Fishing This Weekend?

I went Saturday to BPS in Orlando and spent way too much money. I had to get a new graph as my Lowrance LCX15MT crapped out on me a few months back. Luckily in Florida the need isn't that great to have one as the water where I fish is mostly 5 feet or less. I got a Eagle fish mark 480. BPS had it on sale so I went ahead with that. Wished I could have got the color ones but that budget thing keeps slapping me haha. Got a new rod and reel and some lures.

Fished a tournament on Garcia again Sunday. Apparently I used up all of my luck last weekend when me and my buddy won it. I had no luck today. I bought the magic bait at BPS albeit only 1 :-[ and started right away catching fish on it. Then I missed 2 nice ones that jumped and threw the bait and the other one just pulled loose. First one I saw and it looked in the 3lb range. Second I never saw and pulled hard like a big fish pulls. I was so deflated after that. It was only fitting then that a freaking Pickeral followed my bait and decided to swallow my bait and even though I saw it was a Pickeral I went into the usual jerk rod set like an idiot and of course the 30lb braid was cut as if I was using sewing thread. :cussin: :banghead: Well after this only 1 more bite and fish the rest of the day.

Since I only had 3 fish in the livewell I didn't even want to weigh in so I released them back into the flats that I caught them and just went home. Didn't even hang around for the weigh in. I only had 4.5lbs combined haha. So I installed my transducer and epoxied it into my hull the rest of the day when i got home. Hopefully I did that right

Drew, best of luck on your upcoming tournament. Hope the day turns out the way you have no doubt fished it in your mind for weeks now.

Sunday on the St. Johns turned out to be cold as heck in the AM, the boater I fished with ran north about 15 miles and I froze my butt off. Got to the 1st stop and no tackle bag. Somewhere in the process my tackle bag either flew out of the boat or was thrown out by some of the wakes he crossed at WOT. I was a little less than happy but told my boater I was OK, he had paid his entry fee and I would not keep him from fishing.

I asked for a few worms and I would just fish them. I figured I could cover all water columns by varying the way I rigged the worm. I picked up my worm rod and the side plate fell off and into the drink!! Finally my boater saw I was about to have a heartattack and said lets go back and find that bag of yours. Well I did not have much hope as I figured it sank like a rock and took my $1500 Handheld Garmin GPS, tons of tackle, and a rain suit with it.

Well I could not believe my eyes about 1/2 way back to the ramp there it was bobbing up and down like a crabpot buoy. We retrieved the bag and off we went back to our first fishing hole. First cast with a zoom vi bra tail, took a 3lb'er. We fished for a while longer and my spirits picked back up. I managed to catch what I thought had to be the next world record on a crankbait that turned out to be a mudfish. Before the end of the day I managed one other keeper for the day. My boater had his pass at one non-keeper and his own mudfish.

So the day did not start out well, but it ended OK, no real weight caught at this tournament. I believe the winner weighed in around 10lbs. I had about 4-1//2. My boater turned out to be a super guy and we had a good day together trying to figure out the pattern.