Tide: 0.7ft Low at 6am, 1.5ft High at 2pm
On Friday I went scouting for the Calusa Blueway Paddling Tournament, my third consecutive year of participating in it. I prefished an area about an hour away from Matlacha and did really well on the reds. They were in a pre-front feeding frenzy, eating every lure I threw their way. I also found a school of snook laid up under the mangroves but they didn't want anything plastic.
The day of the tournament I decided against fishing the same spot because the snook had lockjaw and there were no trout to be found. I came up with a plan for Saturday that was very unorthodox as it required launching the Pro Angler three times to catch each species, all in a short 8 hour window. In the morning I launched in the darkness along with 5 others and let the northeast wind push me across the flat. I covered about 2 miles while throwing topwater along the way and came up with two trout to 18". That was good enough for me so I made it back to the launch by 9:30 and launched at my snook hole at 10. I landed 3 snook to 24.5" by 11 and was ecstatic as I was now on the way to my "guaranteed redfish" spot to complete the slam while I knew most people would have difficulty getting all 3 species with the given conditions. I fished the final spot for 2.5 hours and was truly awestruck when I realized it was time to head to the weigh-in and all I had was one baby redfish that was a measly 11.5". It was very frustrating considering I saw 4 reds over 30" cruising the sand and had two upper slot fish chase my DOA for 10 feet but not commit! This is a testament to how unpredictable fishing can be and no matter how much knowledge you think you have about a particular area, there are no guarantees. I did learn a valuable lesson for next time...bring ladyfish as backup! First place had 71" and took home a Pro Angler, second had 63.5", and third had 59". I ended up in 7th out of 44 with 54" total.
