Keaton Tournament (excuse for fishing)
Posted: April 5th, 2010, 10:14 am
Boy there were some really big trout hauled in this weekend at Keaton by some really good anglers. Congratulations to all the winners, the competition was tough at the top. 
This was my forth trip to Keaton and I was excited to have my oldest Son with me this year as my partner.
He’s still in the Navy Reserves (with another deployment coming up) and it’s amazing how often his reserve activities coincide with the Club tournaments. Because of one thing or another, It had been almost a year (Take a Kid Fishing Last May) since we had been able to fish together. We left Tallahassee around 8:30 Friday morning and had the boat on the water by 10:30. It was a beautiful day and we stopped to take a picture of the fog bank hanging off shore but it didn’t show up nearly as impressive as when looking at it for real.
We headed North and pulled in just South of Spring Warrior around some bars. Depth was around 2 ft but with the tide going out that was changing. We fish for a couple of hours with very little to show for it except one barely legal trout that jumped on a Capt’n Mikes red spoon. After throw’n a bunch of different lures from topwater to suspended and soft plastics on the bottom it was time to do something different.
Under different circumstances I probably would have moved to a different inclose location and continued looking for tournament type fish but since it had been so long since my Son and I had been together, I decided to FISH and we headed out into deeper water. We moved a mile or so further North and started a drift. That move proved to be productive even if the fish were less than tournament grade. Using CT’s with 4 inch pearl white shrimp we finished up around 3:30 with a two man limit with one over 20 inches, most were caught in 5 to 6 foot with a lot of shorts thrown in the mix.
Here is the Day One cooler.
After seeing some of the hogs that were being brought in from the prefishing on Friday, and not having located any good spots or develop a plan,
I felt that to try and be competitive in the tournament would more than likely prove very frustrating. Frustrating was the last thing I wanted for the two of us so we decided to repeat most of what we had seen on Friday. We tried a few different areas and actually had a pretty good start on another 2 man limit by 11am. We even discussed limiting out…calling the tournament director and passing up on the weigh-in In favor of hitting the Golden Corral in Perry for lunch. 
That’s one of the problems with planning when fishing is involved. 
It took us an hour and a half to catch two more keepers. 
We finished the day with less weight than Friday but still felt good to limit out two days in a row. Its been a while!!
Here is the Day Two cooler.
Here’s my Son with two average fish.
We headed back and ran into Casey loading up at the ramp and told him we were gonna pass on the weigh in and head on back. After we got back to Tallahassee, I did pick out the 5 biggest and after taking some conservative measurements and feeding them into the weight estimator on the homepage we would have placed somewhere in the middle around 17th place just over 8 lbs for 5 fish had we stayed. It was a good two days with 20 trout cleaned and resting comfortably in our refrigerators.
This was my forth trip to Keaton and I was excited to have my oldest Son with me this year as my partner.
He’s still in the Navy Reserves (with another deployment coming up) and it’s amazing how often his reserve activities coincide with the Club tournaments. Because of one thing or another, It had been almost a year (Take a Kid Fishing Last May) since we had been able to fish together. We left Tallahassee around 8:30 Friday morning and had the boat on the water by 10:30. It was a beautiful day and we stopped to take a picture of the fog bank hanging off shore but it didn’t show up nearly as impressive as when looking at it for real.We headed North and pulled in just South of Spring Warrior around some bars. Depth was around 2 ft but with the tide going out that was changing. We fish for a couple of hours with very little to show for it except one barely legal trout that jumped on a Capt’n Mikes red spoon. After throw’n a bunch of different lures from topwater to suspended and soft plastics on the bottom it was time to do something different.
Under different circumstances I probably would have moved to a different inclose location and continued looking for tournament type fish but since it had been so long since my Son and I had been together, I decided to FISH and we headed out into deeper water. We moved a mile or so further North and started a drift. That move proved to be productive even if the fish were less than tournament grade. Using CT’s with 4 inch pearl white shrimp we finished up around 3:30 with a two man limit with one over 20 inches, most were caught in 5 to 6 foot with a lot of shorts thrown in the mix.Here is the Day One cooler.
After seeing some of the hogs that were being brought in from the prefishing on Friday, and not having located any good spots or develop a plan,
I felt that to try and be competitive in the tournament would more than likely prove very frustrating. Frustrating was the last thing I wanted for the two of us so we decided to repeat most of what we had seen on Friday. We tried a few different areas and actually had a pretty good start on another 2 man limit by 11am. We even discussed limiting out…calling the tournament director and passing up on the weigh-in In favor of hitting the Golden Corral in Perry for lunch. That’s one of the problems with planning when fishing is involved. It took us an hour and a half to catch two more keepers. We finished the day with less weight than Friday but still felt good to limit out two days in a row. Its been a while!!Here is the Day Two cooler.
Here’s my Son with two average fish.
We headed back and ran into Casey loading up at the ramp and told him we were gonna pass on the weigh in and head on back. After we got back to Tallahassee, I did pick out the 5 biggest and after taking some conservative measurements and feeding them into the weight estimator on the homepage we would have placed somewhere in the middle around 17th place just over 8 lbs for 5 fish had we stayed. It was a good two days with 20 trout cleaned and resting comfortably in our refrigerators.
