Padrick/Smith Finish in 3rd Place at Carolina Redfish Series #1

by Lee Padrick, June 1, 2015

Dwayne and I finished in 3rd place at Carolina Redfish Series 2015 Event #1.  We had practiced in all the spots we knew between Drum Inlet and New River, and the biggest schools of fish were south of the Highway 58 Bridge.  So we planned to fish the biggest schools of fish we found.

First fish

We drew Team #25 out of 26 teams, so we were next to last at checkout on May 30, 2015.  The tournament was held out of Chasin' Tails Outdoors in Atlantic Beach.

Upgrade fish

Dwayne and I arrived at our first stop after a hard run.  It took a little while, but we figured out the pattern of our fish, and started putting fish in the boat.  We caught a few smaller fish and had two in the livewell, but we didn't have much over 7 pounds.  Then Dwayne stuck a nice fish, close to 6 lbs, so things were looking better.  I stuck a nice fish on a gold spoon, and we upgraded to a little over 10 lbs.  Then Dwayne put another nice one in the boat, a fish around 6 lbs, and we had an aggregate weight that was close to our target weight.  A few minutes later, I made a cast to where I thought the fish were, but no takers on my gold spoon, so I was retrieving it pretty fast so I could cast back to the spot.  A fish hammered the spoon close to the boat, and after we netted it, we saw it was a thick one.  We measured it a few times, but couldn't get it measure under the 27" mark but once, so after flipping it a few times, we released it.  

So close, but too big

We had around 12 pounds in the livewell, so we went to another spot to fish low tide, and found our school in some shallow water.  I stuck one immediately, but broke the fish off.  Big mistake on my part.  We got another shot at the school, and Dwayne boated a 28" fish on a gold spoon.  

Then we spent the next few hours trying to find our school, which disappeared with the extremely low tide.  Still have no idea where those fish went.  Ended up catching 15 fish on the day, just not the right ones.

3rd Place with 12.12 lbs

We headed back to the scales with what we had, and ended up with the 3rd place weight of 12.12 pounds.  

Congrats to Captain Mike Taylor and John Roberts with a big winning bag of 13.42 lbs.  Captain Jeff Cronk and his wife Kellee finished ahead of us in 2nd place with 12.45 lbs.  We ended up in 3rd, just ahead of our Hook and Bones teammates On Point Fishing, the team of Garrett and Littleton that finished in 4th place with 11.77 lbs.  Big congratulations to all the teams that weighed fish on a tough tide.

Leaderboard

We want to thank Chasin' Tails Outdoors, PointClickFish.com, Crystal Coast Graphics, and Hook and Bones for putting on a great tournament.

We also want to thank Salt Life Optics, Grunden's, Salty Bay Baits, Deep Creek Lures, Captain Gary's Marine Care Products, Fins Superbraids, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, Bubba Blade Fishing Knives, Tsunami Air Wave Rods, Bimini Bay Outfitters, Buccaneer Bait Company, and Power Pole Swallow Water Anchors.  

Check out Randy Nelson and Explore Inshore for footage of the event.  We're going fishing with Randy and his video camera at the end of June and we're excited about the trip.

We had a lot of fun and look forward to next event in the series on June 13th.
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