Skeet’s Beat – Frustration on St. John’s Citrus Slam Didn’t go as Planned

I don’t know what happened for sure at the St. John’s River, other than to say it sucked.

I thought it was going to be a good tournament when practice was over. I found a bunch of good bed fish, and a few big ones.

I was so sure about what I was going to be doing that I spent a little extra time on Wednesday doing my tackle before going out. I was pretty excited to break out all of my sightfishing tricks, and my gear was all ready.

I was really hoping that I’d get an early boat number since I drew a 90’s number at Harris Chain last week. No such luck, I drew out in the third flight, with a number in the 60’s.

I got to my first area and was ready to fish for one of the big ones that I had found. When I got there, Greg Hackney was fishing for one and J. Todd Tucker had already caught another on his third flip to it.

I decided to go try one of the other 15 or so waypoints I had that was a fish over five pounds, but they were all gone. I don’t know what happened, but they weren’t there.

If the weather had changed, I’d have understood, but it didn’t. I talked to a few of my competitors about it, and we still don’t know for sure.

I finally started fishing for small males; just trying to get a limit, but was only able to come up with three fish for a little over five pounds.

On day two, at one O’clock, I only had one fish in the boat when I finally gave up on the sightfishing. I picked up a soft plastic jerkbait and made long casts around weeds with spinning gear.

I threw it on a final prototype of a new Wright & McGill Co. Micro Honeycomb Football Jig / Big Worm spinning rod and size 4000 Victory spinning reel with a 4/0 TroKar Wide Gap Worm Hook on 20-pound-test Spiderwire Fluorobraid.

By the time I had to leave, I had pulled together a limit for around eight pounds. Not much weight, but at least it was a limit. If I would have done that all day, I probably would have caught a decent limit.

This was the worst tournament I’ve fished in quite a while. I didn’t think I was on a winning program, but I was in the area with at least half of the top 50. I was hoping to be able to finish in the top 25, but that didn’t happen.

My only frustration, other than the tournament itself is that I took myself out of the AOY race. I probably did, but I’m going to go out and try to have a bunch more top five finishes and make up for it.

I can’t do anything about it for a couple of weeks. So, I get to go home and spend some time with Kim and the girls until it’s time to go to Pickwick.

For more about Skeet’s career – visit www.skeetreeseinc.com