By DAVID MILLER
Special to The Dispatch
Harold Rich is an “old-school” crappie angler.
He’s got a relaxed baritone drawl when he speaks, a delivery that’s accented by grandfather-like sense of humor.
When the Westport, Alabama native was asked Saturday about how his team won the Crappie Masters tournament at the Tennessee-Tombigbee River, he quipped, “we had the biggest stringer of fish.”
The 18.46-pounds, two-day total for Rich and teammate Ferrill Mitchell could be described in an equally simplistic way. When the pair received their $5,000 winner’s purse and Crappie Masters trophies, Mitchell made it a point to highlight his teammate’s methods for finding fish – a now-rudimentary method called “flashing.”
“[Rich] is a master at using the flasher, a Lowrance flasher,” Mitchell said. “It’s an obsolete flasher, but I’d put him up against anyone out here.”
A flasher is a type of sonar that provides a crude sketch of what structures are on the bottom of a river or lake. Most anglers today use more advanced GPS-enabled technology, which can map thousands of acres and provide accurate details of fish and structures.
“When it came out, I started using them and stayed with them,” Rich said. “Other stuff has come out that’s much better, but I know how to use flashers, so I stay with it.”
Rich and Mitchell weighed in at 9.45 pounds on Friday and brought 9.01 pounds to the scale Saturday afternoon at Columbus Marina, which hosted the tournament.
“We lost a couple of on the way to the boat,” Rich said. “We did everything we could.”
Mitchell said he and Rich used green and white Midsouth tubes and said the duo was prepared for the one-pole limit because “we one-pole fish all the time.”
“The current was bad today,” said Mitchell, of Northport. “It was hard to fish how we had before. We just hung in there, fished mostly the same stuff from yesterday today.
“We caught the last two biggest fish 30 minutes before we left.”
Columbus natives Danny Walden and Bob Adkins finished fourth with a two-day total of 17.15 pounds. They had the second-heaviest fish of the day at 1.60 pounds and fished primarily at gravel pits and Tibee Creek, Walden said.
“Sure, there’s a home-field advantage,” Walden said. “Most of the other teams don’t know that we were catching fish from two to 14 foot, and some people were surprised the fish had already moved back out that deep, but they have. It helps to know your waters.”
Even as bites were “funny” Saturday, the bites Walden and Adkins did get may have been enough to win the tournament if not for two or three that escaped lines close to the boat.
“We had a great tournament,” Walden said. “We caught three to four limits each day. The difference today in fourth and first was we lost three fish today. We didn’t lose any yesterday. In a tournament, you get that opportunity, you got to get hem in the boat.”
Larry Fulton and Brigg Abercrombie finished second with a two-day haul of 17.60 pounds, while Ray Looney and Will Evans took third at 17.24. Tim and Tom Fields rounded out the top 5 with 16.91 pounds.
The Crappie Master’s series will return to Mississippi for the National Championship at Grenada Lake on Sept. 29.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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