Ifa Kayak Tour Championship Day 1

 DAY 1 It started early Friday but not that early Because we had to wait until 6:45 safe light to launch. After taking my launch picture I hit the water and headed straight for my trout spot. I knew I would have to peddle fast because the sun was coming up and the big girls don't like to hit the top water much after the sun gets over the horizon.  I was unsuccessful in beating the sun but it was still early enough to catch a few on top my first was a decent 19 inch speck  I quickly took a picture of and released.
The picture is missing something. 
My goal was to catch at least 20 inch speckled trout. I knew that would put me in contention for the big trout so I kept throwing top water. Not even Five minutes later I had a huge blowup on top and I could tell I had a bigger trout on as he wouldn't come up to the surface. I took my time making sure to not apply too much pressure and rip the hooks out. I finally landed it and at 8:00 I knew I was done targeting trout for the day.
At this point i realized I didn't put the token on the other fish. 
I left my trout spot and headed for my big redfish flat that is situated right off some deeper water. As I was pulling up I could see finger mullet being blasted up and down the shoreline. I cast my top water in and after one twitch I was hooked into a nice 18 inch trout this continued every other cast for about 150 yards until I reached the flat. I did hook something big while fishing this stretch but it popped my line right after I set the hook. Once I got to the flat even bigger mullet were being chased and I knew the big reds were there nope more trout. If this wasn't a tournament I would have bee thrilled to be catching all these trout especially since they were all 16 inches or better but I needed a redfish. Abandoning that trout bite was hard to do I more than once thought about saying screw the tournament and filling up my ice chest . I stuck to the plan and headed to a deep main drain where the water was moving and I had caught a couple bulls before. Five minutes in I hit what I thought was a snag  but soon It started moving. A couple minutes later I had a solid 30 1/2 inch redfish and was taking my picture. I felt great having 51 inches and it was only 10:00 especially since that was my goal going into the day.
Notice anything missing?
In my excitement I forgot a very important element for the picture again twice on the same day.   Forgetting the token on a 18 inch trout and upgrading was a part of the plan, not having a 30 inch redfish that I landed count would be devastating. After taking a quick water break and composing myself I went back to jigging. After 15 minutes of nothing I had a hit turned out to be a gafftop. Then I popped my line twice in the next ten minutes. I continued jigging At this point I had roughly an hour and a half until I had to head back to the launch.  I wouldn't need that much time because my drag began to sing and I knew I had a big fish on the end of my line. I took my time with this fish as I only had 15 pound mono spooled up and I didn't want my line to pop. I was praying it wasn't a black drum but I took my time and fought it much longer than normal. I landed it and headed to the bank to measure. It was big but I guessed it was 36 inches when I finally measured it was 39inches and it would have been at least 40 if it had a whole tail.
Headed to the bank to measure. 

The fish was not as excited as me.























Maxed out at 39 inches.
Day one went about as good as A tournament has ever gone for me I was able to stay calm and composed throughout and execute my plan. There were some great numbers put up on day one ,and after the first day I was near the top of the leader board.I was in 6th place with 60 inches only two inches behind the leader.

Stay tuned for Day 2.

First Two Weeks of October Photo Dump

Too much good fishing to take time typing long posts.