Part II of the Texas Redfish Series Tournament Trail – Matagorda, Texas

By: laguna_4_me Mood: SALTWATER FISHING Date: 06/08/2008 00:36:34 Music: None

Part II of the Texas Redfish Series Tournament Trail – Matagorda, Texas

May 3, 2008

Written by Brandon Marshall, Team Castnshoot

In a white tornado of documents I fling my arms around my desk finishing up paper work for the week so I can hit the highway. Running unusually late to meet-up with my Castnshoot Team Members Wes and Bobby Gilmore in Seadrift, Texas. It’s always a blast hanging out with this father-son duo while soaking in the evening sunset, consuming a couple of cold beverages, and catching up on the latest events since the last tournament in Corpus Christi nearly a month ago. Consequently, I found myself playing smokey and the bandit on the back roads trying to make-up time. I finally roll into the Gilmore’s bay house and immediately begin to fill my lungs with the salt air and cool breeze. The refreshing feeling is something only an ol’salty can know! Wes and Bobby come down greeting me with sarcastic remarks of my late timing then with a warm smile and a firm handshake, hand me a cold brew that I had been day dreaming about on my drive. We sat up for a couple of more hours telling jokes and shooting the breeze while we were waiting on my tournament partner and long-time friend, Brian Steward. As if my timing wasn’t bad already, we now see the headlights of my partner rolling around the bend at the umpteenth hour. The three of us start talking about what kind of prank we could think of at the last minute, but out of pure kindness we held back knowing he would be tired anyhow after the long drive from Port Mansfield. He had been down there for several days addressing an aquatic business trip. We all turned in for the night with eager anticipation of the next morning to do a little prefishing. Morning came too soon as we were all still beaten by the hard work week and late night chatter. Now…some of you have read about Bobby’s coffee from previous articles written by Wes…but let me describe it from my point of view as his son may have sold him short. The coffee taste as though he uses a chemistry kit to get perfect balance between great taste and enough caffeine to wake-up a dead horse. Two cups later and the sugar from a breakfast roll, and I could have literally swam to Matagorda pulling the boat by my teeth! We hit the highway and arrived in Matagorda just around daylight and launched the Tran Sport 210V Cat powered by a new Mercury 250 ProXS. I’m not going to lie...I was still a bit nervous about how my partner would handle the additional testosterone upgrade from his Yamaha 200 hp to this mean sounding Mercury 250. He put me to rest several minutes into the ride as he hammered down coming out of Russell’s Bait Camp and cutting smoothly across the water at 56 mph, a speed the boat had never seen previously. We spent several hours searching back lakes due to the higher spring tides, but the wind was providing no help with gusts up to 35 mph. With winds like that, a person is just happy not being tossed around like a rag in a washing machine. We managed to find some scattered fish but as my partner and I remained quiet, we both knew that the next day would be difficult. We met back at the boat ramp with our counterparts, the Gilmores, and gave them a quick shrug of our shoulders and a face gesture resembling that of a three year old sucking on a lemon. For the captain’s meeting, a crowd began to gather and we slowly shouldered our way towards the registration table to fork out the green stuff once again and draw our boat number. I usually draw, but to be courteous I extended the chance to my partner. Needless to say, out of 127 we drew 130! I looked at my partner like a parent catching their kid’s hand in the cookie jar and yelled out, “How can we be 130 out of a 127 boats?!?!” The guy holding the bucket just replied, “uhhhh…That means you’ll be last.” To make the best of a rough day casting several thousand times and drawing a number that could not possibly be beneficial, we high-tailed it back to Seadrift where I had planned out dinner for the night, King Ranch Chicken Casserole with a side of rice. We all enjoyed dinner and a hard day fishing. We sat around playing guitar and telling stories before heading to rest our tired bodies. Saturday morning came with excitement as our adrenaline began to kick-in along with Bobby’s kryptonite coffee and the soreness felt just several hours earlier began to diminish. Brian and I loaded-up in the truck for the drive, which seem to take forever! Almost like a youngster awaiting the arrival to the amusement park, I kept asking, “Are we there yet?” Annoyed by me, Brian pulled into the bait camp where the place was lit up like a disaster area for half-cocked captains and fishermen. We managed to back the boat down into the ramp without hearing anyone screaming bloody-murder, so all-in-all everything was going great. The 127 boats circled around like Indians on a rampage when the loud speaker began calling the numbers one by one allowing them to slowly head their way out of the bait camp. I looked over at my partner just as he began cleaning his reel and changing out the line. Outraged by this lack of time management I asked, “What are you doing man…we’re going to be heading out in a little bit!” He nudged me with his elbow pointing to the boats behind us and laughingly said, “Chill! We probably have 30 minutes before they get to us.” I took a deep breath and then looked behind me as boat number 20 passed close by. I gave a short wave and fake smile as if they stole our number. It was torture just setting there and listening to the sound of outboard engines revving up and racing-off to their favorite fishing hole. Time to spare, Brian and I start discussing last minute plans to head to an area we had not fished yet, gambling that our instincts would payoff. Like a ready greyhound on a leash, we began creeping up until the last number was called and Brian let the Mercury roar! However, a few hundreds yards and we shut down again to putt through The Locks, a Watergate system for the intercoastal waterway for barges to pass through without having to worry about tide fluctuations. Coming out the South end of the system we throw the hammer down again and began passing boats one by one. For those readers who have not tournament fished before, passing other fishermen is just one of the many thrills in itself! To look at your opponent as you pass them and see that their number was a good 20 boats ahead of yours, is a great feeling, even if they’re heading to a spot no where near yours. Enjoying the surprisingly calm winds, we break away from the crowd and begin cruising the shoreline searching for an area not already covered up with boats. Brian looks over at me after bait begins jumping against the bank as if asking for approval that this is a better spot than any. We jump out and immediately we both begin catching some five-pound reds. Nice for any other day, but not nice for today. After grinding out 15 or so twins of the two we have on the stringer, we head back to the boat and rethink our game plan. Crossing the bay system we see a storm system coming in from the North and before we could hit the safety of protected water, we get slammed with high, cold, winds. The boat beats through the rough water to get us to an area along muddy shell and we bail-out into knee deep mud. After getting about 50 yards from the boat and catching my breath, I start to think maybe this is a bad idea. About that time, Brian hooks-up and brings in an 11.5 lb red that is only slightly over the slot limit. The catch gave me another boost of energy and I continued pressing forward, literally, as to break suction from my feet to lift my legs up and out of the mud. We remained in the area long enough to realize that we hit a straggler and the best thing to do with only a couple of hours left was begin fishing our way back toward bait camp for weigh-in. With time to kill, and still quite a ways out from making a good show, we stopped along the intercoastal behind some spoil islands to try our luck. Brian was throwing this new spoon I’ve never used before and begins catching some undersized reds with an attitude. Not having any luck, I walk back to the boat and pull anchor. Waiting there, Brian hands his rod and reel to me with that special little spoon and says, “Throw it a couple of times while I check on the fish in the live-well.” I’m thinking at this point anything is possible and start casting. On the third cast, I couldn’t believe the luck, the rod doubles over and line starts ripping off the reel unlike the reds I had been catching earlier that day. We net the fish and to our shock was a pound and half better than the other two fish we had. The whole way back to the dock we started laughing because for years now Brian and I have joked about how nice it would be to better our fish with only minutes before weigh-in. Only five minutes to spare we make it to the bait camp and place 53^rd out of 127 boats with a weight of 10.16 lbs. Although the outcome was not exactly what we wanted, we did keep the team effort on the forefront and had a fun day fishing!