Keaton 2008.03.22 NFGFC Tournament
Posted: March 23rd, 2008, 4:18 pm
Headed out early for the tournament with Mojo and finally convinced my other half, 'MooksFishingWidow' to come try to fish with us. We drove up to sign in before putting the boat in the water, none of us ever having been to Keaton Beach before. Went down the road and dropped the boat in at the public ramp, ended up being in the front of the parade as everyone was jumping in their boats when we rolled by the marina. I pulled off by the pier to let a few people go around since we never been there before and I wasn't sure how to avoid the rocks. I found them as soon as I pulled off left, so after letting 8 boats go by, one push off with the paddle, we got in line behind BB, who was off to the races north.
On the ride up the canal, a coin toss (literally) determined that we would head south from the channel, which we did. We were encouraged by the fact that most of the boats in front of us had GA tags and all turned and burned north. At the end of the channel, we pulled off the south side, zoomed out the raymarine and looked for features on the map. I found a small area with soundings ranging from 2 to 6 feet in close proximity and we decided that would be a good starting point. We went a few miles south toward that area, and wasted a little over an hour idling in from 10 foot water to the area we were targeting, again having no idea what kind of hazards may or may not be there and knowing that low tide was near.
When it started getting shallow, we marked some spots we drove over that had major bottom / depth changes in small areas. decided to drive up as shallow as we could go and then drift out since the wind and tide would both push us WSW at the time. Got to water about a foot deep, cut the motor and started fishing. My girlfriend had never been fishing before in her life, so I gave her a crash course in casting and what to do if she got a fish on, and hooked her up with a cajun thunder / Gulp combo in 3" new penny. Not more than a couple minutes after I got her going, mojo was on the bow bringing in a pretty nice trout on a white flutter shad. 15-20 minutes later I got a massive topwater explosion on a super spook, but it wouldn't get the hook. The Gulp was getting destroyed by pinfish. We spent the rest of the time until low tide motoring around every 20 minutes or so and running short drifts looking for fish. Every place we stopped the bait fish destroyed the gulp but we werent getting or seeing a lot of trout.
We ended up right in the middle of the spots we'd marked earlier around the time the tide and wind went slack. I spent more time with the woman working on her casting while we were in the doldrums and the rest of the day she was casting her own (I'd been helping prior to that since it was a little windy and she'd never fished before).
As soon as the tide started coming in we got on the bite. We never even measured mojo's first fish because we knew it was a keeper and didn't really care at that point whether or not it was over 20 since there were 3 of us. When we got the next trout in a little smaller, we realized we had no measuring device. All we had that we knew for sure was an exact length was a pice of printer paper with our directions to keaton marina on it. We did our best with that. We threw back 2 or 3 that we just weren't 100% sure about. Around 13:00 the bite reazlly heated up around there, and we spent the final 3-4 hours of the tournament running the same 1.5 mile drift over and over. The wind and current were keeping us almost perfectly in line with all the spots we found.
Between 13:30 and 14:45 we put 6 or 7 more trout in the boat, and just when my girlfriend was getting antsy and bored, she ended up landing our biggest fish on her popping cork Gulp shrimp combo. I don't know if I've ever been more proud in my life!
I added our 3rd keeper on what was left of a gulp jerk shad after pinfish ate about 2/3 of it on the first cast. Landed another couple on redfish magic fluke and mojo on the flutter shad, but they were all close to 15, and having no way to measure we pitched them all back. We ended up weighing in 3 fish and getting I think 9th place, which we thought was pretty good having never been there and doing no prefishing, but the best part about the whole day was that my woman finally agreed to come fishing, hung in there in spite of some boredom and frustration, and landed two nice trout, including our biggest keeper on her own casts with absolutely no help other than me getting the net. That made it one of my best fishing days ever 
On the ride up the canal, a coin toss (literally) determined that we would head south from the channel, which we did. We were encouraged by the fact that most of the boats in front of us had GA tags and all turned and burned north. At the end of the channel, we pulled off the south side, zoomed out the raymarine and looked for features on the map. I found a small area with soundings ranging from 2 to 6 feet in close proximity and we decided that would be a good starting point. We went a few miles south toward that area, and wasted a little over an hour idling in from 10 foot water to the area we were targeting, again having no idea what kind of hazards may or may not be there and knowing that low tide was near.
When it started getting shallow, we marked some spots we drove over that had major bottom / depth changes in small areas. decided to drive up as shallow as we could go and then drift out since the wind and tide would both push us WSW at the time. Got to water about a foot deep, cut the motor and started fishing. My girlfriend had never been fishing before in her life, so I gave her a crash course in casting and what to do if she got a fish on, and hooked her up with a cajun thunder / Gulp combo in 3" new penny. Not more than a couple minutes after I got her going, mojo was on the bow bringing in a pretty nice trout on a white flutter shad. 15-20 minutes later I got a massive topwater explosion on a super spook, but it wouldn't get the hook. The Gulp was getting destroyed by pinfish. We spent the rest of the time until low tide motoring around every 20 minutes or so and running short drifts looking for fish. Every place we stopped the bait fish destroyed the gulp but we werent getting or seeing a lot of trout.
We ended up right in the middle of the spots we'd marked earlier around the time the tide and wind went slack. I spent more time with the woman working on her casting while we were in the doldrums and the rest of the day she was casting her own (I'd been helping prior to that since it was a little windy and she'd never fished before).
As soon as the tide started coming in we got on the bite. We never even measured mojo's first fish because we knew it was a keeper and didn't really care at that point whether or not it was over 20 since there were 3 of us. When we got the next trout in a little smaller, we realized we had no measuring device. All we had that we knew for sure was an exact length was a pice of printer paper with our directions to keaton marina on it. We did our best with that. We threw back 2 or 3 that we just weren't 100% sure about. Around 13:00 the bite reazlly heated up around there, and we spent the final 3-4 hours of the tournament running the same 1.5 mile drift over and over. The wind and current were keeping us almost perfectly in line with all the spots we found.
Between 13:30 and 14:45 we put 6 or 7 more trout in the boat, and just when my girlfriend was getting antsy and bored, she ended up landing our biggest fish on her popping cork Gulp shrimp combo. I don't know if I've ever been more proud in my life!
I added our 3rd keeper on what was left of a gulp jerk shad after pinfish ate about 2/3 of it on the first cast. Landed another couple on redfish magic fluke and mojo on the flutter shad, but they were all close to 15, and having no way to measure we pitched them all back. We ended up weighing in 3 fish and getting I think 9th place, which we thought was pretty good having never been there and doing no prefishing, but the best part about the whole day was that my woman finally agreed to come fishing, hung in there in spite of some boredom and frustration, and landed two nice trout, including our biggest keeper on her own casts with absolutely no help other than me getting the net. That made it one of my best fishing days ever 
