Donnie Dill and Bill Lasher Win wild card!
Shelbyville Lake, August 27, 2006, by Barry Featheringill

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Illini Team Trail Wildcard Tournament

Lake Shelbyville level: 599.53
Water Temp: 78 degrees
Sky: Partly Cloud to Sunny
Barometric Pressure; 29.92 Steady

Sunday August 27^th fifty-one teams took off the Illini Team Trail Wildcard event. Many of the teams were on the borderline of qualifying for the Classic to be held Sept 24^th and 25^th on the Ohio River a Golconda , IL . The top 20 teams by points were automatically qualified for the Classic. The winners from last year’s classic also received an automatic birth for the Classic. The next seven came from the top points winners of today’s tournament that were not already qualified for the classic.

Today’s winning team was the team of Donnie Dill and Bill Lasher with a winning weight of 16.60 pounds for five fish. They started off the morning with a few keepers and moved to another spot where they got another fish then later in the day moved to a spot that Donnie had been catching fish on for the past few months. Donnie was fishing a prototype bait that is called “dollysocker” that and is a big soft plastic bait that they were able to cull three of four fish in the last hour or so.

The second place team was Jim and Matt Carroll who weighed in five fish with a weight of 15.90 pounds. They caught their fish shallow in the backs of coves.

The third place team was Josh and Melvin Argo with 15.33 pounds of fish.

The big fish weighed in at 5.58 pounds and caught by the team of Shane Haslett and Jacob Hartke on a Carolina rigged lizard in about 18 feet of water.

The Anglers of the Year with a season point total of 604.42 points for the six tournaments was the team of Travis Boley and Terry Potts.

There were five teams that brought five fish limits to the scales. One hundred and sixteen fish were brought to the scales with a total weight of 302.56 pounds. There was only 1.27 pounds between the first place and third place team