Shad & Crappie Derby – January Update

Wow, what a great start to this season’s Central Florida Shad and Crappie Derby. Well over 50 anglers joined us at Dick’s Sporting Goods for our early registration so they could be fishing early on opening day, November 1st at safe daylight. Water levels at that time due to Hurricane Irma meant no motor zone all day. Many of the dedicated crappie anglers up-loaded their catches that very first day including Mike Tindel, this year’s token angler photo. With over 1150 registered anglers fishing in the past, most anglers will be seeing his mug shot a lot of times this season.

Our November biggest Crappie winner is another angler who has fished with us for many seasons now, Mr. James Hazelton uploading a whopper at well over 15” and will also qualify him for the 15” Crappie Club Certificate. Just a few days later he bested his own previous entry. All we will say is it is going to take a big Crappie to beat James’ second entry.

With our Annual One Day Tourney scheduled for December 9th at our host location of Boat Tree Marina. As in years’ past, old Mother Nature threw us a curve and brought us wind, drizzling rain and weather in the mid 40 degrees. With over 40 pre-registered adult anglers we were surprised when dozens braved the inclement conditions and brought over 2 dozen crappies to the weigh master Charlie McCullough. Our $100.00 prize winner for the largest entry of the day went to Mary Hacker with a fish weighing 1.83 pounds and a little over 14.5”, Girls Rule says Mary as she was accepting her cash prize provide by Gibson’s Trucks in Sanford. A new sponsor Crappie Psychic donated another $100 bucks for our anglers and Mel Railsback took second place honors with a 1.52 lb. entry winning $60.00 for his efforts and our 3rd place finisher was Don Hibbard with a 1.46 lb. fish taking $40.00 for nice crappie. Trophies and Prizes were also awarded to 2 youth anglers, both young girls who fished from just after 8:00 am until noon with not much luck but were all smiles when they got their reward for braving the miserable conditions.

Thanks as always to all of sponsors and sign-up locations, please visit them and thank them by spending some money in their businesses. To all of our anglers, keep fishing and posting your entries and tell 5 of your friends about this great community event. “It Only Takes One Fish to Win!”