunity to compete for millions in prize money in 2019 across five tournament circuits. Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, with offices in Minneapolis, FLW and their partners conduct more than 290 bass-fishing tournaments annually around the world, including the United States, Canada, China, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa and Spain. FLW tournament fishing can be seen on the Emmy-nominated “FLW" television show while FLW Bass Fishing magazine delivers cutting-edge tips from top pros. For more information visit FLWFishing.com and follow FLW at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
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