Lake Wylie yields big catch for Catawba Catfish Club
.JPG "Jeff Manning, left, and Michael Paciacocco with two of the three lunker Lake Wylie blue catfish they caught to win a Catawba Catfish Club tournament last weekend. The fish were released alive.")
Participants in a Catawba Catfish Club tournament Saturday at Lake Wylie generally considered the action slightly off.
Jeff Manning and Michael Paciaocco apparently didn’t get the message.
The Gastonia duo, who call themselves “Team Reelin’ The Blues,” boated a club-record catch for Wylie to win easily with a limit of three fish weighing 103.4 pounds.
They bested anglers in 30 other boats and won $512.
Finishing second were David Catoe, Mike Rape and Tony Cauthen with 71.55 pounds, good for $328. Wes Rollings and Michael Thomas took third with 70.25 pounds, earning $256.
The top six teams weighed catches exceeding 50 pounds.
The largest single catfish in the tournament was a blue of 47.5 pounds, boated by the team of Matthew Goodale and Adrian Smith, who won $312 for the fish.
All the catfish taken to the scales were released alive in keeping with club rules.
Next on the circuit’s schedule is a tournament March 14 at Fishing Creek Reservoir near Great Falls, S.C. The entry fee is $30 per person and the event is open to the public. Sign-in is 5-6:45 a.m. at the S.C. 21 Access Area. Fishing will begin at 7 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. Tom Higgins
Briefly
Stars of several televised outdoors series are scheduled for appearances during the 31st Annual Palmetto Sportsmen’s Classic on March 27-29 at the S.C. State Fairgrounds in Columbia. Among those scheduled to appear: Capt. Wild Bill of the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch”; Bruce Mitchell, the Renegade Alligator Man of “Swamp People”; Marty Fischer, champion duck caller and host of “Outdoor Explosion” on TNT, and Kip Campbell of Red Arrow TV.
Among the Classic’s displays is “The World’s Greatest Whitetails,” 16 of the biggest bucks ever bagged.
▪ The popular Crackerneck Wildlife Management area in Aiken County, S.C., site of a former Department of Energy nuclear facility, will be open to the public Saturday, then again on March 14 and 21.
A youth wild turkey hunt is scheduled for the 10,600-acre area on March 28. Hunters may scout for turkeys, but no firearms are allowed this month. Fishing is permitted at Skinface Pond and bringing a small boat is recommended. Biking and horseback riding are confined to the 50-mile road system and selected firebreaks.
Catch of the week
A 35-pound golden tilefish and a 25-pound snowy grouper 80 miles offshore of Ocean Isle by local fishermen Barrett McMullan and Zach Faulkner.
This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Lake Wylie yields big catch for Catawba Catfish Club."