Only one weekend remains and Lonepine’s Mike Benson is poised to claim another Fall Mack Days tournament title.

Benson leads the anglers in the top 10 with 988 lake trout and an 18-day average of 49.06 in 26 days of fishing. Benson also won the final day of the heaviest bucket of fish competition after weighing in 14 pounds on Sunday. Benson and the other five anglers who caught four fish each braved on a very cold, snowy and windy day. Benson also turned in two $100 fish last weekend.

The overall bucket winner is Rick Skates, of Polson, who turned in a first-place bucket at 18.35 pounds on Sept. 18, and third place on Oct. 10 of 20.6 pounds.

In the overall standings, second place belongs to Sam Cusker of Bigfork who has 15 days in and a total of 706 fish.

Missoula’s Larry Ashwell is third with 642-32.61 over 23 days, while Scott Bombard of Missoula is fourth with 564-30.17-21 days. Terry Krogstad is fifth with 560-27.06-24 days.

Julie Perkins, of Kalispell, is the runaway leader in the Ladies category with 497 trout while second place belongs to Laurie Kreis with 280.

Larry Ashwell is leading the 70-and-over group with 642 while Florence’s John Gauci is second with 517.

Rich Ferris of Thompson Falls, Julie Perkins and Terry Krogstad each turned in $100 tagged lake trout while John Gauci had a $200 tagged fish.

Youth angler numbers have not changed. Tripp Bick, of Arlee, leads the 12-and-under with 13. Jeff Devlin, of Polson, leads the 13-17 group with 14.

The $10,000, three $5,000, and five $1,000 tagged lake trout have eluded anglers for

nine weeks. There are also over 9,000 with values from $100-$500.

Mack Days, sponsored by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, is a management tool used by fisheries managers to reduce numbers of non-native lake trout in Flathead Lake to increase populations of native bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout.

A total of 14,066 lake trout have been entered so far. Friday’s total was 205 lake trout entered, Saturday 354, and Sunday a hard-caught 33 entries. Anglers had to deal with frozen reels, lines, and fingers making it difficult to catch the lake trout.

Check out www.mackdays.com for information or call 406-270-3386.