Ironman Catfish Results

This report comes to you via Ed Strickland who was there, and a link to The Heart of a Sportsman, our Brothers from Cornerstone who put this on. I'll throw in a few of Ed's pictures, but if you click on the in link above, you can see each of the 3 churches and read their version of the trip as it is good. If anyone knows the blog from Stanleyville, please send it to us and we'll link to it.


From Ed:

Well it's official, the Ironman Catfish tournament is in the books. Did we win?....well no, was God honored? Absolutely. What an amazing evening of what our ministry is all about, fun and fellowship with other Christian men, 70 to be exact between the three churches. Seventy guy's that had never met came together and ate an awesome meal, laughed and acted like we had been friends all our lives.


As many of you know it started out with a ton of trash talking by the guy's from Cornerstone, and that video. And when we arrived, just before dinner they announced that they were in a Christian way going to "put a monkey stomping on us" meaning Colonial and Stanleyville.

Well, I'm sad to announce they delivered, 98lbs later in 10 fish and well... Enough about that! The truth of the matter is we had an awesome time. We had twenty-three from Colonial Outdoors and two ringers in Jamie Olive and David Moss Jr. We really worked hard to prepare for this event. Jamie led the charge with advise for many of us who had never fished for catfish. Chris Crumm went out Thursday night to catch some bait and Dale Strickland, Cody Pigot and David Moss spent almost all day of the event catching our bait in some local farm ponds. We were stoked. But in our defense, none of us but Jamie have ever even been on High Rock Lake. We knew we had our work cut out for us, and we knew these guy's could catch some big cat's, but we felt we could make a decent showing. We are kind of like an expansion team in the world of cat fishing, I mean let's face it, it's hard to go to New York and beat the Yankees, but you give us a season or two and it will be on like donkey kong.

I must say Thanks to the guys from Heart of a Sportsman,Cornerstone Church for all their hard work putting this on, and thanks for including Colonial Outdoors. Thanks to the gang at Stanleyville for participating with us, you guys did an awesome job. And the men from both of these churches are some of the most Christ like guys I have ever met.

You know, the neatest thing of all is this, Colonial Outdoors did not even exist a year ago, and God put it all together, and put Jeremy and the folks at Cornerstone in our life and in just a little bit of time we had the awesome opportunity to participate in an event like this, and I am certain it want be the last. Oh! By the way, we finished third, and it takes a man to admit that.

Gratuitously plagiarized from their website, the words are good enough to reprint:

Impressed by the large number of men at the event, I heard one guy say before we started and after seeing all the boats beached along the shoreline at the tournament that “the night was already a success even if we didn’t wet the first hook.” Another fella said, “it’s awesome to see this many guys who don’t even know each other come together for a night of fellowship.” One church leader said, “Just think, one year ago our guys didn’t even know each other and now we’ve got over 20 dudes together for this event.” That’s what it’s all about. We came together to not only fish but to glorify the one who created the fish, and the lake and the land around the lake: the Almighty God.

Seeing all these men come together made me think of those guys that Jesus used. They were regular men. Many were tough, rugged men - Men who liked to fish – just like these guys. He chose 12 regular men just like this to change the world. Imagine what He can do with 70! It is my prayer that we fish for men as hard as we fish for fish!
God is good all the time...and all the time God is good!



Special congratulations to Brian Cain of Stanleyville Baptist go for the biggest fish of the night (28 pound flat head catfish) and Eddie Ritchie of Cornerstone for the smallest fish (unable to register a weight on the scales). Oh yes, Cornerstone did get lucky and won the Ironman trophy with 98 pounds of cats on the night – but the real trophy was hanging out with 70 cool dudes. Thanks for all the fun...we look forward to doing it again!