Skeet’s Beat – Survival at Harris Chain Grinding out a top 25

I’d like to say that my Harris Chain experience could be called “Survival of the Fittest,” but; honestly, it was all about survival.

Before I get too far; I want to say congratulations to my Dick’s Sporting Good and TroKar teammate Shaw Grigsby; he’s one of the truly nice guys on tour, and to see him pull out a victory like that was really cool.

Also, to Grant Goldbeck; you had an amazing three days; the best of any of us, and while the first day didn’t work out, you did an amazing job.

My practice really did suck; I mean it really was terrible. I spent the first two days fishing, not looking for bedded fish because I thought that the sightfishing bite was pretty much over. Man was I wrong.

The first day and a half of practice only produced a few bites for me and that was when I figured out that I’d better get shallow and look for some spawners. I went looking, and found a couple good ones locked on beds in a little pond, so I left the area.

The next practice day, on Wednesday, I went in there to check on them, and the four pounder I had found was gone, and the five and a half pounder I had found had been prop washed by someone, and she was all spun out, but still there. I went a little further and found an eight and another good one.

I went to the meeting hoping to get a good boat draw out, but when I drew a number in the 90’s, I knew I was screwed.

I fished for a while, with very little to show for it, then decided to go look in the spawning area. I found one four pound male still on a nest, and I caught him; but, all of the others were gone. At first I thought somebody caught them, but nobody did, I guess the storm pushed them all off the nest. I managed to scrape a limit, but when I lost three good ones on a Lucky Craft Gunfish 115 at the end of the day; I came in with a little over 11 pounds and ended up in the 40’s.

I thought that the second day would be tougher, but the fish actually bit better. I caught 13-11 and moved up into the 20’s.

The last day started out rough; I lost five of the first six bites I had early. The fish were biting funny, probably because they were mostly fry guarding males, and I just didn’t land them. I managed to scrape together 10-14, and finished 23rd overall. I feel pretty good to have scraped together enough to have finished in the top 25 after a bad practice, but knowing that I lost the fish that would have put me in the top 12 really sucked.

I caught my fish on two main things this week, I was swimming a worm on a 3/0 TK110 TroKar Wide Gap Worm hook, and 15-pound-test Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon on my Wright & McGill Co. Skeet Reese Tessera Spinnerbait / Worm rod and Victory 701 reel. I kind of used the worm in a swim / hop motion; swimming it through the water until I got to pockets, then I would let it settle.

The other thing I did was Flip, with my Berkley Havoc Pit Boss in black and blue color on a TroKar TK130 Flipping Hook on my signature 8-foot Flip / Punch rod and 701 Victory reel with 25-pound-test Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon.

I’m here starting to switch gears to the St. John’s River, and because I’ve never been here, I’ve got to admit; it’s an unknown X-Factor right now. I’ll get out there tomorrow and see what I can figure out.

Check out Skeet on the web at www.skeetreeseinc.com