Monday, September 23, 2013

IWFA Recap

North Carolina's red drum fishing really impressed this group of ladies from across the country, including Louisiana, Florida and Texas.   We proved to them that we have as good "redfishing" as any place in the country.  Period.

On the first afternoon, I did not contribute much to the big drum fishing, only catching one big one.   Fortunately, the other Down East Guides, Capts. Justin Haddock, Brian Harrington and Greg Voliva, held up their end and introduced the ladies on their boats to a double digit afternoon of giant red drum.  

The morning of day 2, I changed strategies.   We went beating the banks and found a nice school of keeper "reds", catching at least 25 on light tackle off of one point.  But for the afternoon session, I  was still not in the groove and was only able to put each of my ladies on 1 trophy sized drum.  

The last day of their trip I was determined to find the mother load......and I did.   If felt good to call Justin and Greg into the bite, we had an EPIC afternoon.    Meanwhile, Brian was doing so good beating the banks, he never switched over to the big ones, guiding each of his ladies to over 25 releases of  keeper sized puppy drum.

For 4 guides, fishing for puppy drum for the majority of the day, well over 150 puppy drum were landed.

 I haven't talked about any specific numbers of the big drum all year and I'm not going to start now.  Like I said in the beginning of the season, if everyone on the boat catches a big drum, that's a success.  Where can you have that kind of consistency catching 40 pound red drum?  

If everyone catches a couple, that's usually at least a handful for the boat.   More than 2 or 3/person is a double digit day and that's where we stop counting.