We launched the boat wondering whether or not we’d get rained on as we watched a thunderstorm in the distance. We’d packed the rainsuits, but are all allergic to lightning so the first few minutes had us worried. The storm moved off and we made the long run to spot #1, a spot where we’ve been catching good fish every trip. The shallow flat has been covered with mullet and we arrived to see that the mullet dance party was just getting kicked off. We all started with topwaters because well, that’s just what we do.
A few casts in and Pat gets a good blowup, but the fish doesn’t come back for seconds. I grabbed my jerkbait rod and flipped out the soft plastic behind the fish and she nailed it. First fish in the box and it’s a 25” trout. Fast forward about five minutes and a nice red bombs Pat’s plug. While he’s fighting the fish, my plug gets swamped and so we’ve doubled up with redfish. His fish looked good when he got him in the boat, but went 28”. Mine also went back in the drink because he was only 23”. We fished down the bank and I boated a nice 25” trout, but he wasn’t a significant upgrade so back he went. Pat was up next as he caught another 25” trout, but he wasn’t going to upgrade the first fish, so off he swam. We’re almost at the end of the original drift and Skip gets a hit. In typical Skip fashion, there’s a slight tape delay between strike and hookset. By slight delay I mean 10 seconds. It was miraculous, but somehow the fish was still hooked when he set the hook with the rod-tip pointing at 2oclock behind his head. He fought the fish to the boat and as Pat put the good red in the net, the hook came loose. Ugly, but we’ll take it. The red was 27” exactly and later weighed 6.8lbs.
About 10 a.m. I caught a 26” trout that weighed right at 5 lbs, but since the weigh-in wasn’t until 6pm, we continued fishing. After all, we have a rule in these tournaments, we can go home after we catch a 27” trout and a 27” red. Note: we had gear for cobia, but knew that our chances of winning were better if we stuck with what we know how to do.
Anyways, the next four hours were pretty boring, we fished around 700 boats at DI and didn’t even catch a fish. Around 2:45, we trailered the boat to AGP to be close to the weigh-in. We knew that with all the structure in the Harbor the chances were good that we could catch a couple more good redfish. I caught a nice 27” fish, but it was the wrong species. Oh well, at least it won us the trout category as it went 6 lbs even…actually, all three of the over 20” fish in the box would’ve won it.
We ended up coming in 3rd in the redfish category and winning the overall tournament and the Calcutta.
“Hell son, put ‘em on the concrete for a photo”
May was a good month for the Hog. We came in 2nd in the club tournament, won the Red Trout Shootout, had the 3rd place trout in the Rock the Dock and then won the Captain Jack on Saturday. Anyone want to move the June NFGFC tournament to Jerry’s????
