If the winner is a participant in the Ranger Cup incentive program, he or she will receive a $2,000 bonus from Ranger Boats. If the winner is not a Ranger Cup participant, Ranger will award $1,000 to the highest-finishing Ranger Cup participant. That’s a potential top award of $8,000 for anglers who meet contingency guidelines.

Bombardier will award $1,000 to the winning boater if the winner’s boat is equipped with a qualifying Evinrude E-TEC or Direct Injection outboard.

The winning co-angler will earn as much as $3,000 cash.

Big Bass awards of up to $1,000 and $500, respectively, will also be awarded in the Boater and Co-angler Divisions.

Anglers may register for the tournament online at FLWOutdoors.com or by calling (270) 252-1000. Onsite registration will be held Aug. 7 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Walmart store located at 419 Market Square Drive in Maysville. Entry fees are $200 for boaters and $100 for co-anglers.

Maysville River Park & Marina in Maysville will host the takeoff and weigh-in at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., respectively.

The top 40 boaters and 40 co-anglers in each of the BFL’s 28 divisions at the end of the season advance to a no-entry-fee Regional Championship where boaters fish for a new Ranger boat and a Chevy truck and co-anglers fish for a new Ranger boat. Seven regional championships will each send six boaters and six co-anglers to the no-entry-fee Walmart BFL All-American presented by Chevy, which features a $1 million purse and a top award of $140,000 in the Boater Division and $70,000 in the Co-angler Division. Anglers who compete in all five regular-season events within a division but do not advance to a Regional Championship are eligible to compete in the Chevy Wild Card, which will also send six boaters and six co-anglers to the All-American for a total of 48 boaters and 48 co-anglers advancing through BFL competition.

The winning boater and winning co-angler at the All-American will advance to the no-entry-fee $2.5 million Forrest Wood Cup in Atlanta in 2010. This event, featuring a top award of $1 million, is the most lucrative tournament in all of competitive bass fishing. In all, the BFL offers weekend anglers the opportunity to qualify for three no-entry-fee championships with total cash awards exceeding $3.5 million. Plus, the top 40 boaters and 40 co-anglers from each BFL division may move up to the Stren Series™ for 2010 while All-American champions have the option to advance directly to the Walmart FLW Tour®.

The next Buckeye Division tournament, a two-day Super Tournament, will be held on the Ohio River in Lawrenceburg, Ind., Sept. 12-13.

Following the end of regular-season competition, the top 40 boaters and 40 co-anglers in the Buckeye Division will advance to the Kentucky Lake Regional Championship in Gilbertsville, Ky., Oct. 15-17 and will compete against anglers from the Arkie, Hoosier and Mississippi divisions for an All-American berth.

In BFL competition, boaters supply the boat and compete from the front deck against other boaters. Co-anglers compete from the back deck against other co-anglers.

As the nation’s leading provider of affordable, close-to-home weekend tournaments, the BFL is widely credited with opening competitive bass fishing to the masses. It also serves as a steppingstone for anglers who wish to advance to the Stren Series and ultimately the FLW Tour – bass fishing’s most lucrative tournament circuit.

Total awards are based on a full field of 200 boats in every tournament.

FLW Outdoors, named after Forrest L. Wood, the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, is the largest fishing tournament organization in the world. FLW Outdoors also is taking fishing mainstream with FLW Fantasy Fishing, offering the largest awards possible in the history of fantasy sports, $10 million in cash and prizes. Sign up for Player’s Advantage for only $10 to get your edge and win.

For more information about FLW Outdoors and its tournaments, visit FLWOutdoors.com or call (270) 252-1000. For more information about FLW Fantasy Fishing and Player’s Advantage, visit FantasyFishing.com.

www.FLWOutdoors.com

Media Contact
Robin Thweatt, FLW Outdoors (270) 252-1627 or rthweatt@flwoutdoors.com

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“You can catch them other places. The Kentucky River has sauger; in fact, we’re continuing to stock above pool 3. The Tennessee River below Kentucky Lake and Cumberland River below Lake Barkley have good numbers of sauger, and some pretty good-size fish, too, I believe. And I would think any of the Ohio’s tributaries should have sauger in them.

“But the Ohio River is our best for sauger.”

To read more, check out Gary Garth’s story at The Courier-Journal by following the link below.

