Jim, Alex and I got to the beach house Water Damage Recovery rented and met Louie to help set up for the party. Louie had beer and drinks ready to go so we went to the dock for some fishing practice. Jim and I went and bought some shrimp and we started catching fish. Jim got a Flounder and Alex got a Redfish. All of us caught sand trout and several undersize Specs. As it got dark, Alex went to the neighbors dock and turned there light toward us and we crossed 3 light to really start the action. We caught 30 or so keepers as guests started arriving. Shawn and George showed up and Louie went to Lake Jackson for some excellent food from Chili's. Shanan and Raul showed up from Frost insurance and came to the dock to fish and Brandon and his dad Steve came to supervise. Later Joe came in and we all eat and talked. Jen and Steve and his son got in late to Linda's so we did not see them at the party.

Shawn brought a poker set and a washer game they were playing while I fished. By 9:00 Jim started cleaning the fish and we bagged them for the Party Saturday night. We put the scraps in the crab trap so we could also eat crab at the party. At 10:00 we headed to our house for some rest before the tournament started Saturday morning.

Saturday morning came early as Alex went with Rick in the boat for the 30 minute ride to Linda's and Jim and I drove. We got waivers signed and bought bait and ice. The weather had been forecast early in the week as cold and stormy so quite a few participants decided to stay home and sleep. Some had other excuses as being sick or tooth aches but the hard core among us came ready to brave the weather. It was a beautiful sunny day with winds around 50 miles per hour to keep us cool and help make those long casts. After we all launched Jim, Rick, Alex and I went to the bay and spent the day in green water around bird island. I could only catch bait fish and 5 inch Sandy's. Jim got an undersize Flounder and Rick caught a few Hard Heads and Gafftop. Alex yelled he had a fish on and it was big. I thought he had a big Gafftop but saw color as it got close to the boat. When it saw the boat his reel screamed and the big Redfish tore off away from the Kenner. I handed the net to Rick as I did not want to be the one who let it get away. Alex was really working hard to get it close when Rick finally got it in the boat. It was a little over 27 inches and the biggest fish Alex had ever caught. We took a few pictures and put it in the box.

 I had to retie his leader as I had forgot to replace the 12 pound test from the night before and handed him my rod. All of a sudden he had another fish on, this time a 16 inch Spec. We kept fishing and I continued to catch bait sized Croaker and Sandy's when Alex hooked another fish. It was pulling hard and I was hoping for a big fish but it was a sting ray. I stupidly netted it and got the hook in the net. I stepped on the end of its tail to keep from getting stung and when reaching for the hook its tail slipped and it stuck me in the finger. Boy did that hurt. I let Jim release it while I tried to stop the bleeding and got some antibiotic ointment. Jim said the motor had hot water so I filled a bucket and soaked my finger for a few minutes. The pain went away fast as the protein's in the poison were neutralized. I put a big squirt of ointment on the towel and wrapped it tight to stop the bleeding and went back to fishing. By now we were out of shrimp so the bait I was catching was coming in handy. We all started catching Sandy's and Croaker and put 10 or so in the box. Waves started going over the bow by 11:00 so we headed in to clean our fish. We saw Shanan and Raul on the dock at the beach house so stopped to see how they were doing. Shanan had caught a 35 inch Black Drum and Brandon got a picture of it before they released it.

Jim, Rick, Alex and I went back to Rick's to do house work, clean the boat, cut and weed eat the get cleaned up. Rick saw some people on the dock and gave them the Sand trout and Croaker then we went to the weigh in.

Shawn Royer caught the smallest fish, a 6 inch Gafftop catfish.

 

Jen Banchard got the biggest fish that got away, a 33 inch Black Drum

Tallest Tail went to Brandon Jager. He got stuck on a reef and had to pull his boat 3 miles to get back to fishing.

Because of the rough weather and the difficult time catching the target species we changed the winners.

2nd place for Trout went to Louis Flores for a 14 1/2 inch Trout weighing 1.2 pounds.

1st place for Trout went to Joe Hale for a 16 3/8 inch Speckled Trout  weighing 1.6 pounds.

 

No keeper Flounder were caught so we changed to Black Drum. All Drum over 30 inches have to be released.

2nd place Black Drum went to Shanan Wagoner for his over 30 inch fish.

 

1st Place Black Drum went to Jen Banchard for her over 30 inch fish.

 

Only 1 Redfish was caught so we opened it to other species.

3rd place went to Steve Jager for a large Croaker.

2nd place went to Steve Halverson for his Gafftop catfish.

1st Place went to Alex Harper for his 27 inch 6.4 pound Redfish.

 

We thanked all the sponsors and committee members with certificates and handed out plaques and prizes to the winners.

It was decided Jen Banchard will be the chairman for the next fishing tournament and we all went to Georges beach house.

Jim cleaned all the fish and Rick got the supplies for a fish fry. With the winning fish and the fish from Friday night we had a mess of fried fish as well as leftovers from the Chili's the night before.

While the cooking was going on others were playing washers and telling fish tails. I went to the dock with the camera to take pictures of Shanan, Raul, Brandon and Steve fishing. Shortly after getting there Shanan had a fish on. It was huge and spooled him twice. With coaching from everyone he finally brought it to the dock. When it was measured it was a Black Drum well over 42 inches. They had been using the crabs from the trap as bait and it worked great.

We went back to the house for a game of poker which Shawn won and some more food. At about 10:00 the rain finally arrived and Jim, Alex and I went home for some sleep and dreams of big fish to come.

Mark