Redneck Fishing Tournament Results

I would have to say that my Uncle Jimmy is a redneck of epic proportions.

He only recently got a cell phone. Yes, in this day and age he only recently got a cell phone.

His rationale was that if someone wanted to get ahold of him that bad that they know where he lives.

He’s also one of the most avid fisherman that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, this is one of those things that prompted him getting the phone. He finally went fishing in a town where they had dismantled the last standing payphone in town.

Anyway, he does a lot of little tournaments. Nothing with big prize money, just one of those things that gives him things to do in is retirement on the weekends.

Despite his admitted Carolina redneckery, he does like going to the Midwest for fishing tournaments every now and again with some friend of his for something called the Redneck Fishing Tournament.

It’s almost as if this tournament was designed for him.

It takes place every year in Illinois, and is basically a way of getting rid of the thousands of invasive carp that live in the Illinois River.

He went this year as part of a team, and I have to say it is one of the more fun sounding ways of getting rid of an invasive species.

Over two dozen teams competed in the tournament, with a team called Carp Storm bringing in four hundred and forty three invasive carp.

Combined, the 29 teams caught 1,971 invasive carp. That haul was trucked off for processing into fish meal at Aquatic Protein in Beardstown, Ill.

The total haul of carp was somewhere around twelve thousand pounds, which if you have your calculator in the next room works out to around six pounds per fish.

Not a bad haul if I do say so myself.

With invasive species fouling up local ecosystems sometimes things have to be done like this to cull the population a little bit.

I have to say, it does sound like a good bit of fun. Anytime you can combine anything with fishing it is a good day.