Fishing captain ends runner-up streak, wins tournament that benefits pediatric cancer

Captain Brett Norris has been participating in the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation fishing tournament for more than 10 years. Each year he’s up near the top of the leaderboard, but could never quite finish with a victory in the redfish, snook and trout two-day slam tournament.

Against Tampa Bay’s premier anglers, he finally ended the runner-up streak last weekend.

“After years and years of seconds, thirds and fourths, this is a relief!” the St. Petersburg-based captain Norris said. “It was a long weekend with a ton of smiles and high fives, finally getting that first place!”

The tournament brought together 81 of the area’s best fishing guides in Tampa Bay, who fish all the way from Tampa down to Sarasota and Venice. Boats are filled with anxious teams who search for the single biggest redfish, snook and trout combination while raising money for a great cause.

It’s a great barometer for how the fishery around Tampa Bay is as many of the captains are on the water daily, so they know exactly what to fish for. When Day 1 kicked off on Oct. 16, Norris’ first target was one of the many redfish schools that anglers have been running into for most of the fall.

“We hit the jackpot with a 40-inch stud red early,” Norris said. “That took a lot of the pressure off. It was mixed in with a school of other big redfish so from there we knew we could focus on the snook and trout. For the rest of Saturday, we focused on trout, and that wasn’t nearly as easy as the redfish.”

In what Norris described as some of the slowest trout fishing he’s ever seen in Tampa Bay, they ended the first day with an 18-inch trout.

Day 2 provided a challenge. Overnight a strong cold front brought drastically different weather with north winds approaching 20 knots. It grouped many of the teams together in the south St. Petersburg fishing grounds where Norris stuck to as well. In spite of the weather, the snook were hungry.

“We needed the snook to complete the slam on Day 2. The first bait to hit the water was a nice 32-inch fish. That took the pressure off of the snook and continued to absolutely smash the snook for an hour straight,” said Norris.

“We ended up getting close to 10 slots (between 28- and 32- inches) and more heartbreakers than we could count. We definitely lost some toads! The biggest snook we ended up with was 34-inches out of the school.”

With almost 92-inches for their slam, Norris’ team ABC Liquor and anglers Kris Becker, Mike Davenport and Nacho would bring home the first-place trophy for overall three-fish combination.

This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 1:21 PM.