The format of The Big Joe was an open tournament and the big hitters showed up, but Rayburn played stingy for most of them! There were numerous reports of teams only catching 8-10 fish and they only being 2 pounders. This left a lot of teams scratching their heads at the end of the tournament on Sunday.

To nobody's surprise, the team of Clayton Boulware and Albert Collins brought in a stringer weighing 20.59 pounds. Boulware and Collins both placed in the money on Saturday in the ABA Ram series tournament with Collins winning first and $5,000. So everyone knew these two together were going to be a threat on Sunday. At the end of the day, their 20 pound stringer was the only one we saw all weekend and held up for the win. Boulware and Collins left the pavilion Sunday evening with a check for $1,200.

The team of Jody Norsworthy and John Scott, not only won second place with 17.76, but they also won big bass honors with a 8.08 bass. They took home the biggest check of the tournament good for $1,300. Not far behind Norsworthy and Scott was the team of Marc Shaw and Tuff Sherman with their solid 5 fish limit of 17.52.

We offered something new for The Big Joe Tournament called The Average Joe Incentive. This was paid out to the highest placing Average Joe Team that also entered on Saturday. The father/son team of Bill & Chris Stark used the V&M Jbug again on Sunday, just like did on Saturday, to not only win the Average Joe Incentive, which was good for $300, but they also finished 7th for the day and collected another $180 making their day on Sunday worth $480. The Starks took home almost $1,600 in cash and prizes for the weekend!