We left Shields before daylight, headed east and watched the sun come up on our trip torwards Aucilla. We started fishing some offshore rocks hoping to pick up a big red or two. That water is DARK!!! The Pathfinder paid her dues on some boulders lurking beneath the surface while we fished
. I hooked a monster that subsequently broke me off a few minutes later. While I was pi$$ed he got off, we decided he was probabaly too big to measure.We decided to beat the banks. We fished hard for several hours with some hook ups, and missed fish here and there. Finally FM hooked into a nice red, and then it was on. We caught reds for an hour. Our largest was a 25"er so if they didn't beat that they went back. We must have caught between 15, and 20 reds with 2/3's of them belonging to my partner. We never got one over 25", and we had two fat reds, so it was time to trout fish.
We headed offshore, and proceeded to throw everything that was brought on the boat, even got creative and put together combinations I would have never thought of. Nothing for a good hoour and a half. Time was running out.
Finally I saw the DOA, and thought to myself, why haven't I thrown that? I stood on the front of my boat, with a piece of leftover pizza in my mouth thinking we had no chance to win without any trout. I popped that cork with the DOA under it, and BOOM there he was. Got that 23" trout in the boat. Now we were desperate for that second trout. We running out of time, and we still had to run all the way back from Aucilla to Shields, put in, and weigh in at Jerry's.
FM watched the clock. Finally he said, "last cast". After last cast I said "ok", and threw one more time. He looked at me, shook his head, and said something about not making it back in time to weigh what we had. Then another one hit the DOA, the last trout we needed. He wasn't a monster, but hell, he was 18".
I dropped the rod, and fish on the floor of the boat, and fired the Yammie up. FM stowed everything while I did Mach 8 back to Shields (except in the no wake zone of course).
We made it to Jerry's with 5 minutes to spare, but you never know when you might held up somewhere (i.e. boat ramp, the man, traffic).
We thought we had it wrapped, but some boys that fished around Piney Island beat us by two lbs. My hat's off to them, it was a tough day of fishing!!!
Fishmasterson, and I took home second. It was a fun day, saw quite a few folks, I haven't seen in a while, caught up on a few lies, and a few
. All in all a good day. Would have liked to had first, but there is always next year 
.
. I had a great time and was thrilled to place as well as we did. I think the best part is that now we can rename the Pathfinder from "The Jinx" to something a little more befitting. I was thinking "The Cat Finder" 