Keaton Beach 2/25/08

I’m glad my partner Robbie is fishing, I’m beginning to think I need to compete in a working contest, he went back to Keaton for another round of redfish magic.  I will fish again one day 🙂

Robbie’s Report:

Spent a awesome morning on the flats fly casting to reds. Dayum this flyfishing can be tough.

Casted to 15 or so reds only convinced 1 to eat. I believe he was blind, deaf, and dumb.
Caught him on another fly Chalk gave me.

By 1:00 p.m. the wind got pretty fierce out of the SW and shut down my flyfishing. It even made the conventional fishing near impossible.

Ended the day with 3 reds to 26″ and 2, 18″ trout. 1 red on the fly and 2 on a new secret bait I’m hoping to use on the IFA redfish tour. It werked pretty good today what little I used it.

Great day today except for the winds in the afternoon. Can’t wait til next time.

GULP! free since 1970.

Keaton Beach 2/19/08

Robbie made a trip over to fish Keaton Beach on 02/19/08, I was gonna go with him but work obligations got in the way. I missed a good trip and chance to see Robbie catch his first red on a fly.

Here’s Robbie’s Report:

Launched from the K.B. public ramp this a.m. around 9:30 with the help of a Conservation Officer and a crabber. Tide was very low.

Eased out the canal and ran to an area that I love to fish for trout in the winter. No trout at home but many, many redfish. I quickly pitched a soft jerkbait and hooked up immediately.

I figured if I could sight cast a soft plastic to a red, I could toss a fly just as easily. Well after about 40 attempts this 1 decided to eat. She measured 26.75 ” Caught her on the Capt. Caveman fly Chalk tied for me.

Not long after I released her, I got red # 2 on the same fly. This 1 went 25″.

I had hoped to spend the rest of the day flycasting but the wind just got worse. Instead I opted to sight cast to reds with a soft jerkbait. Ended up with 5 or 6 more all about 24″. Probably saw 500-600 reds all day.

It was another beautiful day on the flats even with the aggravating wind. I plan to do more of this flyfishing.

Can’t wait til next time.

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Carrabelle 02/09/08

Finally after spending most of Friday traveling back from Philadelphia and only getting a few hours sleep Friday night was I able to go fishing, John Vickers and myself were fishing the NFGFC (www.nfgfc.org) redfish tournament. There were a total of 29 boats in the field, which was a club record for any tournament.

Fishing was from our observations great and from the pre and post weigh-in chatter everyone had seen many redfish from Econfina river all the way to the Carrabelle river (roughly 54 miles of great redfishing).

We headed out of Carrabelle looking for the targeted species, first stop was outside of a sand bar that was pretty much void of life, and so we moved. Second stop was the beginning of our first drift along the bank, which resulted in basically our day of fishing. We immediately saw redfish after redfish and that pattern stayed true all day; we estimate that we saw over 100 redfish.

The water was super shallow and gin clear, the fish that we saw feeding were catch able, the laid up or cruising fish if with in sight were almost impossible to catch. We ended up catching 20 or so reds, John hooked an over slot fish that had his way with John and left him with his knees knocking. I caught one that was a 1/2-inch to long, here’s the only picture of the day.

We managed to catch several fish that were 25.5 inches long, we kept looking for that 27″ fish, but only found a 24 1/2″. That 24 1/2″ fishing weighed a whopping 6.38 lbs, that was good enough for us to place 3rd in a field of 29 teams.

A picture of the 3rd place fish

We caught the fish on Capt. Mike spoons and Charlie soft plastics.

Thanks to my NFGFC partner John Vickers for guiding us to the 3rd place finish.

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