I had the privilege to fish the Casting for a Cause tournament a couple of weeks ago. This was my second year attending the event and it didn’t disappoint. Lots of fun hanging out with fellow anglers. The drinks, food, and prizes weren’t too shabby either.
I arrived Thursday night after work and went straight the captain’s meeting. On the ride down Brandon and I devised a plan to fish an area we had never fished. I had an inkling there would be some big fish in the area, but it was a crap shoot. We were going for broke. Not much different from our plan the previous year, or so we thought. We were fortunate enough to finish 3rd last year.
Tournament morning, running on a couple of hours of rest, we made it to the launch before first light. We launched into the darkness and started our paddle toward our destination. The area looked like gator infested swampland and neither of us bothered to check how far of a paddle we had ahead of us. After hearing a pack of wild hogs rummaging through the brush on the bank beside us, we started to wonder what we had got ourselves into.
If that wasn’t enough things really started to get eerie when we paddled passed a decomposing hog planted belly up with all fours point to the sky. It took us about an hour to reach our destination. We started covering water looking for signs. Not much happening, but I did spot a few backs on the shoreline. I caught one 4 lb fish and had shots a couple others.
We kept moving further in the marsh and further away from the launch. We paddled pass another decaying hog that the vultures had picked open revealing it’s insides. The smell was almost too much to handle, but we pressed on. Brandon also spooked a doe on the shoreline that pranced off into the thick brush. I found a few more backs and Brandon spooked a few reds but the action was still slow. I landed another 4lb fish. We had 8lbs on the stringer. Both of us knew we had no shot to win, so we kept grinding and paddling.
We finally found feeding activity at our next location. We heard and saw redfish blowing up on button shad all around us. I wasn’t very optimistic initially. I know how tough the bite is when redfish are keying in on small shad. We fished hard without a bite while fish were blowing up all around us. Brandon somehow convinced a fish to eat and landed a small upgrade. We still didn’t have over 8lbs.
We were running out time and had a long paddle back to the launch. We decided to start the paddle back and fish along the way. We saw more wildlife on a while back when I spotted a large snake swimming down the bayou in the opposite direction. 45 minutes into the paddle and still nowhere near the launch we realized we didn’t have time to fish if we wanted to make the weigh-in on time. The paddle was brutal, especially on an empty stomach. All we had was a few water bottles all day. It took us 1 hr and 50 mins nonstop to reach the launch. It was one of the toughest I’ve ever made.
We loaded up as fast as we could and hit the road for the long drive to the weigh-in. As this point we were starving and knew we weren’t going to win, so we decided to stop a nearest fast food restaurant. It just happen to be a Whataburger. A burger and fries never tasted so good. We cut it close, but we made it to the weigh just in time to be the last team to weigh-in. We finished with 8.23 lbs. Brandon’s 8 spot red barely missed first place in the most spots category. Regardless of the outcome we had a good time hanging out at the weigh-in.
The next two days we took it easy and fished out of the canoes after the grueling paddle on tournament day. We decided to check out new areas each day. On Saturday we covered 24 miles of water. We burned less than 1.5 gallons of fuel. Conditions were great for covering water. Glass calm.
We found a decent amount of fish and had a bunch of shots. I stood on the Yeti most of the day and poled Mickey around and let him fish. We threw the fly rod all day. Mickey landed a few nice fish on fly before I got my turn on the bow. The first fish I got a shot I at was right off the bow. I put the fly on it’s nose and it ate near the surface. I got excited and did Bill Dance-esque hookset. The leader snapped quickly. Rookie mistake. Mickey got a good laugh.
We kept checking out new areas. We saw a few more fish, but the bite was slow. Sunday was a wash. The conditions were night and day from the day before. The wind picked up so we tried to fish protected marsh ponds. We covered 13.5 miles and only spooked a handful of fish all morning.
