Thirteen teams competed in Sunday's LERA Bass Club tournament on Lake Cypress. Of those, only two teams managed a tournament limit of 5 fish and they earned the top two places. Ralph Litton of Vero Beach and Steve Bistarkey of Palm Bay took first place with a total of 13.36 lbs. Second place was earned by the team of Bob Barnette of Port St. John and Dwayne Haga of Titusville with a total of 10.07 lbs. Third place was captured by the team of Larry Cruce of Titusville and Bill Boyett of Cocoa with 4 fish weighing in at 8.63 lbs.
Ralph Litton earned Big Bass honors by catching a 3.83 lb fish which narrowly edged out a fish caught by the team of Chris and Dale Mitchell, who were competing in their first LERA Bass Club tournament, by just 14 hundredths of a pound.
By far, the most exciting day on the water was had by the 3rd place finishers. While driving on plane to their first planned fishing spot of the day, the motor on Bill's boat blew a cylinder. Determined to make the best of this unfortunate incident, they opted to just fish where fate had left them. After a full day of fishing, they found themselves about 5 miles from the weigh-in site and prudently decided to start limping back to the ramp about ninety minutes prior the start of the weigh-in. Eighty minutes later, they were 4 miles from the weigh-in and coming to terms with their inevitable disqualification for being late to the weigh-in by more than 15 minutes. That's when another LERA Bass Club team's boat went flying past and made an abrupt u-turn when they realized what was going on. In accordance with club rules, Larry quickly transferred their catch to the live well of the other boat and climbed aboard for the quick trip to the boat ramp leaving Bill and his crippled boat to limp along agonizingly. The other team, now with Larry and his team's fish aboard took off for the ramp unsure if they would make it in time. If they didn't, both teams would be penalized because they would both be late. After the short trip, which seemed to take much longer than it actually did, the boat came off plane and breached the no wake zone at the Lake Cypress public ramp with a full two minutes remaining unknowingly preserving Larry and Bill's 3rd place finish.