With our switch to a 15-inch minimum in our seasonal Catch ‘Em All Brawls, we assumed the record of 516.50 would never be broken. Why? Because it’s much easier to catch dinks, of course.
Well, we were wrong.
For yesterday’s Spring Brawl, John Ferreira started off hot and looked set on running away with it…until Ben Hallowell began uploading fish.
John and Ben went back and forth for a bit, and then Steve Hedges threw his hat into the ring, but at some point, Ben switched on the afterburners and there was no catching him.
Excluding Ben’s fish, what the rest of the field put up is what we expected things to look like with the new 15-inch minimum, taking around 300 inches to win. Steve, for instance, had 273.75 inches for second place.
But Ben found something special, a pond that was firing at the right time, and he put up a massive 570.25 inches of largemouth bass, besting Steve by 296.50 inches, nearly as much as Steve had on the board!
What a day! Congrats, man!
As mentioned, Steve took second place, while John held onto third with 254.50.
Clearly, the bite was tough for many, and the number dropped significantly from third place on. Lee Kennon took fourth place with 109.50, as well as pickerel lunker.
(Ben actually had pickerel lunker as well, but unfortunately submitted a photo that partially cropped out the fence of the photo, so it was denied.)
Finally, in fifth place was Nate Chagnon with 97.25. And overall lunker went to Brian O’Connor, who dropped a 20.50-inch spring fatty on the board.
Great job, everyone! Good to see a big turnout for this one.
Check out the full results here.
The Summer Brawl goes down on June 30!
FYI: When viewing these events on Fishing Chaos, you only see the submission time. So when you see numerous fish submitted less than a minute apart, this is why. Judges can see the rest of the data.