During the spawn, there’s no dam site better than the Ohio River | courier-journal | The Courier-Journal

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Armed with stout conventional tackle and baited up with one-pound gizzard shad, Bruce Midkiff obviously had big cats in mind. An Ohio River cat fanatic who has since passed away, Midkiff found exactly what he was looking for that day in 1999. Fishing alone, he managed to land a 104-pound blue catfish, which stands as the state-record blue for Kentucky and Indiana.

Midkiff lived in Owensboro, so he did the bulk of his catfishing in the nearby Cannelton and Newberg lock-and-dam tailwaters and the Cannelton pool of the river. That said, great catfishing spots are spread along the entire Kentucky portion of the Ohio River, which extends more than 700 miles and forms the state’s entire northern border Most blue catfish are caught down- stream of Cincinnati, with the highest densities through the lower reaches of the river. Channels and flatheads abound throughout the river.

Large lock-and-dam structures break up the Ohio River, creating a string of 20 tailwaters and pools. The best catfishing overall occurs in the tailwaters and through the upper portions of the pools, where currents are generally the strongest. Cats put up in the immediate tailwaters, using current breaks of various sorts, and in deep river holes within the first several miles downstream of each dam.

Anglers fishing the tailwaters often fish vertically with three-way rigs, using enough weight to bounce their rigs along the bottom in the sometimes-strong currents. They commonly fish “gaps,” where turbines are off between others that are on, keeping the motor running to hold the boat in place and putting their lines straight down. Flathead anglers sometimes set up in slack areas, especially over deep waters beside rock or concrete structure associated with the locks and dams.

Downstream of the immediate tailwaters, most catfish specialists key on outside bends in the main river, where deep holes are well defined and easy to locate. Rockpiles and creek mouths also hold a lot of cats. By day, anglers fish the deepest parts of river holes, putting baits right on the bottom. For night fishing, most anglers set up on the holes’ upper-end slopes or even on flats immediately upstream of them.

For blue catfish, which are the most abundant large fish in the river, serious catfishermen almost all favor big chunks of cut bait- fish, with skipjack, gizzard shad and threadfin shad all being popular choices. Some anglers will fish whole baitfish; most will cut strips that are an inch or two wide.

As Midkiff was doing when he hooked up with the state-record blue, some anglers also will put at least one large live baitfish down, knowing that blues and flatheads will both take Eve shad or herring. Anglers who specifically break strength with a small diameter, which is beneficial in strong currents.

Because of the immense sizes that Ohio River catfish can grow to and the amount of current that often flows in the upper ends of pools, big-cat anglers use seriously stout gear. Most use fairly large conventional reels, stout fiberglass or E-glass rods, and a heavy line. A lot of fisherman favor 50- to 100-pound-test braided line. With braid, they get a very high break strength with a small diameter, which is beneficial in strong currents.

Except in the rockiest parts of tailwaters, where three-way rigs work best, most anglers use basic Carolina rigs with anywhere from an ounce of lead or 6 or 7 ounces, depending on the depths they are fishing and the amount of current that is flowing. They lay lines downstream, usually staggering cast lengths to cover more area, put the rods in holders and wait for the rods to surge down.

Hook sizes used for trophy cats range from 4/0 to about 10/0, with the larger- sized hooks usually being circle hooks. Circle hooks have gotten quite popular in recent years because anglers don’t need to know when to set the hook or how hard to yank They just leave reels engaged and the fish hook themselves. As importantly circle hooks usually hook cats in the corner of the mouth, which is extra significant as catch-and-release catfishing continues to gain popularity.

Of course, for every giant catfish in the Ohio River, there are loads of smaller blues and channel catfish, and they use a lot of the same types of areas. Therefore, anglers who want to go after big cats without forsaking likely action can put out a line or two rigged with a big chunk of bait and bait others with much smaller pieces of cut bait, chick- en fivers or commercial dip baits.

Whatever they bait up with, however, anglers must remain ready for anything. Any rod that rod goes down on the Ohio River could be bowing to the tug of a 5- pound catfish or a 50-pounder.

The Ohio River Fishing Guide, published by the Ohio River Fisheries Management Team and available through Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources offices, provides good information on access to all parts of the Ohio River. For more information, log onto www.kyafield.com.

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