Fredericksburg's Williams Wins Co-angler Title

HUDDLESTON, Va. (May 21, 2018) – Boater Rick Tilley of Moneta, Virginia, brought a five-bass limit to the scale weighing 18 pounds, 5 ounces Saturday to win the 2018 T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League (BFL) Shenandoah Division event at Smith Mountain Lake. Tilley earned $4,350 for his victory.

 "I was fishing up the Roanoke River – between the State Park and the bridge," said Tilley, who earned his first career win in BFL competition. "I was fishing the bank and everything that I caught was coming in less than 2 feet of water.

"There is a unique type of fishing here that a lot of the locals know about," Tilley said. "The shad spawn at night – between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. – and the bass sit on the rocks and you can throw a topwater bait and they will just annihilate it. With the cloudy conditions on Saturday morning, I knew the leftover fish from the night time would stay there and that they would come into play.

"I had most of my weight by 10:30-11 (a.m.)," Tilley went on to say. "All of my fish came on a blue and silver-colored Lucky Craft Sammy, although I did catch one smallmouth on a swimbait. The key was that you had to be dead up on the bank to catch them. After 12:30 I went deeper and tried to fish 'big fish' areas, but I never did upgrade."

The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:

              1^st:          Rick Tilley, Moneta, Va., five bass, 18-5, $4,350

              2^nd:         Scooter Lilley, Williamson, N.C., five bass, 17-12, $2,175

              3^rd:         Chad Green, Moneta, Va., five bass, 16-15, $1,451

              4^th:         Brandon Reynolds, Callands, Va., five bass, 16-7, $1,015

              5^th:         Todd Langford, Great Falls, Va., five bass, 15-15, $870

              6^th:         Dexter Andrews, King George, Va., five bass, 15-14, $798

              7^th:         Matthew Funk, Suffolk, Va., five bass, 15-12, $1,540

              8^th:         Martin Villa, Charlottesville, Va., five bass, 15-11, $653

              9^th:         Tommy Little, Chester, Va., five bass, 15-1, $580

              10^th:       Mike McDonald, Randleman, N.C., five bass, 15-0, $508

Funk caught a bass weighing 4 pounds, 14 ounces – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – to earn the Boater's Big Bass award of $615.

David Williams of Fredericksburg, Virginia, won the Co-angler Division Saturday after catching a five-bass limit weighing 16 pounds, 14 ounces. Johnson earned $2,582 for his victory.

Courtesy of FLW Communications.