IFA Redfish Tour Atlantic Division Team of the Year!

The IFA Redfish Tour season concluded with the Championships on November 6 and 7th in Orange Beach, Alabama with teams from 8 states in 6 divisions competing. We were awarded trophies for Atlantic Division Team of the Year which is based on points throughout the 3 events. We stayed consistant finishing in the top 10 at each location. I headed down to prefish 10 days before the tournament and fished in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida catching redfish in all 4 states. With windy conditions the first week I quickly realized a 120 mile run to Louisiana probably wouldn't be in the gameplan as crossing Mobile Bay may not even be possible so we concentrated on more familiar waters in Florida. We found a perfect school of 50-100 reds in the 25-27 inch range but the tide was opposite of tournament conditions. We went back on the right tide and found them but there was a minor problem that provided a lot of fun. Our fish had mixed in with redfish ranging from 30 to 45 inches! We hit a lot of other spots but couldn't find anything better than this huge school. We hoped we could just get 2 bites from the small fish. Each day we only managed to get one fish to measure out of the school. We had a grass flat as a backup plan near checkout that we had to hit both days in the last minute to squeak out a fish to measure. It was frustrating having Top 5 fish in your sights only to watch 40 inchers pick-up anything you tried to present to the smaller fish. The fishing was tough for everyone as our total of 16.54 lbs for 2 days took 23rd place, just good enough to get in the money. The 2010 season gets kicked off March 20th in Charleston, SC.