Trout Smackdown

Hit the water at 2:30 and wacked about eighty trout in a very short trip. Off the water by 5:30. We caught 40 or so trout that were between 18 and 22 inches. Kept our limit for the grease. I caught all of my fish on Category5 suicide croakers and shrimp minnows. All of my bigger trout swallowed this lure. Steve was throwing my old standby DOA cals. Glad to see DMF cut the bag limit on trout down to 4 per person. We have had two cold winters in a row with huge trout kills each of those winters, so stricter guidelines are necessary.

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Back home fishing again

After a week hiatus from the cape fear region I hit the water Wednesday in the late afternoon and caught a nice 21 inch speckled trout and three nice reds on Category5 shrimp minnows on weighted hooks. Man it was good to be back on the water at home. It is much more beautiful here than the Louisiana delta and a whole lot more convenience. The fishing is not bad either.

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IFA Redfish Tour Atlantic Division Champs 3 Years in a row

Capt (Hurricane) Drew Arndt and I were presented plaques in Chalmette, La. for capturing the IFA Redfish Tour Atlantic Division title for the third year in a row. We had a stellar year on the tournament trail this season with a 3rd place finish I Savannah,Ga to start the season, a 6th place finish in Charleston, SC, and a 1st place finish in Surf City, NC to finish the season.

BTW-We won a Ranger Banshee Extreme in Surf City And it is for sale. If u r looking for a flats boat totally tricked out and with a Yamaha four stroke we will give u a sweet deal on our brand new Ranger Banshee Extreme. Email: Captainren@live.com for more details.

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IFA Championship Chalmette, Louisiana

Drew and I had only four days to prepare for the IFA Championship in Chalmette, La. On the way down owner of CATEGORY 5 soft plastic lures met us in Slidell, La. to give us some plastics to try. That is the only thing we threw in Louisiana. We threw the white/chart tail shrimp minnows on jigheads, weighted hooks, and Spinnerbaits. We also threw the suicide croakers in every color matched up to jigheads and wacked trout, reds, and flounder on them. We also threw the segmented paddletails on jigheads and Spinnerbaits. Overall I was most impressed with the action on the shrimp minnows. I have never thrown a paddletail lure of any manufacturer that has the perfect balanced movement and action of these lures. Nothing that I have ever thrown on a 1/16 oz weighted hook has this much action. U can buy these fine lures at: www.category5outdoors.com. Ask for them in your local tackle stores.
We spent the first day close to Chalmette then we headed to Venice to spend the last three days of prefish. In Chalmette we wacked bass, reds, trout, reds, and flounder. Drew caught about 12 largemouth as I was wacking reds on the Category 5 shrimp minnow. He could not keep the bass off the spinnerbait. On day two we headed to Venice. We knew the Venice area pretty well from a previous Redfish Cup event we fished down there. We started catching fish right away in Venice but did not get on the right ones until later in the day. The water level was much lower than the previous trip and we were unable to get into the spots we fished on that trip. At the end of the day I had remembered a spot we wacked fish in that I knew we could get into. It was a good call then because we were greeted with fish tailing, busting bait, and cruising the banks with their backs out of the water. We wacked fish two at a time until dark with a lot of our legal fish over 8 lbs. The next day we fished an area we had never fished 40 miles in the opposite direction. We found the motherload early as we were greeted by 40 to 50 inch redfish schooled up busting 2 to 3 lb mullet on the outside of the ponds. We went into our ponds and found pods of perfect fish all over the place. There were also pogies in the pond with 23 to 50 inch reds floating up on the surface feeding. The water was clear, the pond was protected and full of fish and bait. This pond was also unlike the other areas we fished the day before-it was deep. We knew if the water stayed clear we would have at a minimum 17 lbs a day. I caught one fish that was 25 inches and 8.75 lbs. We fished the next day in some other spots and found a few fish. Day one we run over 100 miles to our a spot to find our clear water pond in the Lee of the wind completely muddy like coffee. What a buzzkill. After a three hour run one way we caught several fish about 23 inches and some overslots. We did manage one 8 plus pounder before we had to make the long run back to check in. We ended up with 13.45 lbs the first day. We were completely out of the championship due to the one baby we weighed on day one.
On day two we decided to go fun fishing and stay close to Chalmette. That was a good call because we ended up having motor problems. We decided to head back to the weigh in at noon with 15.58 lbs while we were on the fish. Had a decent day chunking category 5 shrimp minnows on weighed hooks. Ended up 35th out of 101 boats with 29.03 lbs. After a great year this was a very disappointing finish but we'll be back next year.

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