Brazos Bettys all-women fishing team to represent Granbury in Texoma tournament

The Granbury Brazos Bettys fishing team is looking to improve its best-ever fourth-place finish in the Southern Striper Babes while at the same time working toward bringing an all-woman fishing tournament to Lake Granbury this summer.

Team captain Rebecca Meadors and first-mate Catherine Sarsfield are old hands at the tournament, which will be June 12 at Cedar Hills Marina at Lake Texoma. This year, they welcome two new team members — Savannah Jewell and Brittaney Rogers — to join them in their quest for trophy stripers.

“It is so much fun, and we all have an amazing time when we go,” Meadors said. “It’s a great gathering where it’s not as much about who wins as it is about the family atmosphere. We are helping raise money for scholarships high school anglers and breast cancer awareness.”

Meadors grew up next to a creek just off Eagle Mountain Lake and spent a good deal of her youth with a fishing pole in hand. When she heard about the Striper Babes tournament, she knew she wanted to be a part of it and began looking for other ladies to participate in the two-division event.

Meadors hit the recruitment trail and struck gold close to home when her neighbor, Sarsfield, expressed an interest. Sarsfield was great at chunking a hotdog in just the right honey hole, but she was a little short on experience when it came to catching hybrid stripers.

The two women were not strangers to the water, and had experience in both motorboats and kayaks. Judging by their first-year fourth-place finish out of 52 teams in 2019, it didn’t take long before Catherine was also ready for competitive fishing.

“Rebecca won a guided fishing trip to Lake Whitney and invited me to go with her,” Sarsfield said.

Up until that time, Sarsfield had some perch and catfish on her dockside resume. When she landed that first striper, her attitude went from “What a pretty perch” to “I want another 21-inch fighter.”

“The tournament is amazing and so much fun,” Sarsfield said. “Hopefully, we will place again this year and represent our community and sponsors. We want them to be proud of us.”

This year, there is some added excitement as discussions between Visit Granbury’s director Tammy Dooley and SSB founder Misty Greene have come to light. It appears there is a possibility the organization will add an all-women’s tournament on Lake Granbury.

“We are so excited about having an all-women tournament coming to Granbury because it’s a whole new level of people coming to visit, shop, and stay here in our beautiful town,” Dooley said.

While the final details are still being ironed out, it appears the tournament will happen sometime this is summer. Meadors has been working for more than a year, helping to bring the event here, and after COVID delayed plans last year, she can’t wait to fish competitively on Lake Granbury.

“It’s exciting because it will help further publicize the sport of fishing for women,” Meadors said. “Granbury will be a great place to hold this kind of tournament because of the centralized location in Texas, and of course, there are all of the amenities our town has to offer.”

Meador said that if anyone is interested in becoming a sponsor for the team, they can contact her by emailing her at HeadHoncho@SilverSaddleSaloonGranbury.com