Watkins Wins Eastern Divisional on Lake Ontario
Russell Watkins, of Aurora, Canada made a steady climb, up the leader board and became the overall champion on Friday at Lake Ontario, at the TBF Eastern Divisional. His Day 1 weight of 14-13 pounds left him in 30th place after most all anglers had a pretty good catch on Wednesday. He stepped it up a notch on Thursday and brought in one of the heaviest bags of the day, which tipped the scales at 23-02 pounds. That weight left him sitting in 4th place, just seven ounces out of first place. He sealed the deal on Friday by bringing in 18-15 pounds to give him a final weight of 56-14 and the championship.
All of the top five finishers were separated by less than four pounds. Matt Thoin of New Hampshire took runner up honors as he finished with 55-10 pounds. Matt weighed in 19-06 on Friday, which was the third largest bag of the final day. Third place was taken by Donald Gagnon, also of New Hampshire with 54-03 pounds. New Hampshire put three guys in the top five as Tim Dube finished in fifth place with 53-04 pounds.
The heaviest bag on the final day went to Alex Wetherell, from Connecticut with his 23-04 pound monster bag of bass.
The biggest bass on Friday was claimed by Jim Hanatow of New Hampshire with a nice smallmouth that weighed 5-11 pounds. Friday saw 335 fish weighed in for a combined weight of 916-13 pounds and there were 46 limits on the final day.
The state to state competition went back and forth just about as each angler weighed, as five of the eight states were within five to ten pounds of each other all the way to the end of the weigh in. Coming out on top was the team from Massachusetts with 437-09 pounds for the week. Ontario (CBAF) was the runner up with 418-01 pounds. Connecticut finished third with 416-14 pounds. Vermont took fourth with 412-15 pounds. New Hampshire took fifth with 410-08 pounds. Maine was sixth with 344-00 pounds. New York had 335-15 pounds and Rhode Island had 164-10 pounds.
We qualified the top two anglers from each of the eight states to advance to the 2017 TBF Federation National Championship next spring.
For full results Click Here
To view Final days photos Click Here
The 2017 National Contenders from the Eastern Divisional :
