Tournament on the Apalachicola River

September 22-23, 2008

This was my first bass tournament and my first tournament with the Tallahaassee Bass Anglers. It was actually a weekend of firsts since the tournament was held on the Apalachicola River. I had never fished a tidal river and my partner for the weekend, Jim Neece, hadn't done much either.

Jim and several other club members went down to the Bay City Lodge on Friday morning for an extra day of practice for Sunday's tournament. I had to work, so I wasn't able to get there until about 7:30 p.m.

Jim had found a few scattered fish on Friday, but no real pattern. Saturday evening dinner was interesting as guys tried to talk about their day of fishing without giving away anything if they had caught fish. Mike Pagazolski was particularly circumspect in responding to any queries about how his day had gone and justifiably so.

High tide was at 6:16 a.m. and low tide was 2:43 p.m. The Docie Bass Memorial Bass Tournament was being held at the same time. They launched about 100 boats from White City, and a bunch of them came down to where we were fishing.

We began practicing Saturday by heading up the river into the area in the upper left quadrant of the aerial view below. By midday we hadn't caught anything and were beginning to wonder what to do next. That's when we met Capt. Junior Holland who has a houseboat that he built himself on the river. He told us that the bass were feeding on shrimp down by Goat Island, so we made a run down there.

The wind was howling around Goat Island when we got there making it really difficult to hold the boat in position or cast. Jim started fishing a black grape worm and was getting bumps like small fish tugging at the tail, but no takers. We tucked into a creek just up from the island. The wind and the falling tide meant that Jim had to stay on the trolling motor almost constantly to keep the nose of his Triton tracking up the bank.

Jim stayed with his worm while I tried spinnerbaits and an Aruku Shad. We hadn't gone far up the bank when Jim started picking up small bass. All of the fish hit within one or two pulls of the worm from the bank. I was feeling pretty snakebit since Jim had four of five fish in the boat and I hadn't caught anything.

He finally had me put on one of his black grape worms and a 1/2 oz weight. Jim sat down in the back of the boat to rest his leg that had been injured in a tennis match. I took the front of the boat and got close to the bank where I could cast as close as possible to the reeds lining the bank and keep the worm in the stike zone as long as I could. That did the trick. I caught two small bass right away.

None of the fish were big, but we figured that at least we had some fish that we could go to and get a limit fairly quickly then go looking for bigger fish. Ah, the arrogance!

Sunday morning came and, after a dandy breakfast at the restaurant at the lodge, we headed for our creek to work our plan. What is they say about man plans and God laughs? Well we planned and the fish laughed.

We fished the whole creek without a bite. When we got to the spot marked on the map below as Jim's Redfish Hole we could see what we thought were redfish working. Neither of us had ever fished for redfish, but from what we had seen on TV we were pretty sure that's what they were.

Jim cast a white Zara Spook where he had seen the last boil an immediately hooked up with this 23 inch redfish. It was his first redfish so it went into the livewell.

Jim caught one bass that met the 12 inch mark. I put a Devil's Horse on and caught a small bass that wouldn't measure. Shortly thereafter I started having trouble with the fluorocarbon line I was using and just put my cranking rod away. I have just about sworn off of fluorocarbon. It has caused me more trouble than it is worth.

The action just stopped at that point. We continued to fish in and around the same area, finally deciding that we may have wait for low tide for our fish to turn on.

At about 1:45 we went back to our fish. By this time the tide was out and the water, which had been up in the weeds, was now completely out of the weeds. Jim caught one more keeper and a few more short fish. I hooked and lost a keeper fish on a Bandit crankbait and caught one more short fish before we ran out of time and had to go to the weigh-in.

Jim finished eighth with his two fish. Mike Pags had five fish plus one on paper for the win. I don't think anyone had a fish over two pounds.

Lower Apalachicola River

I have always wanted to fish tournaments and I don't think I could have found a better club to start with. Jim was a gracious boater and I learned a lot from him. Even though I didn't have a single fish to weigh in, I had a great time and can't wait until the October tournament on Talquin.

"I fished a tournament here five or six years ago for the BassMasters, and the only time I could get them to bite was on that last hour of outgoing tide. I finished 5th in that tournament and every day I caught my fish in an hour during a later part of the day. It was a very stressful tournament because I’d go all day without catching anything and waiting for the tide, and as soon as it got to that last hour, the bite would be awesome."
-Scott Martin article on fishing tidal water: http://www.scottrmartin.com/ARTICLE-tidal-waters.htm