My buddy Captain Ed made it out today. He went offshore and had a decent day. At the boils Captain Ed and his friends caught endless Jack Crevalle and Bluefish. After they got tired of catching Jacks and Blues, they went out to 55ft and continued jigging as they drifted. They caught a few Snapper, a short Cobia, and a huge Barracuda. Unfortunately, he didn’t take any pictures so I thought I would share our trip from the 3^rd annual Fishing for the Future boys and girls club fishing tournament.

June 13, 2021 was the 3rd annual Fishing for the Future boys and girls club fishing tournament. Tania and I had the pleasure of representing Freedom Boat Club of Ft. Pierce. We were teamed up with two other members from the boat club. When I reached out to the other two members, Perry and Rich, to pick a captain, they both asked if I would do it, so I graciously accepted the position and the responsibility that goes along with it.

On Friday evening, Tania and I attended the captains meeting to pick up the measuring device and go over all the rules. This was my first captains meeting and wasn’t sure what to expect. The meeting was held at the Rusty Rudder in Ft Pierce, and they had some good food for us. After the meeting I decided to stop and get some shrimp to save time in morning, as we didn’t want any delays.

Tania and I arrived at the dock at 600am and meet up with Rich and Perry. We carried everything down to the dock where we would load the boat and head out as soon as we could leave. Due to unfortunately events we were unable to get out on the boat until after 7am.

We were able to start fishing at 7:00am so I decided to throw a power prawn a few times while we waited for the boat. On my last cast I saw as snook following my lure for about 10 ft. It was amazing watching the snook hit the bait when I paused. We landed the snook and took its picture for the tournament. It was good to be on the board early with a 26 ½ in snook. At this point my wife reminded me it’s usually a bad sign when I catch the first fish of the day.

Since we had a snook caught we turned to targeting trout and redfish. Our next spot was the spoil island on the east side of the ICW just south of Harbor branch. Rich landed the first fish at this spot. Unfortunately, it was a ladyfish and was not a targeted species. We drifted north two islands without any more action.

Once we came up to Harbor Branch, I ran us to the northwest corner of the peninsula due to the SW wind. We started our drift in hopes for a trout. About halfway through the drift Perry hooked up with a nice trout. We landed the trout, took its picture, and put it into protective custody. The trout was caught on an Alabama Leprechaun. Now we had a 21in trout to add to our tally. Since it was still fairly early in the day, about 8:30am, I was hopeful we would be able to find us a redfish.

Once we finished our drift at Harbor Branch, I decided to run up to Round Island. I hear that Round Island is the place to catch redfish. We had trouble getting to Round Island as it was a dead low tide, and the water was really shallow. It took us about 30 minutes to get back to round island as we had to go really slow and a couple of times, we had to back track as the water got too shallow to proceed. When we finally got there, I was a bit disappointed as I didn’t see any bait or any signs of life; however, we just spent all that time getting there so we went ahead and did two drifts with no luck.

At this point it was about noon, so I decided to head south again and started to work our way back home. I took us back to Blue Hole Creek and started to work the area. We saw lots of mullet jumping as well as smaller bait fish so I was hopeful this spot would produce us some fish. We worked the area with only a few bites, but no fish caught.

We made another move to the area over by Little Jim’s. We started working the east shoreline north. When we got around the point of one of the islands, we decided to put down the power pole and fish with some live shrimp. Perry told me at this one point he caught lots of snapper and a redfish, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to try. We fished here until 230pm. We caught lots of short Mutton Snapper, one 11in Mangrove snapper, and several catfish. Unfortunately, the redfish eluded us all day.

At this point I decided to take a run to one last spot. While we were heading south the wind had picked up and it got really choppy. The last spot I was thinking about would be unprotected from the southwest wind, so I just threw in the towel and headed back to the dock.

We got back to the dock around 3pm. It was a long day on the water with good company. We came home with 1 trout and 1 snapper. After cleaning the fish, Tania and I headed over to the weigh in center were we witnessed the offshore team weigh in their dolphin, then headed home.

About 530pm Tania and I headed back into the award ceremony to see how we faired in the tournament. The Freedom Boat Club Offshore team took 1st place in the Dolphin division. For the inshore team we were in 4th place with a total length of 48in. 1st place had a total length of 85in, 2nd had 65in, and 3rd had 55in. All in all, I was happy that we caught what we did, however I was disappointed I could not put us on a redfish. Had we got the redfish we would have most likely placed in the top three and won a cash prize.

Tania and I pray all who make it out the rest of the week have a blessed and safe trip. May you have tight lines and good times!