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Drew and I capped the Redfish Tournament season with a bang. We went down to Orange Beach, Alabama for the IFA Championship to compete with the other divisional winners across the country. We finished in 13th place overall for the tournament but captured the Cabelas National Team of the Year. We are the first Atlantic Division Team to win the title. The best redfish anglers on the planet were in Orange Beach for the week. The conditions were awful at best for the tournament and pre fishing before. We fished from Destin to Mobile Bay and most areas in between. On Friday morning the tournament director decided to cancel the first day of the tournament and move it to a Saturday and Sunday tourney due to a small craft advisory. The wind blew 35-40 mph all week making it hard to find fish in the area. The wind also blew all of the water out of the inshore areas around Alabama due to the strong north winds driving the water into the Gulf of Mexico. We decided to stay close to checkout in Orange Beach and found several deeper water spots holding fish. Being that close to checkout meant that more teams were beating on the same fish so we had to find a deep water bite that would be consistent on game day. We ended up catching slot fish on day one in a few different areas and on day two decided to stick to our game plan and try to weigh in at least what we had weighed on day one. After starting out slow due to the current ripping we only had a 18 inch fish in the well until about 11:00 am when the current slowed down. At 11am we landed our first decent red and hooked up on the next two casts. Had an upper slot break me off right at the boat and then we landed the next fish with a great team effort. We also did the same thing on day one with our biggest fish. This fish swam straight to the structure and I flipped the bail on my reel so we could go after the fish and pull him out without breaking off on the barnacle lined pilings. The fish came out of the structure once I flipped the bail and put the heat on him and then found a small tree limb outside the pilings and Drew was able to get a net on him. We fished two or three more spots and the bite picked up. We caught about 12 fish in short order and pulled a couple more off of another spot. We upgraded our smallest fish and then moved back to our original A spot from the morning. First cast hooked up and then got broke off on a piling as the boat was drifting on us from not properly setting up in the current and wind. Frustrated but content on the near 10 lbs of fish we had in the livewell we returned to check-in to see how we fared. The only team that had been in front of us on day one crossed the Bay like most of the other teams and failed to get back across. Thankfully our strategy to stay close and weigh in respectable weight each day paid off big time for us.
I am completely booked for the month of December but have openings in January and February. Don't miss a hot trout and redfish bite this winter-book now to reserve your winter fishing trip.

Tight lines,
Capt Ren