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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