[erayyak]

Well, I am back. Short trip. Left Thursday after work, made it to the last GA exit on 95 before sleeping for a few hours in a cheap hotel...then back on the road early am and at the ramp in Tampa by 8am....I even beat my friend Mark and he lives there.

We fished Friday at a place called Weedon Island. In all my time of living down there I never went there. Wish I had fished it more. Not that I did that good, but there were tons of fish, and Todd, Mark and Peter all had really good days. I managed one decent jack and one rat red. I think Mark caught 5 reds, and a couple of trout. Todd had 3 reds, 2 trout and 1 snook. And Peter caught at least 5 reds and a couple of trout. Some good fish. Most of the fish were caught on either topwater or a Gold Exude Dart. It is amazing that standing in between Peter and Mark fishing the same pothole on a grass flat...they caught most of those reds and I didn't even have a hit. Mark was using the Dart and Peter was using a baby bass Exude Slug. I never have understood that.

Tournament day was Saturday for the Erick Bell Memorial....and I repeat I am not dead in case someone I know sees this. Conditions were windy and rainy but 63 anglers showed up anyway. 6 of which were fly guys. The lure I chose was a White Redtail Jig. The fly guys use white clousers. The lures were all from the same company, and each angler got a 1/8 oz, 1/4 oz and 1/2 oz. So everyone used the same thing. A TON of fish were caught including 6 slams with the winning slam (red, trout, snook) being over 70 inches. The largest trout was 22 inches caught on fly...that was impressive with the weather. I did ok catching a dozen trout between 14 and 20 inches....about a dozen pinfish, some lizard fish, a few ladyfish and a snapper. But again I got skunked on the reds and snook. Mark and Todd (who are my teammates on Team Wildy for Wilderness Systems) both caught some nice trout and a 22 inch red and 21 inch red respectively. Neither could find a snook to finish out the slam.

My intentions were to take tons of pictures...but here is what I got from Friday. With the pouring down rain the only pics were of my trout for the tournament. The negative tides made for a tough day, but the reds on Friday were up on the flats tailing and sitting in a few select pot holes in the grass. These are the pictures from my camera, if they send me any I will add them to the thread.