FLA Fernandina Draw

Florida Lure Anglers April Winners

The local tournament blitz continued with yet another tournament last weekend - springtime sure does have them stacked up. This one was the Florida Lure Anglers monthly club tourney and we had a draw format in Fernandina which ended up being for a 2 flounder limit on lures only.

The club adopted the draw format after the success of MirrOlure madness which was a tournament open to the top qualifying club teams in 2007 and 2008. The kicker for that event was that all teams would compete with the exact same lure selection which was provided by MirrOlure and the format would be drawn from a hat at the ramp. Talk about an equalizer - prefishing wouldn't count for much since nobody knew what species they would be targeting and nobody would have a "secret weapon" lure to use. The event was considered one of the best tournaments in club history and members seemed to really like the mystery of not knowing what the bag limit would be ahead of time so the draw format was established for this season.

Since the FLA club members have evolved into highly skilled and competitive anglers, most welcomed the challenge. Of course, there was some bitchin' and whinin' when 2 flounder came out of the hat that morning (while we are in the midst of a great trout bite) but everybody played on a level field. Lots of guys were scrambling around before takeoff re-rigging rods and tweaking their float plans - myself included. Another "x-factor" was the fact that the huge spotted redfish tournament was being held in Jacksonville that would have around 400 boats which makes for a crowded day on the water.

Well, the blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while and I am proud to say I won the tournament. The thoughts going through my head in the morning were that it would be a tough day since my partner Jamie Havard was unavailable to fish and I would be going solo. A flounder tournament in my opinion is one where 2 lines in the water are very important because it is all about covering a lot of water. But, I was equally thankful that we didn't draw a format that included redfish because there would be 400 boats out in the marsh redfishing and I am also mired in a redfish slump personally.

I ended up gambling on coming back to Jacksonville in hopes that I could secure an open shoreline in Mill Cove despite the other tournament boats and luckily one of my favorite spots - aka "lucky bank" was open. I had one hooked up pretty quick but it came off boatside and then I got my biggest for the day a few yards down the bank. So, I knew the fish were around and didn't even crank up the big motor until it was time to run back to Fernandina because I continued to either catch one or spook one for the next several hours.

A couple of important tools for the day were the Slayer Lures Jr. Punisher spinnerbait rigged with the willowleaf blade (quicker sink rate) and the Power Pole shallow water anchor. Like I said earlier, to me it was all about covering water so I power-poled down and thoroughly fan cast the mud flats before lifting up, repositioning, and doing it again. All...day...long. Incidentally, my only other FLA win came a couple of years back and I fished alone that time too...but you won't see me kicking Jamie off the team because he has been carrying the load when he is able to fish.

Fred Rounsaville teamed up with Randy Padgett for 2nd to continue his consistent string of high finishes and club president Chuck Dehlinger and Brian Clark took 3rd. The points race continues to be interesting with JD Nobles and Deinse Myers battling with Randy Hartley and Josh Stewart for first place and Scott Obrian and Wade Hastings still in striking distance.