Big redfish create a challenge at Tampa Bay Redfish Tour. Here’s who won.

Leading up to the first local redfish tournament of 2022, Jeff Mullett wasn’t quite sure he was going to be able to fish.

After about with COVID in early January, the Sarasota native didn’t know what his plan would be at tournament time.

“We did not prefish. A few weeks before we found some fish during the Tampa Power-Pole Pro Redfish Tour on the south shore of Tampa Bay,” Mullett said. “So we went back to that area and hoped for the best.” They placed 14th out of 50 boats during the December tournament.

As the sun rose on Saturday, Jan. 15, Mullet and his Team Promar with Justin Mullett and Matt Miller went back to instincts. Competing against 20 boats, they hoped to bring home the two biggest redfish within the 18- to 27-inch slot for the final round of the Tampa Bay Redfish Tour.

With no redfish allowed to be kept south of the Manatee Bridge, Mullett wasn’t able to fish his home waters.

“We couldn’t head down to Sarasota Bay where I know it’s been loaded up. The closure hurt us for this since you couldn’t keep them there. Instead we left from Maximo (St. Petersburg) and headed south around Port Manatee and Bishop’s Harbor to start fishing.”

Early in the morning, the three-man team dealt with very low water and skittish fish. After spooking a few, the team hooked into their first decent fish followed by a lower slot and what they thought would be an upper slot fish.

“The first one we put in the box was around 6.1 pounds, and then we got a 22- or 23-incher. Matt caught one we measured that was a big, beautiful fish right at 27-inches.

“We put it in the live well at that time and thought it was just right,” Mullett explained. “We knew it was close, probably an 8-pound fish so worth holding at that time.”

After three hours in Bishops Harbor, the team went outside around Joe’s Island, seeing a few fish that weren’t willing to eat the Molting colored Slayer Inc SST soft plastics they presented.

Without much time left, the trio made one more stop. When they pulled in another quality fish they put the biggest fish from earlier on the board once again to see where they stood.

“I don’t know what happened in this tournament, but it seemed like quite a few people said their fish got bigger in the well. When we checked again it was just over 27 inches with the pinched tail, so we let it go,” Mullett said, knowing an oversized fish would be disqualified.

“I think two or three fish ended up being too big for other teams at the weigh in, so we kept the new fish that was about 6.8 pounds.”

At the weigh-in, Team Promar would take up their redfish pair to the scales. Mullett didn’t think it would be enough to win. But their official weight, 12.81 pounds, ended up beating team Fish Whistle by the slight margin of .05 pounds.

“When you do it like that it’s a nice surprise. I didn’t think it would be enough but we’ll take the win either way.”

The Tampa Bay Redfish Tour tournament was also able to raise $1,000 for the Gator Wilderness Camp School.