Former champion bass fisherman David Fritts of Lexington will be among the top 77 professionals and 77 co-anglers competing for a $1 million top prize in bass fishing’s world championship on Lake Murray in Columbia, S.C., this coming weekend.
The anglers represent 31 states and Japan in the $2 million Forrest Wood Cup.
Fritts won the title in 1997.
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Wildlife classes: Melody Wilkes will lead eight-week courses for home schoolers age 7 and up.
The classes will be at the Cabarrus County Cooperative Extension office at 715 Cabarrus Ave. West in Concord. Cost is $85 per student. Classes meet Mondays from noon-1:30 p.m. and begin Aug. 25.
Each museum-based program consists of hands-on items with rare and endangered artifacts from U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, interactive educational displays, a slide show presentation and live animal demonstrations.
The schedule is Aug. 25: Wetlands; Sept. 8: Agribusiness and Environmental Field Days at the Cabarrus Arena and Events Center, Sept. 15: Plant ID Hike; Sept. 29: Birds; Oct. 6: Owl Pellet Dissection; Oct. 13: Animal Races; Nov. 3: Conservation; Nov. 10: Community Wildlife Service Project
For more information, contact Wilkes at 704-436-9048 or visit www.awalkinthewoods.us. To register call Cynthia Brown or Heather Jones at 704-920-3310.
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ENNIS, Mont. (AP) ó Alroy Billiman, 28, stood at the front of a drift boat floating on the Madison River.
With the handle of the fly-fishing rod tucked in his right armpit, he used his left hand to repeatedly pull bright-green line from the reel and create a few feet of slack.
He’s right handed, but he’s learned to make do without it.
He lost his right arm while serving with the U.S. Army in Iraq. He was driving when a roadside bomb exploded.
“I drove over it and it blew right underneath me,” he says. “It took my arm off.”
He’s had to readjust his entire life.
“When I lost my arm, everything was another learning experience,” he says. “But there’s always a way.”
He’s even found a way to fly fish. But he wouldn’t have even been here if not for Warriors and Quiet Waters, a local nonprofit organization that flew Billiman and his wife in from San Diego. The foundation also flew in two Marines and another Army soldier and their spouses for five days of all-expenses paid fly fishing.
Since 2007, the foundation has been reaching out to soldiers injured in Iraq or Afghanistan, said retired Marine Col. Eric Hastings, board director. The foundation flew in 14 injured servicemen last year and 32 this year.
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OCEAN CITY, Md. (AP) ó A Berlin man is atop the leader board at the annual White Marlin Open in Ocean City.
It’s billed as the world’s largest billfish tournament with $3 million in prize money at stake. The fisherman who lands the biggest white marlin will earn nearly $1 million.
Tommy Hinkle caught the 81-pound marlin last Monday aboard the Fish Whistle, based in Indian River, Del. Hinkle is just ahead of Timonium’s Rodger Mooney, who also caught an 81-pound marlin, fishing aboard the Hatterascal, which is based in New Bern, N.C.
The competition is in its 35th year.
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MIAMI (AP) ó A commercial fisherman is charged with poaching thousands of spiny lobsters with traps that damaged coral reefs and sea grasses in sensitive marine waters, in a case that spotlights an ongoing problem off the Florida coast.
U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said the charges announced last week against David W. Dreifort, 41, reflected one of the largest lobster poaching operations ever prosecuted in the southeastern U.S.
More than 6,000 lobster tails were confiscated after Dreifort was arrested. That’s about 1,000 times the legal bag limit for Florida’s just-completed lobster sport diving mini-season. And officials said most of them were taken from protected seabeds of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
At up to $20 a pound, this one batch of confiscated lobster tails could have been sold to local fish houses for about $30,000. Hundreds of divers take part in the annual sport mini-season, which this year claimed the lives of four people searching for the popular crustaceans.