By the time you are reading this there will be less than one month until the Derby is over – so get out there and get your fish posted on our photo gallery: https://coastalanglermag.com/orlando/shadcrappie-derby/photo-gallery/.
December and most of January has seen several new entries for this season’s Derby. Many slab-sized crappies have been posted that are 15” or larger and qualify those anglers for the ’15-Inch Crappie Club’ Certificate and a special prize at this year’s award ceremony to be held at The Jolly Gator Fish Camp Bar and Grill on Thursday March 15, 2018 at 6:30 PM.
The Shad started a little late this season with many nice fish caught and posted to our photo gallery on the Orlando Coastal Angler Magazine website. Nothing really huge yet on the Shad entries at the time of this writing in mid-January, so that means it is wide open for this month of February to get out there and catch a big one and become one of this season’s grand prize or species champions.
Big crappie caught in the month of December over the 15-inch mark and the December big crappie winner was once again Mr. James Hazelton with a huge fish over the 15 inches on the ruler. This is a first for our Derby as James also caught the largest crappie for the month of November – never has any angler won back to back months, especially with fish that were both 15 inches or larger. The December winner for shad was the 2016 women’s division shad champion Kaiti Rae Adamson with a 14.5-inch blue back herring shad. She posted the first shad this year, and her shad article is published in this month’s Orlando magazine! Both anglers will get restaurant gift cards for their efforts at this season’s awards event.
Please remember to go by and thank our sponsors by spending some money at their businesses and tell them you appreciate them for supporting our free community event, the Shad and Crappie Derby! Get out on the water and catch yourself a winner – see you at the awards ceremony March 15, it’s free and open to the public.