The Notorious Blog

June 26th 2010 lake Chuck

Today I fished as an alternate for Team Texas Tackle Factory at the TRS Lake Chuck Tourney.. Talk about a BLAST…

At the Capts Meeting, Trey pulled number 36 so that put us in the second flight of boats.

At around 6 am, our number was called and we were off. We were fishing out of a Beautiful 23 Shoalwater Cat tower boat that belonged to a friend of Treys. We were in this boat because Trey’s boat had motor issues on thursday, and I blew the powerhead on my boat during a trip the day before.

We left and were making our way down to the southern portion of lake calcasieu heading for a lake that Trey had caught some fish the day before in prefishing. We got there and the water looked great , there was bait everywhere and a few fish foraging up close to the grass.

We worked a shoreline and saw a few big redfish, but couldnt get them to bite even by landing on there heads. Trey eventually put on a popping cork and gulp and caught a nice smaller 4.5# red.. Into the livewell he goes, breaking the ice by 7 am.

We kept trying to catch more fish, but they just werent happening in this area this morning so we jumped on plane and move a few miles away.  At this new spot, we were working some rip rap with midcoast corks and gulps trying to drum up some reds. We were steadily catching reds, but they were all 19” long .

While we were fishing, I was checking on the red we had an noticed he wasnt doing so good so we made the decision to let him go, instead of having him die with no chance. He wasnt going to win us anything, so it was not a hard decision.

We let him go and decided to make a move to the west. We were running and talking about where we should go and we passed a beautiful looking pond that you could only see from the tower. This pond was behind some cattails and looked promising.

We got into the pond and all of the sudden were were in a ton of what looked like broken tree trunks, so we immediately shut down as to not lose a lower unit. It turns out, these stump/trunks were actually cat tails that were broke off at the water line. They were quite soft, so we were not that worried.

We put the trolling motor in the water and were looking around when all of the sudden we see tons of redfish running away from the boat. In all directions we look, we spot reds pushing so our day was looking up. We kept working towards a little cat tail island in the middle of the pond and I get a close up look at a redfish pushing away from us. One cast two foot in front of that fished proved to be the ticket.. He ate readily and the fight was on. We got him to the side of the boat and Trey put the net under him and we were gasping at this fish. He was definately a toad!!!!!!!!  out comes the check it stick and wouldnt ya know it, he was 27.25” and around 8#s… Too big for louisiana tournament unfortunately.

We released him and I hopped back onto the tower. Immediately we saw a few more fish that were just out of reach, so we kept pushing in towards this island in the middle of the pond. Just as soon as we got back into motion, I saw a fish swimming towards us and I made a great cast 1 ft in front of his face and he ate quickly.. .Again the fight was on and the fish was at the boat moments later. This fish would Measure, I knew it!!!!   A perfect 26” fish that was about 7.5 on the boga

We high fived eachother and were back on the hunt. Moments later another fish came to the boat that was a smaller fish, but was number 2 in the livewell. This fish was about 4#s.

For the next two hours, we were seeing fish and cathing fish. I was not casting at fish i could easily tell were oversized, as we didnt want to disturb the area unless it was for a solid tournament fish. About an hour later, we cast at a fish that was definately an upgrade. Sure enough, this fish was about 6.5#s on the boga. Into the livewell he goes.

We spend the next hour or so casting at fish that all of the sudden decided they didnt want to eat, so we started making our way out of the pond and off to the weigh in. We arrived about 30 minutes before our time and weighed in rather quickly.

We ended up 19th, which isnt too bad considering our competition, but we knew we could have been in the top 10 if we had done a few things better. All in all it was a great tourney, with a great guy fishing as my partner.. Thanks for the Memory Trey.. I look forward to doing it again