IFA Navarre June 7-8/19-21, 2008

Date: June 7-8, 2008

Birddog and I are heading west in search of Sciaenops ocellatus known locally as redfish, red drum and red bass. The journey leads us to unfamiliar waters. Running west through San Destin and Destin early in the morning, the traffic is nil and the wind is calm.

Passing through Fort Walton we see a banner stretched across the street mentioning “Billy Bow Legs.” If you are like me and said what the hell is a Billy Bow Leg? Here is your definition: “The annual Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival is held in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The festival honors the local pirate legend, and is unrelated to the Seminole chief Billy Bowlegs. Similar to Mardi Gras, the festival consists of a parade, fireworks, and associated celebrations. The festival originated in the 1950’s as a boat and water skiing show. Contrary to popular belief, there is no period documentation supporting claims that William Augustus Bowles was named “Billy Bowlegs” (nor is there any evidence Bowles even set foot near what is today Fort Walton). The festival has a Mardi Gras flair rather than a historical focus, with locals dressing up in cocked hats (such headgear was not in fashion when Bowles was active in the late 1790s to early 1800s from his base near Apalachicola).”

We proceed on heading further west, stopping at the convenience store for the day’s staple of supplies (drinks and snicker bars). A gentlemen asking if we were going fishing detains us for few moments. He tells us where we need to go; the place described is already on our list of places to visit. We thank him for the information and press on.

We are the third boat to launch and we head off into the unknown. We spy a school of redfish early and managed to snag one. We fish up and down Santa Rosa sound. We continue to check spots we had marked and looking for anything that looked fishy.

About 1100 the community embraced the Billy Bowlegs festival. Take the busiest day at St. Marks or Econfina and multiply it by 20. The place was crawling with jet ski’s bow riders and yacht’s.

We fish until around 4:00 and call it a day with only a few fish to show for our efforts.

Day two finds us launching from the world’s smallest boat ramp parking lot. There was enough room for three or four vehicles with trailers. We had to back down the street to launch.

We head east looking for something that might be worthy of a tournament grade stringer. To our dismay day two turns into a repeat of day one. We see a few fish and catch a few fish, only one being close to tournament quality.

Here are some shots of what Billy Bowlegs was like:

Here are some pictures of what we caught during this weekend:

Date: June 19-21, 2008

We find ourselves back in the place lacking a great number of our target – redfish.

We fish everywhere but where we had found fish a few weeks earlier. Grinding out new spots that look good, but do not seem to hold fish for some reason. We see several nice schools of jacks but we can not seem to get them to eat. We manage to find a few good trout bite’s, but that is not going to help our cause.

Finally at the end of the day we manage to find a few fish, several are good quality. The biggest concern was the late bite, the fish did not turn on until after 3:00 pm. We call it a day and head in.

A few pics from the days catch:

We find ourselves heading out again the next morning grinding out some more new spots. Painful fishing, but it has to be done, you never know where that next good spot will be. We finally conceded and head to our goto spots and verify a few fish are still on the spots. It didn’t take much to convince Birddog that we would be fishing this same stuff tomorrow and we should head in.

We load up, get the boat ready, and park it for the night. During the day we had a few mishaps with some rods, mainly my rods. We figured out a plan and went with it, it mainly consisted of Birddog sharing a rod or two with me.

We go to the Captain’s meeting and hear the schedule of events for the next day’s event. We leave and discuss if we have everything in order for tomorrow. Birddog mentions that we didn’t check the lights. I say they should be fine, let it go.

Morning of the tournament – We head to my friend’s house to get the boat. We hook it up and get ready to leave. Birddog wants to try the lights. Front light is good, back light is not working…hmmmm…A lil spray and banging and it’s still dead. Off to the store for better light to better spray and beat on it. I run my hand under the cap…hmmm…loose wire…get the screwdriver…hmmm broke wire in receptacle not to be fixed. Let’s go to wal mart and get a new one. Super Wal Mart is not open 24 hrs in Navarre.

Birddog takes off and heads to the ramp….he passes the pace car and is starting to lap the field. We arrive at the ramp to find it is thundering and lightning real good offshore.

We duct tape a flash light to the stern light pole and we are golden. Birddog grabs the rods and says, “Is this the rod that broke yesterday?” I shake my head back and fourth in a no fashion. Birddog facial expression is one of please be joking with me, this isn’t funny. I say, “No, I rigged it last night” another broken rod.

We launch the boat, I park the truck and walk over…we are in the boat bobbing around waiting to blast off. I notice my bag isn’t in the boat…back to the truck. Upon arriving at the truck I see my bag and the net. I say hi to the net and grab my bag and leave.

We are the last boat to launch and we head off to spot number one. The well oiled machine goes into motion, rods grabbed, trolling motor deployed and we start casting. I being on my post as trolling motor driver turns on the trolling motor…nothing…hmmm.

Birddog runs to the back of the boat and starts flipping and turning things…found one bad fuse that didn’t even apply, but we fixed it. Still no trolling motor, at this point we are thinking we could load it on the trailer and call it a day. I pull the trolling motor up and it’s jammed in the housing some how. We pull the prop and she is working just fine.

Finally we are back to fishing. We fish a few spots and the weather finally chills out enough for us to fish. I’m retrieving the Captain Mike’s spoon and looking for the next spot to cast when Birddog says, “Don’t stop.” My line goes tight. The Chinese fire drill goes off – trolling motor up, power pole down, me running around the boat. Remember the net is in the truck, so we have to hand land the fish. I play the fish out and Birddog cradles the fish into the boat and we have the first keeper of the day – a lil knuckle bumping and the pressure is off…we didn’t zero.

We continue to fish up and down the bank…going from spot to spot. I believe Birddog landed the second keeper of the day and was able to upgrade the fish I caught earlier. I think we landed five fish all day.

We had 5 minutes to fish before we needed to head in…Birddog says,”We need two good fish.” I say, “Okay.” We fish along, actually in a new spot and say to Birddog “There are your two fish, catch them.” Two fish over 25” swim 10 ft from the boat and wouldn’t eat… all you can do is smile and laugh.

We ended up finishing in 6th place again…just a few ounces out of the money.

We started this year wanting to fish this division and finish in the top 20 of each tournament. We have finished 6th twice and are 3rd in divisional points. If we bomb from here out we have exceeded far more than we expected going into this adventure.

We could not have gotten this far without the support of our families. We would like to thank our sponsors we couldn’t of done this without them: Capital City Bank, Grand Panama Beach Resorts, Paradise Bar and Grill, Pickett’s Landing, Challenger Performance Tackle, South Georgia Outdoors and Bite-A-Bait.

Thanks to my partner for enduring the bad singing and snoring.