Winning the BCKFC Championship

My local club has their first annual championship hosted in Cocodrie, Louisiana and rewarded people in the club who finished in the top 15 of each tournament.  Around 40 qualified for the event in December.  I’ve been consistent all year, but haven’t won any club tournaments. I’ve come close twice so I really wanted this one bad.  I made sure I had 3-4 days to prefish for this tournament. I covered lots of water so I had different options depending on weather conditions on tournament day.  The week of the tournament the weather was beautiful and then a big front was coming in on Friday night before the tournament.  Seems like the weather has been bad for the tournaments all year.  Friday it snowed with temperatures in the low thirties. It rarely snows in south Louisiana so expectations for a successful tournament result was quickly fading. As I’m leaving the launch early Saturday morning the water temps are reading 42 degrees so I knew the first few hours would be worthless trying to find fish.  Winds would be lite and the sun would be out.  Finally around 10:00 I find a bayou with water temperatures in the 50’s.  I spot a redfish, but it doesn’t want anything I’m throwing at it. I soon realize they are trying to warm up and not hungry.  For this tournament I need two redfish and five trout.   At around 11:00 I catch my first redfish and it’s a decent fish at 24″ and around 6 lbs.  With the conditions I’ll take it.   After that I caught and released 6 fish, but they were all small.  The time was winding down and I needed to head back soon so pressure was on for one more good fish. I only had time to fish till 12:45 considering how far I needed to get back to the weigh in by 2:00.  Around 12:30 I see a big upper slot red swimming along a bank and he ate as soon as my swim bait went in front of him. After I get him in the boat he is just under 27″ and fat!  I knew my two redfish would give me a decent bag, but I didn’t have any trout and that could be the difference.   When I get to the weigh-in I noticed that I wasn’t the only one having trouble catching trout.  Not one trout was brought to the weigh-in.  It’s my turn to weigh my fish and my two reds give me a total of 14.8 lbs and my big red was 8.4 lbs. That gave me the overall win in the championship and biggest red as well. I beat second place by over a pound. I brought home two two checks totaling $1700, a Penn Slammer spinning reel, and an honorary championship belt that I get to keep for a year.  I couldn’t have gotten to any of spots without my Coosa FD. I traveled over 10 miles and my shoulders wouldn’t have been able to carry me in those conditions.  Till next year, tight lines!