Finished the day in the Dragon's Lair and found a good school on a rockbar offshore a decent bit. We found them tailing at 11 a.m. The first cast to them and the plug got inhaled and a nice fish was brought to the boat. It got hot and so we left the area and took it to the house.
7/26 - JBT Redfish Tournament
It'd been a while since SNR and I had fished together and so we decided to fish the tournament after he got the kitchen pass from the wife. We got to JBT early and saw OneKeeper and NeverTooLate, paid our money and made our way to the Aucilla ramp. We launched the boat, headed East. At Spot #1 we found several cookie cutter 20" fish and we had two in the well by 6:50. We saw SeaSpot at a nearby creek and left after the area got crowded with boats around 7:45. We headed to the Dragon's Lair in hopes of finding the big school again.
We pull into the Lair and fish for a few minutes and the school shows itself a couple hundred yards away. The windless morning made it easy to spot the tails and backs humping out of the water. We eased our way to it like pros, held off as long as we could before casting to ensure that we could get the plugs to them and when we couldn't stand it any more, fired our plugs into the school. Two landmines went off around our plugs and it was "Fish on, Brotha!" Snatch catches an overslot PIG and I lose mine a couple minutes into the fight.
We power pole down and wait on the school to see what they do. They move off a hundred and fifty yards and show themselves again. We ease into them again doing our best Blair Wiggins impersonation and again have double hookups / explosions. We both lose our fish
Again we stop fishing, put the power pole down and wait for the fish to show themselves. We see them about 500 yards away and continue to ease our way to them trying to be as stealthy as possible. We finally get to them and again, we both fire our plugs into the school...double hook-ups again...Snatch catches a 26" that replaces one of the smaller fish in the well...I lose my fish again, but at least get to net SNR's fish (succeeding in my role as net biatch / Jumptrout)...
The school leaves and so we head into a creek. We fished the creek hard, him throwing a topwater and me throwing a spoon. I catch a small red, 18", at the mouth of the creek, but nothing more is doing in the area. We're about to make a major move when I tell Pat that I'd caught the reds and seen the school the day before on a particular bar the previous day at around that time and that I thought the school might have moved there.
We ease towards the bar and sure enough, the school (now smaller) was there and still actively feeding with tails and backs out of the water. We both throw into them and I have a big blowup on top. I fight the fish for a couple minutes and bring in the 24" fish. At this point it gets extremely hot and so we make the decision to head in, clean the boat, and get a bite to eat before the weigh-in. Off the water by 12:30.
We weighed 10.75 lbs and came in third. Huey and Chuck had 10.9 lbs and the winners had 10.11 lbs. On a side note, Snatch was pumped that he got to hold the big fish for pictures at a tournament...apparently the Diceman doesn't let him do it much.
Your welcome buddy. It was a good day with one of my good friends.
It has been a while glad we made it happen.
