With very little advice from others (besides there are a lot of rocks) and never fished the Steinhatchee area, we decided we try to do some prefishing the day prior. We started the day off with some minor boat issues so we didn’t get on the water till 9am. We eased out and fished some creeks. The water temp ranged 56-59 and was stained but clear. We used a combination of lures from twitch baits, topwater, spoons and soft plastics to see what the fished liked. We caught 15 reds with a 26” being the biggest and lost plenty of tackle on oysters.
On Saturday, we were the second boat to leave the dock at first light. Water looked a little different because it was low tide and man was it revealing as to what’s out there. We ended up stumbling on some structure that paralleled 100 yards off the shoreline. That’s where we caught most our fish, about two hours in. Fish were caught on spoons and twitch baits. We ended up catching over 23 reds with a 26 3/4” being our biggest (7.1 lbs).
We weighted in two fish totaling 11.4 lbs. nothing astonishing but it was good enough to place third out of 56 teams.
All fish were released.
If you never fished a tournament, I recommend finding one and trying it out. This tournament was done right! You don’t need the fastest boat or even saltwater lures (our twitch bait was a bass lure) to catch fish. Heck, we could have paddled to where we fished. So try a tournament sometime!
Get out there and just fish! I’m no pro but If you genuinely need tips on fishing I’d be happy to help. Just PM me.
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and the memories of the extreme backwaters that revealed parts of Florida that many will never have the opportunity of seeing outside of history books and The National Geographic. 
