IFA Kayak Fishing Tournament - Titusville 6-19-11

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Tournament Day!
Mosquito Lagoon - East side & Indian River Lagoon - Scottsmoor
Sun. June 19, 2011
Moon - 4 days past full
M.F.= 3:00 pm
Temp.: Low 71, 87 h.
wind: SSW varied from 0 to 10 mph, switched to E at 1:00pm
pressure: 30.03 (Steady)
humidity: 65% -52-88%
rain: severe storms over night
Sunny

My prefishing had not revealed any particular outstanding spot to get on some big reds so I decided my plan would be to get my trout out of the way early at Scottsmoor and then head for the NE corner of Mosquito Lagoon, put back in and just start paddling South looking for reds.

At the Capt's meeting we were instructed that we could launch no earlier than 5:45 am. I think I was in the water just before 6AM.

I paddled for the edge of the grass to fish the sand bottom at the 30-36" depth. On my third cast of the morning I hooked up with a trout on the 27MR-18 MirrOdine. Boy was I excited! I could tell by the way he pulled he would measure enough to get me on the board. Half way to the boat he pull off! Man, was that disappointing.

I recovered the plug and made another cast. A couple of fast twitches and I had fish #2 on. I jumped the ladyfish a few times and she threw the plug. The next cast was met with the same result…another lady fish. I pried her off the plug and hummed it right back out. The plug barely hit the water when it was smashed by a 3 lb. Ladyfish.

That's the one, I'm just about to make a big mistake!

I pulled the fish alongside the boat and lifted it up with the line. It’s mouth was gaped open with the forward hook in the lower jaw. This is where everything went sideways.

I could see what was about to happen but I couldn’t stop myself….I just had to lip that fish. As soon as I touched her she went wild, thrashing and hung the trailing hook in the side of my thumb! Now, I’m hooked on one end of the plug with a 3 lb flopping fish on the other. I instantly grabbed the fish and pinned it in the bottom of the boat.

My first thought was to get the fish off the plug before the hook got buried even worse. There was already blood all over the plug, thumb and my leg. I used my pointer and middle finger to maneuver the plug out of the fish while I held the thing with a death grip with my right hand and got her out of the boat. I rolled my thumb over and immediately realized the situation was already to the “worse” point! The hook was completely buried to the bottom of the bend. Damn it! This is pretty bad I thought. I might not be able to deal with this by myself. This might turn into a trip to the emergency room.

After accessing my options I decided to try to push the hook through and get myself back in the game.
I pulled my bait knife, cut the line to the plug and retrieved the needle nose pliers from my tackle box. The next step was to get the plug off the hook. I used my knife to open the split ring and was able to work the hook off. It was a delicate operation to say the least.

With the hook off the plug I clipped the other two hooks off the treble. All the easy steps were over and it was time to push this thing through! I don’t know how many times I pushed, probably 6-8 times. I would push….stop and take a couple deep breaths. It felt like I was pushing as hard as I could. Finally, the point started to come through. I cut the skin down the side of the point a little and once the barb was out it gave me enough room to get the needle nose around the hook and clip the point off. Man was that a relief when the barb popped off! After that it was just a matter of backing it out and bleeding it as much as possible to flush the wound out.

In a couple minutes I had a new hook on the plug and was back in the hunt! Strangely enough my thumb wasn’t even soar. I barely thought about it the rest of the day.

In short order I had another trout on and lost that one also. A few minutes later I lost another! I couldn’t believe this was happening. Finally, I put a trout in the boat but he turned out to he a ¼” short to measure. The bite started slowing after that so I paddled back north to start another drift.

I got back into a few fish and before I knew it I had five legal trout but all were about 16 ½”. I just couldn’t get any on that were any better than that. I had about 12 on all together. I don’t know how many ladyfish but they far out numbered the trout.

At 8:30, an hour late, I decided I would have to head for the ramp and get out of there. I loaded the boat as fast as possible and struck out for New Smyrna Beach.

I think I was back in the water around 10:00 and was feeling I had really burned a lot of valuable time and was questioning myself for not going to Dummits Cove where I had seen a pile of redfish on Friday and was much closer. The problem was I just could not get them to eat.

I started paddling south and had brought my binoculars so I could increase my coverage of the flat. It was a great idea that worked well. The only problem was that there was almost no redfish to be found. I paddled 3 ½ miles south and probably did not see half a dozen redfish and all were jumped, no pushers, no tailing, no nothing!

While it was only 87 deg. The wind had died on the flat and it was H O T! I had to pull my glasses off and wipe the sweat rolling down my face about every third cast.


Once I reached tiger shoals I realized the likely hood I was going to put a red in the boat was not good and getting worse. All I could dohope for a miracle. I did jump a few more fish on the way back but saw nothing I could try to make a cast to.

Finally, I made it back to a sandy strip I call the sink hole and came up on the down wind end and made a cast with the 27MR. Wham! Fish on but it immediately went air born……ladyfish. I made another cast and hooked up with a fish that pulled hard and held deep. I felt I might have a minimum red on but all of the sudden the line popped! Noooooooooo! After all the bad luck for the day I just lost a plug that I have literally caught hundreds of fish on. I guess it was inevitable though.

I tied my back up 17MR on and made another cast. I immediately hooked another lady. Another cast another lady.
I put the plug rod down and made a cast with my gold spoon. You guessed it…..another ladyfish! However, this one was a little small, maybe 10”. About half way to the boat a huge redfish in the 36” range struck at the thrashing ladyfish! I could not believe it. If it had not been for the swarm of ladyfish I could have had a real shot at catching that fish. I think I could have finished 3^rd or 4^th with that fish. As it were he probably saw the boat and I could never draw another strike from him….ladyfish, sure!

I fished one more sand hole which took me right to the wire. Weigh in was 1:00-3:00pm and it was after 1:30 and I still had over a mile paddle to get hack to the truck! I squared everything away and started stroking. I knew I did not have close to enough fish to make a good show but typically half the boats will not weigh in a fish. After all that effort I was at least going to weigh in what I had……or so I thought.

I hit the hill running, through everything in the truck and took off like a shot. I had to get back to New Smyrna and cross over on hwy 44 to get to the interstate and head south to Titusville for the weigh in. I thought about shooting down A-1-A but 95 sounded faster. Well, just as I got onto the interstate I could see it was a parking lot up ahead and all traffic was stopped!!! It turned out to be a small pickup upside down on the shoulder and looked pretty bad. Hopefully no one was seriously hurt. Talk about rotten luck for me though! Rather than finishing in the middle of the field at about 18^th, I got a big fat zero for not making the 3:00pm dead line.

What a day! I can’t remember ever fishing any harder.

The weigh-in was pretty enlightening . It worked out that first place went to a guy that fished 125 miles from where the tournament was held! What! I couldn’t hardly believe it! The rules had stated “no off limits” but It would have never occurred to me that someone would fish so far outside the area. Incidentally, this guy is a captain and a guide and fished his home waters. That just was not right! Legal according to the rules….yep!

I did send a letter to the IFA urging them to have a look at the way this rule is written but as of this day I have received no response.
I probably had 30-40 ladyfish and about 12 trout on. No redfish however. There were two really large trout caught , one 27.75” and one 26.25”. The winning red was 39”(from Jacksonville).

Anyway that was the big Titusville Tournament. I don’t know if I would do that again or not. Maybe with a few rule changes.

Larry S.