Day one – Meet up with Birddog at the intersection of 231 and I10 early in the morning. Loaded up all of my equipment and we headed west. Two hours later we arrive at our place of residence - Ono Island, Alabama.
We unpack our gear and launch the boat and head out in search of the elusive Alabama redfish. First spot we roll up on produces two keeper reds and two trout in about five casts.
Mr. Denny Blume, the neighbor of our host was kind enough to show us the ends and outs of the sailboat we were staying on – had requested some fish if we caught any. So we find ourselves with a few fish real quick, but not knowing the regulations of Alabama. I tell Birddog to call Big T he is in front of a computer, Big T tells us what we need to know and we go back to fishing. We go back to fishing thinking we are going to catch up some great redfish and trout for a couple of days. Little did we know…with hurricane Ike do south of our location, the great fishing only turned into two more redfish for this day. Day one started out with a bang and ended in a dribble – things only got worse.
Day two – We launch from the sailboat and head off into tropical storm winds. We fish here and there…over yonder and up there…at 10:30 in the morning we say this is insane fishing conditions and call it figuring the worst will be today. We cease all fishing activity and call it a day.
Ironically the water is so high our host decides to kill the power to our sailboat and moves us into the house.
At the house are two beautiful English bulldogs – Sally and Sassy.
We more or less hung out around the house, hoping the wind would lay…looked at some maps and tried to figure something out for the next day.
Mr. Blume stops by and asks how was fishing and we gave him the great news – not to good. He says, “The wind is suppose to be even higher tomorrow, around 40 mph.”
We are in a pickle, can’t fish cause the wind is blowing a gale and the tournament is scheduled for Saturday.
Day Three – We decide to load the boat and head over to LuLu’s and launch the boat in the intercoastal waterway. Our thought was the wind was going to be 35-40 out of the southeast – fishing the eastern side of Mobile bay would be protected. Well let me tell you, when the wind is over 20 there is nowhere to hide, nowhere. We fished on the eastern bank and could hardly hold the boat on the bank. The wind was horrendous and Mobile bay wasn’t to calm.
We call it a day around 2:00 with only a small trout and croaker to show for our valiant efforts.
We head to the house thinking man this place sucks – we are going to lay down a goose egg so big they will see it in Tallahassee on Saturday.
We get cleaned up and head off to the Captain’s meeting at LuLu’s. We check in and draw number 20. I mosey over to the raffle ticket table and pick up two tickets. Being well taught on raffle tickets by Atticus and Littoral, my raffle ticket procurements were going to be staggered. We grab a nice cool drink and chat it up with Capt. Pete Turner, Jason Melvin, Fred Myers and Dwayne Eschete. There was a lot of chatter about the tournament being postponed until Sunday. I stroll up to the raffle ticket counter and procure three more tickets. Jerry takes control of the meeting, goes through all the rules, and announces that the tournament is postponed until Sunday. We say great another day of looking for fish, maybe we can find some.
The raffle commences – they got through all the prizes – solar bat sunglasses, outboard oil, and boat electronics. I’m thinking great I wasted $25 dollars. The grand prize number is 023…Birddog says, “Chalk!” I look at the numbers, they match. We won a Minn Kota 36 volt trolling motor. Big Mike commences to tell us that nobody has ever won the trolling motor and the tournament. We are like that is probably going to hold true, cause we haven’t caught anything hardly.
Day Four – We discuss running back to Navarre and checking the spots that yielded a six-place finish back in June for us. We decide to launch and check a few spots around Perdido before heading east. We end up hooking a few fish through the morning. Most of the fish would come off after being hooked up. We marked two new spots, which gave us a total of four spots that we had caught/hooked fish.
We head off to the east and don’t see or hook a single fish.
Our plan has always been to find fish and fish those spots – no deviation from plan. We had four spots to live and die by on tournament day.
Day Five ”Tournament Day” – This morning for me started about 1:00 am. The power would stay on for 10 minutes and cut off for 10 seconds. I’m a light sleeper, so it doesn’t take much to wake me. This went on until I finally got up around 4:00. My partner next door was laying some Z’s down though, glad someone was getting some good rest.
We hook up the boat and head to the ramp at 5:00. We launch and head over to the staging area. Around 6:10 they ask us to start staging in numerical order. 6:15 and Fred and Dwayne are first out the gate in the M&M’s Ranger - nineteen boats later we leave. We head east and get passed by just about every boat except the one boat that we passed.
