This weekend was pretty hectic. Chuck Staham, Chris Ravello, and I fished a two day redfish tournament that scored the largest redfish caught per day.
We headed out to the east coast to an area that has always been productive for us when targeting redfish since the boundaries of day one permitted fishing anywhere in the state of Florida.
Right after launching we started seeing tails in the distance. As we got closer we could tell that they were black drum. Chuck made a perfect cast which resulted in a hookup. The drum drug him all over the place and by the time he landed the fish the school had moved on.
Since the black drum were gone we moved on to try to find some redfish. Shortly after we located a small school of fish in a large pothole. Chris made a quick cast at the edge of the school and hooked up.
The school did not move but were reluctant to eat after that. As the wind started picking up so did the bite, I spotted a red cruising the edge of the school; Made a quick cast ahead of him with my EP, waited for the red to catch up, made two strips and the red pounced on my fly. One of the most rewarding fish I have ever caught since I am a fly fishing newbie and it was my personal best redfish on fly.
After a couple other attempts I hooked a bigger red but lost him due to line failure… It sucked… The wind continued to pick up so I put down the fly rod for the day. Overall we had a blast Chuck caught 5, Chris 4, and I Caught 5. It put us in a good standing on day one.
Day two was a polar opposite of day one. We were restricted to fishing a small portion of upper tampa bay and I could not find a single redfish that was above 17 inches. A 17 inch red would have gotten me 1rst place, but thats fishing. Congrats to Mark Knoles, Hard Core Kayak Angler Club member who caught a solid fish each day. It was a well deserved victory. I did come in second place and caught the largest fish of the tournament so it was not a complete waste.
