Hammond and Cook Win 6 th Event at McPhee Lake

McPhee Lake, which lies in the southwest corner of Colorado just outside of Cortez, was the site of our 6th tournament. This was the first event this year where the weather was not a factor. You could not have asked for better conditions as fifteen teams launched at 5:30am on June 5, each focusing on the big prize, qualifying for the Championship to be held at Clearlake, Cal. in early October. Evidently, some of teams also focused on the task at hand, winning this event. Out of the fifteen teams entered, five brought in the tournament limit of five fish, and most had at least one to weigh.

The team of Steve Hammond and Dennis Cook became the first to win more than one event this year. As you remember last year, we had two teams win three events each. Hammond and Cook caught most of their fish throwing plastic, rigged Texas, dropshot, or splitshot, with tubes being the preferred bait. Some of their five fish limit came on crankbaits, which helped to cull up to 12.20lbs of smallmouth. The team of Robert English and Dennis Martin, better known as Team Gimp out of Albuquerque, NM; showed the local teams that you don't need to be familiar with the lake to do well. Their second place bag of smallmouth weighed 11.51 lbs. caught mostly on plastics. This team also competes in PVA tournaments held around the country at various lakes, which culminates at a championship attended by qualified teams. These events are held to showcase that having a disability doesn't have to be such a life changing condition, that there are activities such as fishing which can be enjoyed even competitively as these two have shown us. For more info, please visit their website at www.pvabasstour.com . Leading the AOY points, the team of Dave Gerhardt and Russell Crites, caught enough fish to maintain their lead by just over two points. The five smallmouths they brought to the scales weighed 11.26lbs, good for third place. Big Bass, a smallmouth, was captured by the sixth place team of Steve Gill and Brett Olds weighing 3.78lbs. There was not a largemouth weighed at this tournament.

With one event remaining, the race for the Championship and AOY is still not decided. There will be eight teams chosen by the highest accumulated points after seven events. Then two Wild Card teams will be qualified by being the highest placed teams at the last event after the points teams are decided. They must also have fished six tournaments or more to be eligible for the Wild Card qualifying system.

The AOY race has three teams within ten points of each other with the fourth team having an outside chance trailing by more than twenty-four points. In 1st place, Gerhardt and Crites, 2 nd place, Hammond and Cook, 3 rd place, Perry and Skelton, and 4 th, Stanley and Pirkey.