Eschete, Pizzolato win Walmart FLW title

Local fisherman Dwayne Eschete of Mandeville hooked up with Blake Pizzolato of Montgomery, Texas, to lead Team M&Ms to the Walmart FLW® Redfish Series Championship in Biloxi, Miss., recently with a three-day total of six redfish weighing 57 pounds, 5 ounces. The anglers captured the top prize of $75,000, which included a $25,000 Yamaha bonus.

“I feel so overjoyed,” said Eschete, who has won more than $110,000 in FLW Redfish Series events. “Ranger, Yamaha, FLW, if it wasn’t for these guys, none of this would even be possible.”

“We were in 5- to 6-foot waves out there today,” Eschete said. “It took us three hours to get 125 miles one way in the rough water. We ran 48 miles per hour across that water. Our body parts will hurt tomorrow, but it was worth it today.”

“We didn’t have anything else and we knew we had to go,” Pizzolato added. “We knew to have any chance in the world we would have to take a beating three days in a row. It was worth it.”

Eschete said the team fished all three days in the waters of South Pass near Venice, La. Eschete said the team used Mango Ripple-colored Berkley 4-inch Gulp! Shrimp under a cork with a ?-ounce jighead to target redfish that were cruising for mullet in 2 feet of water on a sandbar.

“We just staked off and waited for the fish to pass,” Eschete said.

Eschete said the team caught 15 fish in the 19 minutes they fished on the final day of competition.

“The first day we got out there and struggled a little bit,” Eschete said. “But we caught good weight. Then the second day we caught good fish and left, and we just hoped the third day would be better.”

Eschete and Pizzolato opened the tournament with two fish weighing 17-08 Thursday.

They added another two fish weighing 18-03 on Friday, which broke the record for a single-day catch in an FLW Redfish Series event of 18 pounds, 1 ounce, which was then broken by Team Berkley anglers John Henninger of Jacksonville, Fla., and John Eggers of Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Henninger and Eggers’ two fish weighed 19 pounds, 4 ounces.

On the final day of competition, Eschete and Pizzolato smashed that record again with two redfish weighing 21-10 and capped off the championship win.

Rounding out the top five teams were Robby Weyel of Comfort, Texas, and Brian Talley of Houston (six redfish, 51 pounds, 6 ounces, $14,000); Henninger and Eggers (six redfish, 50 pounds, 9 ounces, $10,700); Charlie Thomason of Covington and Britt Ordes of Slidell (six redfish, 50 pounds, 5 ounces, $4,600) and Shawn Walker of Crystal River, Fla., and Fred Walker of Ocala, Fla. (six redfish, 46 pounds, 6 ounces, $6,600).

Teams caught 10 redfish Saturday weighing 83 pounds, 1 ounce.

The Walmart FLW Redfish Series Championship was a three-day event with up to 100 teams, including the top 50 from the Western Division and top 50 from the Eastern Division after four qualifying tournaments in each division competed Thursday and Friday. The top five teams, based on heaviest combined weight, advanced to Saturday’s final round. The winning team was determined Saturday based on the heaviest three-day accumulated weight.