Nurse surprised to win at Nature Coast fishing tourney. ‘My face went pale as a ghost’

For nurse Jessica Honovic, the past few years of working haven’t been easy.

“It’s a lot of work, stressful at times,” she said. “I’m always looking for reasons to go fishing.”

Last weekend, she made plans to join into the Chassahowitzka Community Catch Fishing Tournament, based out of the Nature Coast of Florida. The tournament would have teams competing for the biggest trout and redfish with separate categories. A third, unknown category would be chosen for the Calcutta, or side pot, that anglers could opt into.

“We entered the Calcutta and prefished for two days, it was on fire. We caught a lot of redfish and released them all to know where they were. On tournament day, Saturday morning, we went back to the same spots and nothing. The tide was low and we had no fish at 11 a.m.,” Honovic explained.

“I said to my husband, James Hansen, we’re not going to keep doing this. I said let’s go to the point then slowly start working through the backcountry.”

As they went for deeper water, Honovic kept working her gold spoon. Around 12:30, she finally got her first bite of the day.

“I thought I had a rock almost. I went to yank it and saw it was a redfish and got it to the boat, said ‘Sweet, we got one.’ It was small, about 19-inches. I counted the spots on it, six on one side, five on the other and said we’re keeping it.”

The pair kept fishing. Honovic switched methods trying to trout fish, throwing a variety of lures with no luck other than a few ladyfish. Around 3 o’clock, they called it for the day, disappointed in their catch.

“We then started to have motor problems. It would run 15 to 20 feet then stall out. We were stressing. This happened for a mile then it eventually ran fine after that, and we’re not sure why.”

At the weigh-in dock, Honovic ran up to see what had been caught. It was there she saw what the Calcutta was.

“I saw it was most spots, and the current leader was 10. So I ran back to the boat to get our fish and turn it in!”

After an hour of waiting and all fish being weighed in, the redfish she caught ended up being a big winner.

“They called us up and said we were the winner of the Calcutta! I asked the lady how much was in it and she said just over $1,000. My face went pale as a ghost. The next day they did awards and raffles so we took some of the winnings and bought raffle tickets,” Honovic said.

“When we got the winning envelope for the Calcutta, it actually said $1,440! The $10 per entry had over 140 boats. Even more lucky after that was three raffle prize winning tickets. All I kept thinking to myself is man this is crazy!”

The other big winner on the day was fellow female angler, Melissa Spagone, who brought home first place redfish with a 6.65-pound fish.