Redneck Fishing Tournament

A few months ago, Trevor was watching ESPN and they were doing some show on the "Redneck Fishing Tournament" in Bath, Illinois. It's a fishing tournament to try and get rid of Asian Carp. They're taking over the rivers and they want to exterminate them before they reach the great lakes.

I'm sure many of you have seen videos of these carp, either in an email video or onAmerica's Funniest Videos or something. They're the fish that jump out of the water. A lot of times they'll jump right in the boat. Trevor thought it looked like a fun trip to make. So, with our friends Jared and Marci, we decided to make it a road trip.
Please don't look too closely, I'm not really that big of a poser...

We left one evening and drove all night, getting there the next evening to Bath, Illinois.

The fishing tournament lasted two days over the weekend (Friday and Saturday), and it was SO MUCH FUN!

Tournament rules say you can't use a pole (you don't need one), but you can use a net or a bat. :) We caught around 130 fish between the four of us the first day. The tournament had two heats both days--each heat lasts two hours--but Friday we only got through one and a half heats and ran low on gas. There is no gas station in this tiny town, so we had to fill up in the next town over.

This is only about 60 fish after the first heat. Disclaimer: Those are all fake tattoos. Although some drunk guys asked Marci where she got hers...




There were a TON of fish to catch Friday. Sometimes it was all you could do to shield your face and forget about catching because there were so many fish jumping. We were so covered in fish slime and fish scales by the end of the day, it was disgusting. There were a lot of boats, but nothing compared to Saturday's madness. Friday was "Redneck Costume" day. I'm pretty sure a lot of these people weren't in costume...but they could definitely win :) This fishing tournament draws some interesting people. And some drunk ones. Marci and I got hit on more than we ever have in our lives--a lot of times with Trevor and Jared right there with us. We're hot in Illinois! :)

Our costumes were ok, but Marci's was the best with her helmet (this is common so you don't get smacked in the face with a fish--a lot of people get broken noses, etc.) with a rubber chicken duct taped to the top. :) There were several tv stations, as well as the travel channel and photographers for ESPN, etc. Marci got so many interviews because of her chicken helmet. Pretty funny stuff. She also had a boat full of photographers following us around for 45 minutes snapping millions of pictures of her catching fish. Love that girl.

Saturday was less exciting, there were WAY too many boats trying to load off one tiny boat ramp. The fish weren't jumping as much, so we left a little early to try and get an earlier start back home. We only caught about 10 fish in the first heat. Sad. I wish we got some more pictures of the fish jumping, but we didn't get a lot of action shots...the boat full of photographers said they'd send some to us so stay tuned :)

We drove all night again and got home Sunday evening so everyone could get back to work. We stopped by Mount Rushmore for a quick look.

Thanks Grandma Strupp for watching the kids! We had a blast and I know they did, too.