188 teams participated in the 2008 Fishers of Men South Regional Championship. Sam Rayburn would prove to be tougher than usual for a majority of the field, including both ArmyBassAngler Teams that qualified. The founder of Fishers of Men, Al Odem, provided an inspiring message the night prior to competition began while the anglers enjoyed an awesome meal and shared stories about life, fishing, and their individual walks with God.
ArmyBassAngler Pros Brent Homan and Mike Garrett qualified in the last tournament of the 2008 season. Unfortunately, Garrett would deploy to Iraq a few days later leaving Homan to manage the huge lake himself. Throwing soft plastics and various crankbaits, purchased from Tightlines, during practice Homan would find some pre-tournament success in locating fish. However, both tournament days proved to be more difficult. Early in the first day, Homan experienced technical difficulties making it tough to methodically cover enough water to be competitive. Overcoming his first day hurdles Homan had high hopes for the second day. But, day two proved to be even tougher than day one. Beautiful weather, minimal winds, and fishing pressure all managed to play havoc on the bulk of the field’s ability to land more than a couple of fish. Homan would land several fish on lipless crank baits, but they were all too short to bring to the scales. However, despite his best efforts Homan enjoyed fellowshipping with the dedicated staff and friendly anglers that make up the Fishers of Men National Tournament Trail.
ArmyBassAngler Pros Randy Sitz and Chad Nelson manage to get in one official day of practice and located quality fish with a rattletrap in hydrilla. Unfortunately, the area they map recon’d was a long trip from the official launch site. With lake conditions extremely rough that first morning due to a stiff breeze and 70 boats blasting out ahead of them the Skeeter ZX 225 managed the conditions extremely well stated Sitz, ”I simply held the hot-foot to the floor and drove. I can’t believe how well that boat does in rough water; the boat handled the tough conditions better than any other boat I’ve owned. With the ZX225 Yamaha we shot out of the hole and blew by a lot of other boats, none of them Skeeters, like they were standing still.” For two solid days, Sitz and Nelson spent their time “chunkin and winding” managing several quality fish on rattletraps, they picked up at Tighlines using the 10% Military Discount Tightlines offers, but never rounding out a limit. Matter of fact, thanks to their Castaway Soft Touch Rods, they put keepers in the boat that may have sprung loose without the forgiving rod tips. Sitz and Nelson would save the last hour of each day for the bridge pylons near the launch site this proved to be the only strategy that would allow them to bring a limit to the scales each day. Using drop shots and patience they were able to coax one last keeper each day…the fish came in 10-15 feet of water on watermelon/red finesse worms. With a two day total of 22.24 pounds, Sitz and Nelson would finish 41st overall out of 188 teams. 22.36 would be the “pay day” cutoff. Nelson was quoted as saying, “We’re comfortable with our effort and the game plan considering our lack of time on Sam Rayburn. This was the next level in the Fishers of Men Trail and we were proud to represent all of the other Central Texas Fishers of Men and our Sponsors at Regionals. It was a blessing to be here, the weather was awesome, the people were super, and Randy and I had fun…there is no disappointment in that—HOOAH!”
