Late-day catches deliver a top-3 finish in Sticken Pigz tourney

Sometimes it pays to be a little lucky when fishing. For Team Outdoors360 and myself on April 22, that proved true in the final hour of the 2017 Sticken Pigz Redfish/Trout tournament.

The morning started around 4:15 a.m. as I met with Caleb Grimes to head out for bait before the start of the tournament. The wind was fairly light as we searched the flats for whitebait, and our efforts were rewarded during the dark hours.

We made the quick run to the Palma Sola boat ramp where our teammates Rob Chapman IV, Jonathan Allen and Adam Papka were waiting. Their day started around 3 a.m. because of a nearly 220-mile drive from Lake City. They were anxious, as were we, to get out and start fishing.

The tournament required only two fish weighed in; results were based on the combined weight of the largest trout and largest slot redfish caught by each team. Redfish, I knew, would be difficult to come by, so we started early for trout, effectively getting them out of the way. After only a brief period of wading, Allen landed a trout that was about 22 inches. From the boat, I landed another around the same size, while Chapman IV landed another around 21 inches. They weren’t the biggest trout, but we were satisfied with the early morning start and figured a decent redfish would get us into the top 10.

The game plan the rest of the day was to search for redfish. We headed south into Sarasota Bay where boats and waders were littered over the areas we wanted to fish. We kept our distance and an eye on activity around, but with little signs of life after more than an hour, we decided to venture back north into Terra Ceia while scouting along the way.

If you haven’t been on the water this spring, it is hard to describe just how clean the water is around the River Mouth and Terra Ceia areas. This means that fish, while easy to spot, are wary of you. After spotting a few redfish exactly the size we wanted, we began fishing, but it was tough.

Eventually a cut whitebait I had soaking over grass was eaten and my drag began to scream. At first I thought it was a good redfish, but it kept going and going. I knew it was something huge as my reel was smoking and line was running out. About 100 yards away, one of the biggest snook I’ve ever seen breached the surface, slicing my leader. The beast was gone, and the redfish hunt was back on as we were running out of time and places to look.

At 1:45 p.m., we had only about an hour of fishing left. At 2 p.m., Papka hooked our first redfish on his new rod and reel combo.

“The first knot I tied on the line broke. The second one held even though I was a bit nervous,” Papka said. Chapman IV netted the fish, which was barely hooked in the soft tissue of the mouth.

On the measuring board, it was right at the border of the 27-inch maximum slot. Our confidence was finally up: The nearly perfect fish had fallen into our laps minutes from the buzzer. We fished a little bit longer, and on just about the last bait, Allen landed another 23-inch trout, but this one was slightly fatter to improve our trout total.

Our two weighed fish, a 3.31-pound trout and 7.2-pound redfish, were caught in the last 40 minutes of fishing, and we were off to weigh in. As tournament organizer Mark Cruz began announcing the top 10, our 10.51 looked pretty good. Third place went to Capt. Josh Prunier and team RippinLips with 10.25 pounds, and we were second behind team Natural Bite’s 10.94-pound total.

It wasn’t the best day of fishing any of us have had, and far from our best total weight in this tournament. Other boats struggled to find good fish, and we sneaked off with a top-2 finish in the 64-boat field. It just goes to show if you keep fishing until the end, you never know what you might catch on the last cast in the last spot.

This story was originally published April 29, 2017 at 5:22 PM with the headline "Late-day catches deliver a top-3 finish in Sticken Pigz tourney."