Pair grab national fishing title



Jones, Poston, land
Fishers of Men crown


By Thom Chalfan
Sports Editor

Monday, March 30, 2009

Kevin Jones and Mike Poston are used to winning bass tournaments. They have won many in the area over the last dozen or so years and claimed the Fishers of Men North Carolina East Division championship in 2008.

But it will be hard to top this last weekend.
Jones and Poston landed the limit of 15 bass weighing 53.24 pounds over three days to win the Fishers of Men National Championship in Shreveport, La., on Saturday.
Jones, who is from Ahoskie and Poston, who lives in Gatesville, won a $45,000 Red/Silver Triton TR-20X3 boat, a $2,000 bonus and extra money for daily finishes. The total came to $48,160.
“To tell the truth, we still haven’t realized what we won, I don’t think,” Jones said.

Both Jones and Poston were extremely happy to win the title as representatives of the North Carolina East Division.
“It really wasn’t about the money or the boat,” Poston said. “We are really proud of the fact that we went from eastern North Carolina to Shreveport, La., and figured out how to catch fish in their home water.”
Though there is a difference of nearly 20 years between Jones and Poston, they have been fishing together for many years.
“We met each other in 1988 and started fishing in some tournaments together on and off,” Jones said. “About 10 or 12 years ago, we started fishing together pretty much all of the time. We hunt together, too.”

The tournament began Thursday and continued through Saturday. But it was not just three days of fishing that earned the pair the title. They traveled south early in the week to test the waters.
“They give you three days of practice to let you fish and figure out what you’re going to do,” Poston said. “Because people like us have never been in Shreveport, La., they gave us three days to look around.”

It was early in the week the duo found a nice spot about the size of a football field where Jones said the fish were coming to spawn. That spot would be a key to the win.
“We practiced and found that ourselves on Tuesday morning,” Jones said. “Nobody told us about it, we found it on our own. That’s one thing that made us feel so good.”
The two developed a strategy for the tournament that did not have them staying in their primary spot, but moving around to try to improve their overall catch.
“Every morning we started off in the same spot,” Poston said. “Then we would go to our one particular place and get our limit. Then after that, we’d run from spot to spot trying to better our weight.”

Their strategy worked.
After the first day, Jones and Posten were tied for third place with 17.93 pounds. That was when they really started to get the butterflies.
“We really didn’t feel that much pressure until after the first day was over with,” Jones said. “You had a lot of pressure on you just trying to make the cut, because only the top 28 (teams) made the last day. Then we had the lead the last day, so there was a lot of pressure.”

Jones and Posten made the cut — in fact, they led after the second day. Another haul of more than 17 pounds gave them more than a 3-pound lead heading into the final day.
“The third day, we started in Port Lake and caught three fish,” Poston said. “The we went to our spot and caught seven keeper bass in that spot. We stayed there and tried to better our weight, because that was the last day of the tournament anyway.”
They actually had their worst weight on the final day, but only by a fraction of a pound. The pair brought in totals all three days that varied by less than half a pound, by far the most consistent performance of any team.

“We caught them all on crankbait,” Poston said. “Nobody else was fishing crank baits. Everybody else there was asking ‘how did you catch them?’ We told them and they said ‘you’re teaching us something we don’t ever do.’ So they learned something from it and we learned something from it.”
Poston said he appreciated the support during the tournament from their families and the other fishermen in the division. Both of them said they had a very enjoyable time.
“It was just a great, fun trip,” Jones said. “The whole time we were there we had a great time. I just thank God it came out the way it did. It was just our time, I guess.”


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