The first day’s takeoff saw three teams head south to Laguna Madre, while seven ran to waters north of Port Aransas. Different game plans, but all will be seeking a pair of big bites in hopes of winning the sixth annual Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter.
Tournament format allows anglers to keep two redfish between 20 and 28 inches daily, with the heaviest cumulative 3-day weight earning the $75,000 top prize.
In the early goings, the team of Florida redfish pros Mike Lauer and Jesse Craddock boated a chunky “high slot” fish that weighed 8 pounds. Elsewhere, redfish pro Davis Christian netted a whopper for his partner, Bassmaster Elite pro Justin Hamner, but the nearly 10-pounder measured just over the 28-inch mark.
Other teams got on the board with solid keepers in the 3 1/2- to 6-pound range. That begs the question: Why not just fish for the big reds?
Answer: It’s not that simple.
Size Selection
Around 9 a.m. Bassmaster Elite Brandon Palaniuk spotted a tailing redfish and made a perfect cast to the feeding fish, which gobbled his bait and filled a limit for Palaniuk and Robbie Hunzicker. Aside from that, the windy and partly cloudy to fully overcast conditions draping much of the tournament playing field will limit the sight fishing tactics that allow anglers more control over which fish they’ll target.
Absent the ability to visually pick out the right fish, the game often becomes a luck-of-the-draw scenario. True, bigger reds often work the deeper edges of whatever habitat you’re fishing, but it’s not uncommon to find a couple of high-slot tanks running with a crowd of smaller reds.
Until they reach maturity, around the 30-inch mark, redfish often school in mixed sizes. Unlike spotted seatrout a common inshore bycatch known for cannibalistic behavior, redfish don’t directly threaten one another. Feeding competition is a real thing, but smaller reds aren’t necessarily fearful of swimming alongside bigger ones.
Fred Myers, who teams with his son and fellow redfish pro Carter Myers, said it’s a matter of putting yourself in fertile areas with good redfish populations and playing the probability game.
“During practice, Carter and I found areas with numbers of fish and my philosophy is that, theoretically, an area always fishes better during the tournament because you’re locked in there, you’re concentrating on what needs to be done and you’re picking apart the area,” Myers said. “We were using baits with no hooks and we got a look at smaller ones, decent ones and some better ones.
“We know they’re there and we’ll be in good fishable water. We have some good fish, but we did not catch ‘em (in practice). Obviously, we’d rather catch them during the tournament.”
Part of it may come down to working through the numbers.
“I think we have plenty of small fish to go through if we need fish, but our focus is to get those bigger fish, even if we have to burn some smaller fish to get to (a competitive) weight,” Myers said. “But if we average 13 pounds (a day for the first two days), we’re going to go to a place where we saw just big fish (on the final day).”
By the Numbers
This event’s experienced redfish anglers are pretty good at eyeballing a fish’s approximate weight, but while it’s okay to estimate the pounds, competitors must be certain of their fish’s length, specifically at the extreme ends of the slot limit.
Tournament Director Chris Bowes said the event ensures a consistent measuring process by providing each team a Check-It Stik measuring board and a Perfect Pincher — a fish-friendly device that squeezes the red’s tail fin to establish the maximum overall length.
“They use the Perfect Pincher by putting it over the (caudal peduncle) right before the tail fin fans out and moving it along the board until it reaches 1/2 inch before the end of the tail,” Bowes said. “That allows you 1/2 inch to see where the tail touches on the measuring board.”
The same process is used at the weigh-ins for an official length verification. If tournament officials determine a redfish is under or over the slot limit, that fish is disqualified and the team incurs a 1-pound penalty.
“It’s vital that the anglers do a good job to stay within that slot, because the mistake of bringing in a fish that is not within the slot is devastating,” Bowes said.
Of course, this all starts with catching big redfish and that will be the goal for every team in the tournament field.