Bad Luck Fishing is still better than Work

I'm getting ready for the tournament on Sunday so thought I'd take the day off from work and practice. I'm finding the hardest part of the whole ordeal is getting a decent picture of the fish on a measuring board. This is a requirement for the tournament and if I can't get it right it won't matter how big a fish I catch. I think the one today could have been over 31" if I would have got him on the board correctly.

I did catch some fish, so that's not the bad luck part. The bad luck started this morning when I got to the 'good' spot and the waves were breaking into the shoreline. The wind was gusting to 20mph, so that was out. I headed to a completely different spot that I never do well at, but at least it was sheltered from the wind. 2 hours of peddling and absolutely nothing was moving. I tucked up into the mangroves to eat some crackers and take a break, figuring the rest of the day was going to be like this. I heard a commotion behind me and not 50 feet away was a big blue tail sticking out of the water. I had to cast over my left shoulder and behind me, and accidentally hit him with the lure. It didn't seem to matter though cause he grabbed it and took off. I was already in a bad position, facing away from the fish, and to make matters I had loosened up my drag earlier while I let the bait set out on the bottom. Redfish don't usually make real fast runs, but with the drag set the way it was this one did. He was quickly taking all my line, and was about to wrap around a pole that was out off the shore, while I was still trying to get turned around to face him. I did everything I could but the wind was pushing me the other way. I'm sure the line wrapped across that pole, why it didn't break I'll never know. I did finally get pointed in the right direction, tightened the drag, and let the fish pull me out to deeper water. He wore himself out pretty quickly after that and I was able to get him in for some pictures.

The next fish had 2 or 3 friends with him... a bunch of commotion in the shallow water and and soon as my lure hit the middle of it the fish grabbed it and took off. Unfortunately this one might have been a little bit bigger, and was able to break the leader.

Then it started to rain, then my rain pants started to leak, then it really started to rain, then I dropped my new real in the water, arghh. Hopefully all the bad luck is over and I can go into Sunday with a fresh start.

Nice Redfish

30 and 1/2 Inches?