BENTON, Ky. – Team Castrol – consisting of Captain Nick Parrish of Jacksonville, Fla., his son, Vann Parrish, and three friends, Lon Layton, Kenneth Dewitt and James Grieger – earned the Kingfish Tour Team of the Year award following the tour’s final regular-season stop. Parrish and his team will now advance to the FLW Kingfish Tour Championship Nov. 9-11 in Mount Pleasant, S.C., as the No. 1 seed with 759 points.
“We are totally thrilled,” said Parrish, whose team runs a Hydra-Sports Vector 3300CC powered by triple Yamaha 250 horsepower outboards. “We had a great time this year and everything seemed to fall into place. We still can’t believe it. I think I am still on cloud nine. We are fired up about the championship and next year even. We are just ready to go fishing. It was great to finish this well when we are fishing against this caliber of fishermen, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this sport.”
Team Castrol trailed Team Triple Gobble by two points going into the Southport tournament, and they knew they were going to have to fish hard to take the Team of the Year crown. Ultimately, that is exactly what they did, finishing in 11th place and squeezing by Triple Gobble by 11 points.
Consistency was the name of the game for Team Castrol as they netted two top-10 finishes (eighth at Sarasota, Fla., and fourth at Beaufort, S.C.) along with an 11th-place showing at Southport and a 22nd-place finish at Fort Pierce, Fla.
“Now we can go into the championship and worry about only one thing – winning,” Parrish said. “That would be the way to top off this great season.”
While the team will be far from their home waters in Jacksonville, they say they are ready to make a run for the championship title, as Mount Pleasant is just 50 miles up the coast from Beaufort, the site of their best finish this season.
The $1.82 million FLW Kingfish Tour consists of four regular-season events. After these four events are complete, the top 50 teams compete in the three-day, no-entry-fee $500,000 FLW Kingfish Tour Championship. The winner of the championship will earn as much as $150,000.
As the FLW Kingfish Tour Team of the Year, Team Castrol will receive free entries into the 2007 FLW Kingfish Tour.
Named after the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, Forrest L. Wood, FLW Outdoors administers the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, Wal-Mart FLW Series, Stren Series, Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League, Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail presented by Abu Garcia, Stratos Owners’ Tournament Trail, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League, Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour, Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Series, Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series and Wal-Mart FLW Striper Series. These circuits offer combined purses exceeding $37.9 million through 249 events in 2006.
For more information about FLW Outdoors and its tournament programs, browse FLWOutdoors.com or call (270) 252-1000.
Wal-Mart and many of America’s largest and most respected companies support FLW Outdoors and its tournament trails. Wal-Mart signed on as an FLW Outdoors sponsor in 1997 and today is the world’s leading supporter of tournament fishing. For more information about Wal-Mart, visit Wal-Mart.com.