What a long weekend…

Friday night was the 1st Annual Hooters Saltwater Cowboy Fishing Tournament. My friend Jed really wanted to fish it and asked me to fish with him. I have to admit that I wasn’t really excited. Inshore fishing isn’t one of my strengths. And snook is like my unicorn… my moby dick… the fish i just can not catch. But Jed and his friend Sean… they kill alot of snook… I was willing to bet on them. Besides, 1st prize was $1000. A $50 registration was like betting on my friends and I to win that money. I was game!

The captains meeting was at Hooters at 7pm… we were released at 9pm to start fishing. Jed, Sean, Derek and I were one of the first boats to leave Hooters and stopped right away on the river at one of their best snook holes. As I’m quietly dropping the anchor as to not spook any fish, I’m also watching tournament boats slowly passing us by in the no wake zone. Not 15 minutes go by and Sean’s first cast brings up a 31″ Snook… the fish we thought was going to be the hardest one to catch was just landed! Another 15 minutes go by and Jed gets a big hit on his rod. I start reeling in my line to get it out of his way and BAM! My rod doubles over and I’m hooked up. DOUBLE HOOKUP! Jed gets his fish to the boat first and it’s a 21″ redfish. I get my fish to the boat and its another redfish! Mine is bigger at about 25″. This was an AWESOME start to the tournament. In the first hour we had two of the three fish required for weigh in that were upper slot sized! Things were looking good. We just need a trout to qualify. I knew from this point on that it was not going to be easy to find a trout. The trout fishery is just not what it used to be in this area and I know everyone is going to take that for granted.

We knew we only had time to hit a couple more spots while the tide was good so we made a run south to one of Sean’s spots. Nothing. We made the run back up north to a hole in Hudson that we know only old guys fish for redfish. Sure enough, it was loaded with redfish. We got 4 more redfish… one beating mine at 26″. It was about 3am now and we desparately needed a trout. Luckily I landed a 16″ dinky sized trout at about 5am that would at least qualify us for weigh in. The tide was slacked and there wasn’t much we could do so we anchored up in the river, pitched a few baits, and pretty much took naps. Around 630am the sun started to come up. We were all re-energized. We only had about 6 more hours to fish. Chances of catching another snook or redfish that would beat what we already had was slim. The team decided that our biggest increase in weight would be a trout. So that’s what we set out for.

We called fellow anglers to see how they were doing and to see if we could get a tip on where the trout were at. It seemed that we were doing pretty well at that point since nobody else even had the slam (snook/redfish/trout). We got a tip to head south to Dunedin for some monster trout. None of us were familiar with the area and didn’t want to take the risk in wasting 40+ minutes driving each way. But we did run south to Three Rooker island and then to Anclote island and then to a deep hole I have marked off of the Anclote sandbar. There was only short grouper there but at least we were on the fish. We just needed to find the right depth now. We were in 14′ of water and headed inland to 10′. Nothing…. on to 8′. Nothing… on to 6′. We were running out of jig heads, plastic baits, and TIME! We killed jed’s supply of Gulp jerkbaits and the Gulp shrimp weren’t cutting it. Sean and I eventually switched to my DOA Cal jerbaits to cover more water, faster. I must’ve had 6 or 7 different colors and one by one I went through them to see which one the trout liked that day. Jed eventually gave up on the Gulp Shrimp and asked me for a DOA. I remembered that I had one reserve pack of a special color left in my bag so i threw it at Jed. He freaks out and says OMG THIS IS MY FAVORITE COLOR! It was Avocado Red Glitter. Jed rigs one up and casts it out. BAM! 21″ trout! Not only did we improve our trout weight but we now had a very respectable trout that we knew we would be key to us possibly winning. We fished a little bit longer and the Avocado Red Glitter proved to be the sure thing for trout. We landed several more trout up to 18″ and called it a day. We got to weigh in a full hour early just to relax and get some lunch.

Alot of really nice boats that I didn’t see at the captains meeting had showed up. It’s pretty intimidating seeing those boats in the same tournament as you. It’s also pretty obvious that those guys are professional guides that are nationally sponsored. All in all there were something like 25 teams in the tournament. Only 6 qualified for weigh in! That trout really did mess eveyrone up! We had weighed in at 16.7lbs… putting us in 2nd place so far. The team just before us had an even 18lbs. The next team weighed in at 15lbs or some and THEN WE WON 2ND PLACE!!!!!! That trout really proved to be the key since it beat out every other trout by almost 2lbs!!!

Left: Me driving with my Tarpon mask and Team WayFar shirt on.
Right: Fish or Die!

Jed and Sean with our prized Snook