We just returned from fishing the Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter, and was it ever a cool event. My partner, Ryan Rickard, and I won it, but that’s only a part — a small part actually — of why I think it was so cool.
Let’s start at the beginning …
Trait and I received an invitation to fish the tournament from Skeeter and Yamaha. We said yes but in truth we didn’t know anything about what it was or how it would work. On top of that the only redfish I ever caught was by accident fishing on the Sabine River. And, I don’t think Trait had ever caught one. So, like the pros we are we started doing our research.
After doing that we figured out that they were bigger than bass, would bite most bass lures and that they could be hard to find sometimes and even harder to make bite. That is not exactly a lot of information. Nevertheless, we headed towards Port Aransas and into the new world of redfish fishing.
First, I want to say that Ryan was one of the guys who made this thing fun and who taught me what I needed to know about catching them. He’s from Florida and knows what he’s doing when he chases redfish.
Once we were introduced we hit it off right away. I asked a lot of questions. When he answered them I realized that catching redfish wasn’t too much different from catching bass in the sense that they can be patterned. They’re found in similar places under similar conditions.
After a few hours on the day of practice I was able to duplicate most of what he did. I even had a few ideas of my own. However, I have to say that without him my learning experience would have been long and painful.
Something else I learned was that fishing saltwater isn’t as easy as fishing freshwater. The boats are more expensive and saltwater is hard on everything. We (bass anglers) can wash and clean our boats when we feel like it or when we have time. The saltwater anglers have to do it when they come off the water, and they have to do a thorough job of it. There’s no hitting the high spots for a picture or two like we can get away with at tournaments.
In short, B.A.S.S., Yamaha, Skeeter, Port Aransas and everyone else involved put a really fun event together. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter was the most fun tournament I’ve ever fished. I really want to fish another one next year, maybe in my own saltwater Skeeter with a Yamaha outboard on it.
Trait says the same thing about the tournament and about her partner, Matt McCabe. She had a really good time and is looking forward to doing it again.
It was just an all-around good experience. It was positive for B.A.S.S., positive for our pro partners and positive for us bass anglers. Trait and I want to say thanks to everyone for all of that and to FS1 for the great TV coverage.
Next time we’ll talk about winter bass fishing. I know it’s complicated because winter isn’t the same in the Midwest as it is in Texas. Nevertheless, we’ll give it a shot.
