Marshall Hughes and Cole Stewart, both of Hemphill, weighed 21.86 pounds to top a field of 171 teams in the Bass Champs East Texas Division finale held Aug. 1 on Toledo Bend.
Bass Champs’ summer protocol limits teams to three-fish bags. The winning bag averaged about 7.2 pounds per fish, including a 10.62 pounder that was the biggest fish of the event. Hughes/Stewart earned $21,350 for the win. Second place went to Joe and Halleck Wilkerson with 16.91 pounds.
In big league tournament news, nine Texans grabbed checks of $10,000 or more in the FLW Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit event held July 29-Aug. 1 on the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis.
Texas’ top finishers were Kyle Hall of Granbury, ninth with $17,000; Alton Jones Jr. of Lorena, 24th with $11,000; and Jim Tutt of Longview in 48th with $10,500. Others Texans who got paid were Lendell Martin Jr. of Nacogdoches, 55th; Todd Faircloth of Jasper, 64th; Alton Jones Sr. of Lorena, 67th; James Niggemeyer of Van, 72nd; Jordon Osborne of Longview, 77th; and Tommy Dickerson of Orange, 95th.
Local angler Tom Monsoor of La Crosse won the event with a four-day weight of 54.10 pounds. Monsoor, 71, is the oldest angler on record to win a FLW Pro Circuit event. He has held the record since 2017 when he won on the Potomac River in Marbury, Md.
With one qualifying event remaining on Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, several Texas anglers are in good position to nail down spots in the FLW Title Championship set for Aug. 24-29 on Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin. The Top 50 points qualifiers at the end of the season earn berths to the championship, which pays $200,000 the winner.
Texans inside the Top 50 with one regular event remaining are Jordon Osborne of Longview, 12th; Kyle Hall of Granbury, 17th; Lendell Martin Jr., 18th; Chris Brashear of Longview, 23rd; James Niggemeyer of Van, 34th; and Jason Reyes of Huffman, 39. Tommy Dickerson of Orange currently sits five spots out of the cut in 55th place.