I hooked up with what looked like a good tournament red and lost it, he hit it again and spit it out again, hit it a third time and I yanked - I had him yah baby...no... He spit it out a third time right by the boat and swam on his merry way. The action never stopped and we found ourselves ~3 miles offshore close to 10am in water starting to get deeper and pretty slack tide. There were still reds tailing everywhere but with a faulty trolling motor and no current, we couldn't move slow enough so we decided to head back up the same line and set up an ambush at the creek mouths when the water started coming in.
THis is the part where my pre-fishing report predictions came true... we got stuck every couple hundred feet. Still reds tailing out of casting range. We did some wade fishing while the boat was stuck. 3 hours later we're at the creek mouth on another never-ending pile of reds. I got a flounder attacking my johnson spoon and 2 sheepshead, none of them were able to get the hook. Mojo gets in to the reds again. We can't wait to get up the creek...we have to. The water didn't really come in until about 2pm and by then it was time to run back.
We got up around the fort around 14:25 and a boat near us is screaming bloody murder from the outboard. Guy stands up on front platform yelling and waving, asks us for a tow - sure we have an hour. Get him all tied up "We're at shields - thanks for the tow." D'oh! We woulda towed him anyway but this will make us late. Call Tincan on the cell and let him know we ain't gonna make it. drive circles around Shields while one giant offshore boat after another threads the needle between us and the dock and parks smack in the middle every time I try to swing him around to the dock. After 4 tries someone finally notices and moves his big boat (thanks dude!) so we drop him. Get to the fort still not 3:30 yet. Mojo is 4th in line in the truck...of course number 3 has a special boat that requires (literally) 25 minutes to get on the trailer and out the ramp. We show up at weigh in just before the nice rod is given out...no prize tickets in hand
Good News: The action was non-stop, and less than an hour in to it, Mojokoko hooked in good to the biggest red he's ever caught.
Bad News: He's caught them over slot before.
Had this not been a tournament, I would have considered it an awesome day. Problem is we couldn't catch any slot reds. Mojo's big guy was two lamb hairs under 33" and super heavy. It was caught near rock structure on a Nemire Red Ripper. I threw the Johnson minnow and Capt Mike's spoons and tried the TSS Gulp for a while (no bites or even interest in it, but I didn't have a hook on me conducive to the TSS, so I will try again a few times before I opinionitate - the TSS definitely imnproves the quality of Gulp) We also threw pink Skitterwalk, Top Dog Jr and Super Spook Jr. We got some rolls and chases on the Spook and Skitterwalk but no hookups on either. All my action was on the johnson minnow. Capt Mikes hot pink had lots of interest but no real hits. I tried Bill's advice and used the double-swivel flouro spoon rig, and even though I only used the high-end walmart swivels, it was a big improvement over the one swivel setup I used to do on spoons.
Everything we caught in the redfish category was over slot. That'll teach us to spend so much time doing the recon for the good spots...but it allowed us to help out someone in need without really losing anything and I'm sure they appreciated it. The guy driving the boat gave us his redfish spots as we drove him in. Maybe they will bless us another time.
Now here's the goods on Mojo's big catch
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