We head straight to spot number one and start fishing. I hook up with the first red of the day and he was maybe five inches long. We go through a couple of trout, but no reds in the sweet spot. I troll us out and around the point onto some sand. Birddog locks into a fish. I pull the trolling motor, power pole down, get the net and reel my lure in all of about three seconds. I net the fish, lay the fish in the bottom of the boat and we bump knuckles and we say “no goose egg for us today.” I get back up, keep casting a few minutes later I get bit, get the fish to the boat, and Birddog lands him. The fish ate the spoon like it was cotton candy. In the livewell the fish goes, we have a limit.
Off to spot number two – nothing.
Off to spot number three…I can’t remember much from here, but I will go through the highlights. We run these three spots several times, each pass produces a fish or two. We fished towards a dock and a local fisherman is fishing towards us. Birddog throws and he laughs – I say what? He says my lure landed three inches from that other guys and then Birddog bows up on a good fish and we land the fish. The local guy not impressed leaves the area.
We move back to spot number one – we work down the point and I see something coming down the bank. It’s a red rubbing down the bank heading towards the boat. It’s at the boat, it’s at my feet…it’s between the trolling motor and my feet. I make a 2 foot cast…the fish sees the spoon flash at my feet and spins around and eats. I set the hook, but the hook pulls…the fish runs away from the boat. Birddog makes five casts into the area and hooks and lands what we believe is the same fish.
We manage to catch a few more fish and it’s getting close to time to head back towards the check in…we allow enough time to check a spot Paul Chavis had mentioned to us. We arrive at the spot…Birddog make a cast down the bank and locks into an upgrade. We land the fish…drop the net in the boat floor and I cast my spoon out…my rod doubles over…we land my fish…it is not an upgrade so we toss it. We take the fish I caught in the morning and release it. The two fish are cookie cutter in size….we head to the weigh in.
We check our fish in…the weights are 5.49 & 5.48 – 10.97 lbs
We chill out taking in the weigh in - we talk to Dwayne and Fred, they only had one fish. We are thinking we might be able to squeak by them and take the division. No thoughts of thinking we have a winning weight. That is until some guy says are you the guys that broke 10 pounds? We say yes and he says congratulations you won. We are like holy crap, no way…in denial. Then over the PA the words of Robert Green please report to the stage are announced. We are freaking out by now…we go to the stage. All they wanted to know was were we in the Calcutta. We head back to our spot in the back…all the spots are awarded with exception to first place. Then they call Robert Green and Jim Chalkley to the stage. That’s it – we won the Gulf Shores IFA Redfish tour event. We finished second in the division behind Fred Myers and Dwayne Eschete by only one point.
We have to give thanks to Paul Chavis for showing us a few places to investigate. We actually put our better fish in the boat around two spots he told us to check out. We also need to thank our families and friends for supporting us through this long week. Special thanks goes to Mr. John, Ms. Sandra, and Mr. Blume, Mr. Freddie and Ms. Linda for taking care of us while on Ono Island. They all are truly some of the best people that you could ever meet.
We got interviewed for television and thanked all the sponsors – Capital City bank, Pickett’s Landing, Paradise Grill, Grand Panama Beach Resorts and Challenger Tackle. I told the story of how my wife dreamed that we won this event, which she did…everyone got a kick out of that.
Hindsight is always 20/20 – Birddog and me were talking on the way home and I told him I wish we could have done one thing different. He said what is that. I said we forgot to thank Tom Keels for creating BigBendfishing.net. If it had not been for Tom creating this site – odds are we would of never meet. Thanks goes to Tom Keels for creating BigBendFishing.net, a place of fishing and friendship.
Pictures from Birddog and Chalk's Big Adventure -
Our home for one night
The Oar house aka the bar
The boat was named Paradise
Chill'n
The crib
The crib and oar house
Sweet Bulldog
The girls - Sassy and Sally
Chalk and Sassy singing
Chalk and Sassy kissing
Birddog catching a bass while redfishing
Finding redfish in someone yard is tough
The beginning of the ramp is behind me - we loaded the boat in the parking lot
These people are walking down a paved road
Some video
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Some more video
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We won
Thanks to Birddog for being a great partner and friend.
Awesome trip and even more awesomer report!!!!
There's some good people here and I like seeing good things happen to good people 
