Texas East Division

Despino Tire service Kick Off Tournament

Tournament date February 7, 2026

Toledo Bend

Texas East started 2026 with an explosion!  We were blessed to have 161 teams sign up for the Despino Tire Services Kickoff Event on beautiful Toledo Bend!

Friday evening  found our teams heading to First Baptist Church in Hemphill Texas for check in and a time of great food and fellowship!  Daron Skero provided us with unbelievable pulled pork BBQ, as he has done for so many years now, and it was off the charts as we served up close to 400 plates!  What an awesome team led by Karen Barnett who is brand new to the Texas East team, as she got indoctrinated by fire! We are so very proud of our Texas East Team!  They put together baked beans potato salad with cake for dessert.  It was all smiles on the crowd’s faces as they visited with, ( I overheard lot’s of “Fish” stories, LOL), old and new friends.  The Holy Spirit was present and moving when our speaker, Dave Edwards, brought a moving message challenging our family with this question, “Is Christ “In” your boat?”.  We had over 30 people ask Jesus into their hearts and into their boats!  The Kingdom and our fishing family have grown and we are so excited for them!  We gave out thousands of dollars in door prizes for our anglers, and their families as they headed out to rest up for a competitive day on the lake.

Saturday found us set up at the new SRA park “Sabine Town” which is the site for the National Championship this year.  The weather was perfect and consequently every angler stayed on the water to the last minute, so our scales were pretty quiet until around 3:30.  When the teams started showing up we realized that this was going to be a special day because the sacks were spectacular.  For the very first time we offered a “No-Scope” bonus and the first sack that came across the scales weighed in over 29 pounds of no scope fish! This only led to sack after sack of great catches, a lot of which were “No-Scope”.  When all were weighed the team of Cody Pitt and Lane Masters took first place overall honors with a 31.13 stringer!  Second place went to the team of Maguire Parker and Drake Wadsworth with a bag tipping the scales at 30.13.  Drake also had Big Bass Honors with a near record 12.95 toad!  Third place overall and first place “No-Scope” went to the team of Cole and Tim Stewart with a 29.07 sack!  All the other standings are posted below.

Next month we head to Sam Rayburn where the water is low but in listening to our anglers that just means the fish are consolidated so we expect another great competitive event.

Please remember that all entries must be in the Wednesday prior to the event.  We can’t wait to see everyone and your Texas East team is excited about serving you!  Our goal is to improve each time we meet so your input is welcome so please reach out to me, Teddy or any of our staff with suggestions.  I promise, we do listen!

Thank you all for your support of Texas East!

National Sponsors - 2026 

Fishers of Men would like to thank all our National Sponsors and Advertisers for their support and encourage you to look at their products:  

Falcon Boats, Berkley, Abu Garcia, Mercury, Fenwick, Realtree Fishing, Firefly Outdoor & Marine, Power-Pole, T&H Marine, Frogg Toggs, & Fish 419. 

Texas East would like to thank all of the local Donors and sponsors that make all that we do possible: 

O'Farrell Transport, Despino Tire Services, Best Stop-Toledo Bend,  Hope Legacy Collective, Beacon Wealth Management, Hubert Glass Oil Co., A-Y Wood Products, Daron Skero Family, Johnny Franks Family, Jim Pasagno Family, Jamie and Alice Polk family,  Billy Parker Construction, Coy Jennings family, Dan Hilton family, FBC Hemphill, FBC Broaddus, Six Mile Baptist Church, Sabine State Bank, Anderson's A/C, Pro Fishing Trips, Lost Frontier Park, Keith's Toledo Tackle