MINNEAPOLIS – Team Fish Fever 2/Strike Zone Melbourne, captained by Ed Mecchella of St. Simons Island, Ga., won the Land O’Lakes Team of the Year award on the Walmart FLW Kingfish Tour after accumulating 782 points over four qualifying events.
Those points also qualified Mecchella and his teammates, Marc Pincus and son Shawn Mecchella, for the no-entry-fee Walmart FLW Kingfish Tour Championship Nov. 14-16 in Biloxi, Miss., where the nation’s best kingfish teams will compete for a top award of $150,000. Team Fish Fever was followed by Team My Three Sons, Team Cat Daddy and Team Loose Lucy who each tallied 752 points.
“We’re very proud of the award; we worked hard for this,” said Mecchella, whose team won the 2002 Team of the Year award on the Southern Kingfish Association trail. “We did our homework this year and spent more days prefishing, which helped out a lot. To be able to do this twice, and in both circuits, is just awesome. To my knowledge, no other team has done that. We also run triple 350-horsepower 
Yamaha engines and they gave us the speed to outrun the competition while burning less fuel.”
Fish Fever started the Kingfish Tour season off with a $45,000 victory in Sarasota, Fla. After the Sarasota event, the team then took third in Venice, La., clearing a $10,000 check. Their success continued in Orange Beach, Ala., where Fish Fever took fourth, notching their third consecutive top-five finish. They wrapped up the qualifying season with a 14th-place finish in Wrightsville Beach, N.C.
“The most exciting tournament was Sarasota, our first Kingfish Tour victory. We made a 350-mile run on the final day. We knew the fish were there and we knew nobody else could get there. We only had an hour to fish, but once we got to our spot it was just incredible.
“But we’re not done yet,” added Mecchella. “We’re fired up for Biloxi. We know that area well and we’re going there to win.”
The Land O’Lakes Team of the Year title is determined by the total accumulated points from four regular-season events. Two hundred points are awarded for a win, 199 for second, 198 for third, and so on.
FLW Outdoors, named after Forrest L. Wood, the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, is the largest fishing tournament organization in the world. In 2008 alone the organization is offering more than 90,000 anglers the chance to win over $40 million through 230 tournaments in 10 circuits. FLW Outdoors also took fishing mainstream with the largest cash awards in the history of fantasy sports, $7.3 million.
For more information about FLW Outdoors and its tournaments, browse FLWOutdoors.com or call (270) 252-1000. For more information about FLW Fantasy Fishing and Player’s Advantage, visit FantasyFishing.com.