In preparation for fishing in the Central Florida Shootout, I meticulously rigged each pole, triple-checked the boat, reviewed the weather, pre-fished a few spots, and even bought a new live bait pen from Handler Fishing Supply. Being the first tournament I’ve fished (as long as you don’t count the free tournament my dad signed me up for when I was 9, which lasted all of five minutes because I threw a hissy fit and scared all the fish away), I wanted to make sure I had everything ready to go. The first day of the tournament was on Friday and we swung by the captain’s meeting at the Melbourne Auditorium to kick things off. We strategically stuffed our faces with delicious bbq and cheap beers before wandering around the layout. While walking through the party, we ran into JC from Spacefish and managed to pick up a sweet shirt, and adult beverage cozies (thanks again =). After we had our fill of what the captain’s party had to offer we made our way to the boat aka the nauti ice, aka the aguaholic…okay, it’s a work in progress.
The game plan was to cast net a bunch of bait around the residential canals/spoil islands in the Banana River while waiting for the tournament to begin at 9 pm. Naturally, after buying a new bait pen to hold all my alluring baits, I was having a difficult time locating any inshore. The game plan changed, as I Texas rigged up a bag full of Slayer SST paddle tails. I was now going to throw this weedless artificial under every dock, mangrove, or structure that looked like it would hold fish. This worked out well early on in the night, as we caught a decent trout on our first light, and then after moving down a couple more lights, found one that looked promising. What looked like was really nice sized speckled trout in the shadowy edges of the light, ended up producing three redfish and one snook. Within a couple of hours, we had already caught an inshore slam. The trout was 13”, the reds were 14”, 17”, 19” and the snook was 23”. We closed out the evening fishing in the Indian River this time under some bright security lights instead of the green underwater lights. We head a lot of action but only ended up catching a couple of smaller speckled trout.
The next morning we made it out to the middle section of the Banana River near Cocoa Beach. Started out fishing some shallow flats, and then later in the day moved to some residential docks. I caught a couple of nice size speckled trout by just power fishing around the docks, one ended up being in the slot range at 17”. We also caught a big ladyfish to use as cut bait but didn’t attract any strikes. By midday, we decided to pack it up and head in. We ended up releasing all the fish even though we had two fish we could have entered. They were both on the low end of the slot limit and the weigh-in was an hour boat ride down south. We did, however, drive the Jeep down and enjoyed all the action at Captian Hirams. I was surprised how much fun watching the weigh-ins actually was, and glad I didn’t bring in my fish because they were way short of the winners. I believe the winning speckled trout was 9.8lbs which is an insanely large gator trout.
Overall, the Central Florida Shootout was a great learning experience, hopefully, by this time next year, I will know a little more of what I’m doing, and can enter in a couple of chunky fish. One thing I realized I need to invest more time in though, is night fishing. We had planned originally only staying out a couple of hours to fish at night and ended up fishing for almost five hours. Once you get comfortable with skip casting half blind, because it’s so dark in some of these areas, the night time fish bite was one of the hottest I’ve experienced in a while. I also recently purchased a trolling motor for the boat so it will be in the shop for a week or two. Super excited to be able to use spot lock and not mess with an anchor anymore. Summer is also here for me, so I’m looking forward to being able to share a lot more fishing trips with yall soon. Until next time, have fun catchin em up, but then safely release them for next time, please.
-Spanky
Appreciate the report, sorry you didn’t hit your goals. Night fishing is great, particularly when we get those runs of full moons. The docks around Diana shores have always produce for me during the later hours. The trolling motor will be a game changer, as there is nothing more annoying than battling for position while searching for fish. Look forward to updates.
Thanks, ReelGangta! I’m looking forward to trying out some night time fishing this summer since it is so hot out during the day. I’ve heard there is good tarpon fishing in the late summer months up around Diana Shores. I’ve tried to go back there once in my bay boat and my t-top is just a little too tall to pass under on the Banana River side. I’ll give it a shot one day when I try fishing Barge Canal. I used the motor for the first time last night fishing some dock lights, probably not the best idea as I was pushing buttons blindly, but it’s so nice fishing two or three docks at a time and not worrying about adjusting the anchor at all to be close enough for skip casts. Hopefully will be able to be out on the water a lot more often here soon. Will keep the updates coming!
Slam Bam, You’re The Man! Nice report Alex!
Thanks Damon! Going to try to catch some more snook on the Banana river side soon.
“Dirty Decks” may just officially be your new nickname. At the very least, “going out on the boat with Alex” will henceforth be known as “dirty decking it.” Awesome report, rocking shirt, and if you’re looking for crew to go riding dirty on a night trip, hit me up!
Hahahah I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who laughed too hard at that. I’m down for all of these references and will let you know soon about “dirty decking it” sometime soon!
The knowledge that you can gain from tournaments is super valuable. After a while, you will get to meet some of the top anglers and really get some great insight on fishing the area. Always try and weigh a fish in size does not really matter.
Good point on weighing. To add, the Shootout actually holds a drawing for $1000 cash — and you only get a raffle ticket by weighing a fish. That’s not bad odds to take home a G!
I’m hoping to find some more inshore tournaments soon. Would love to start entering into more competitions and meeting more inshore anglers. I’ve definitely heard the stories that after the tournaments all those guys hang out and talk shop about what worked for them and what didn’t. I’ll make sure to weigh in next time, the raffle odds sound good, and so does the experience! Thanks, guys!