Tampa Bay tournament used Facebook Live to track redfish catches. Here’s the $10K winner

Angler Cody Chivas has grown up fishing virtually every type of saltwater tournament available.

“I’ve fished pretty much everything. I started when I was very, very young. I’ve done kingfish, tarpon, redfish… all of it. I try to mix it up and not get too bored,” the Clearwater native said.

“When we heard about the Power Pole Pro GoLive Redfish tournament, we thought it was a really cool format with a lot of conservational benefits. It let anyone from Pensacola down to Fort Myers fish and go live on Facebook trying to get the biggest three redfish up to 8 pounds. When you caught a fish you showed the weight, so the fish you caught never left the area and were returned immediately.”

Incorporating a large area of the west coast of Florida, Chivas and his younger brother Karson stuck around their home Tampa Bay area. They spent a few days prefishing before the Jan. 14 tournament, finding good fish. But he knew it wasn’t going to be easy come tournament day with the arrival of a strong cold front.

“Prefishing, there were a lot of nice fish. But those days were 70 degrees and sunny. On tournament day, I knew we would have to adjust on the fly so didn’t get my hopes too high and figured we’d piece it together,” Chivas explained.

“Tournament morning, it was blowing about 20 out of the north and was 30-something degrees. Not a day I’d normally choose to go fishing!”

During the first few hours of the tournament, the brothers were without a solid catch and not much going for them. As he anticipated, Chivas needed to adjust with the conditions.

The flat they had been catching fish on during prefishing wasn’t working, so he went to the edge where water was deeper as the strong north wind had blown water out of the bay.

“The wind and sun were against each other so it was tough. Eventually we found fish and kind of had to work angles and make shorter casts, sight fishing the ones we wanted. Casting with the wind at our back throwing blind just wasn’t working.”

When they started to catch redfish, they stuck with what was working. The bait of choice was 3 inch Gulp! shrimp on 1/4-ounce Bass Assassin jig heads fished on 8 pound braided line and 20 pound leader.

Despite the terrible fishing conditions, they made the best of it, eventually catching a trio of redfish at 7.14, 7.1 and 7.08 pounds.

“We caught probably 20% of the fish we saw. Even if it was good weather we would have been happy. That’s a good weight.”

After all the videos were watched and the weights were added up, the Chivas brothers and team Salt Rock would take first place and $10,000 beating second place by a pound total.

They topped the field of 74 boats, and despite the poor conditions only 26 teams weighed in no fish.

Videos of theirs and everyone else’s catch are still available to view by searching the Power Pole Pro GoLive page on Facebook.