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Jesse's Hunting > Fishing Articles > Articles > Following the Reds in the Texas Redfish Series
Following the Reds in the Texas Redfish Series
Chris Fullilove - JHO ProStaff
- Houston, TX
August 23, 2006
Keeping it alive
Angler Trey Ganem carefully places his redfish in the livewell aboard the Spotted Ape. Fish must be weighed alive, and penalties are imposed for any fish that comes to the scale dead. |
The Texas Redfish Series is an annual redfish tournament held along the Texas coast. “The distinguishing factor regarding the Texas Redfish Series tournament and the other national redfish tournaments is that the angler is allowed to wade fish in the Texas Redfish Series”, claims Brian Steward.
This is important, because the Texas coast is covered with large shallow water flats. These flats are a haven for redfish and wade fishing offers a good opportunity for success. Each team fishing the tournament is allowed to enter two redfish at the weigh in. All anglers are required to keep the fish alive at the weigh in, and a weight penalty is issued for fish that don’t survive.
The day prior to the tournament, Trey and Brian scouted for redfish. Scouting for redfish starts with identifying areas that have certain characteristics such as protected shorelines, shallow grass flats, and grass flats that have sand pocket openings. Once these areas are identified, the fishermen use a scouting technique called “burning” to cover miles of shallow flats. Burning involves navigating the boat close to potential fishing areas with an observer standing on a console or tower, peering into the shallow flats to identify schools of redfish. Trey Ganem explained that redfish in these sand pockets feed on bait that swim in and out of the grass.
When scouting for a tournament, anglers look for large schools of redfish, and then try to spot large redfish within these schools. Trey and Brian scouted numerous locations, but could only find small, isolated schools. At the close of their scouting efforts, nothing was promising enough to hang tournament expectations on. About the only knowledge gained was where the redfish weren’t. However, based on prior fishing knowledge and experience gained in the area, they knew of a few other places that had potential.
On the day of the tournament, early morning arrived with a full moon overhead and strengthening wind. After the mandatory boat safety check, the tournament officials sounded off the boat numbers in the order that they would leave. With the call of “boat 41”, Ganem powered up his 300 horsepower, cat-style Simmons Custom Boat (SCB), the Spotted Ape, and left the harbor.
Captain Ganem took advantage of his boat’s speed to spend more time fishing, rather than in transit to fishing locations. With the Spotted Ape running sometimes in excess of 95 mph, no time was wasted getting ahead of other tournament boats and into his first desired fishing location. Trey and Brian were in the water and fishing long before the next tournament boat ever passed by.
Their first stop was a spoil bank. Trey and Brian wade-fished the perimeter of the spoil bank, casting topwaters, copper spoons, and Berkley Gulp crabs. Due to the loose grass accumulating on the hooks of the lures, Trey continued to throw a Berkley Gulp crab, rigged weedless. Trey and Brain were able to identify and sight cast to several redfish whose tails rose above the waterline while they fed along the spoil bank. As Trey waded around a shallow point of the spoil bank, he sight-cast and hooked up with the first redfish of the morning. The fish met the legal limit and would be eligible to enter, but they’d need larger fish in order to comfortably compete in this tournament.
The fish was released into the livewell and they continued fishing along the submerged portion of the spoil bank. In short time, a small school of redfish was located. Ganem and Steward continued to cast and work their way closer to the fish, but they couldn’t find any takers. Trying to pinpoint where the fish were, Trey looped back around to fish the area again, but couldn’t connect.
It turned out that the early morning redfish caught at the spoil bank would be the only tournament fish caught for this team. Despite the hard work, preparation, and scouting that Trey and Brian put forth, this tournament reinforces the fact that the Texas coast is a dynamic fishery, making the Texas Redfish Series a challenging tournament.
For more details about the Texas Redfish Series, visit http://www.redfishseries.com.
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