The first Thursday Night Throwdown took place last night on West Monponsett in Halifax. Fourteen anglers competed in this one.

Chef John Ferreira got there first, and shortly after he fired up the portable grill and tossed on some burgers and dogs. He even seasoned the burgers. Fancy!

Much appreciated, man!

Strong winds greeted us at the ramp and didn’t let up. In fact, I’m certain it got worse. But the rain held off aside from a few sprinkles, which was good.

Chris LaCourse took the early lead with two fish, then I believe Bruce Levy overtook him sometime after. Matthew Conant put up the first big fish of the night, tossing a 19 on the board. At some point I took the lead from Bruce, dropping him down to second, but as always things change…

Despite the lower entry fees, which means lower payouts, we are going to keep the same payout scale as our normal events. I think that is in line with what these events are intended to be: fun and rewarding.

So we paid out three spots, lunker and pickerel lunker…

Only two pickerel were entered, a 16.75 caught by yours truly, and a 23.25 hauled in by Matthew Conant. Unfortunately for me, Matt opted in on that lunker pool and took the pot.

Kelvin Nova and Bruce Levy tied for third place, with Kelvin winning the tie-breaker via a bigger bass—a 19.50—which just so happened to be tournament lunker as well. That was also a tie with Mike Morcone’s big fish, but Kelvin next biggest fish decided that tie-breaker.

Historically, I’ve never done well at this lake, so it felt good to hold the lead for most of the tournament, even though I wasn’t sitting on an impressive limit or anything. With a little over an hour left, though, Conant put a 14 on the board that pushed him ahead of me by 1.75 inches.

I continued to catch fish, but was unable to cull out my smallest and catch the local legend, so this one goes to Matt, 48.50 to 50.25. Congrats, man!

Great job everyone! This was fun. A bit more stressful as well, like speed-round fishing. I dug it. Good idea, Nate!

Happy to see some new faces as well…

Torrence Davis of YouTube’s excellent Bubba Bass Anglers joined us for the first time. Good seeing you again, man!

And we had our youngest competitor ever in Jackson Nardi, Christopher Nardi’s son, who is 11 years old. And in fine apprentice-becomes-the-master form, Jackson took the win in the Father vs. Son match! Great job, young man.

Check the results here on Fishing Chaos.

We’ll do this again in two weeks.