Craig Lahr of Largo, Fla., (left) and Bryan Hudson of St. Petersburg, Fla., lead day one of the FLW Redfish Series event out of Englewood, Fla., with two redfish weighing 14 pounds, 1 ounce. (Photo by Rob Newell)
By Rob Newell - 30.Mar.2006
ENGLEWOOD, Fla. – While much of the field in the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Eastern event spent most of Thursday staking down and waiting on fish in clear water, the team of Craig Lahr of Largo, Fla., and Bryan Hudson of St. Petersburg, Fla., were, as Hudson put it, “thinking outside the box” to catch two redfish weighing 14 pounds, 1 ounce to take the day-one lead.
“It's a pattern I use back home in Clearwater (Fla.), and I'm applying it here,” Lahr said.
The team is fishing underwater bank structures in off-colored water as opposed to sight-fishing flats in clear water.
“We're not fishing big schools like many guys do here,” Hudson explained. “We're fishing specific places that might hold just one, two or three fish.”
“We covered a ton of water in practice using the GlobalMap GPS system that shows underwater contours, drops and oyster bars,” Lahr said. “We're keying on certain bank contours that hold fish. We only hit three of our better places today and caught about a dozen fish.”
The beauty of the team's pattern is that it's consistent and unpressured.
“I feel like we can do it again tomorrow,” Lahr added. “This pattern appears to be unaffected by tide, and we don't have to deal with local anglers fishing these spots, either.”
Two-way tie for second
The team of Jeff Totten of Englewood, Fla., and Ozzie Lessinger of Fort Myers, Fla., share second place with Shane and Gary Miller, both of Naples, Fla. Each team weighed in a pair of redfish weighing 13 pounds, 15 ounces total.
Totten and Lessinger are fishing about 40 miles south of the takeoff point. They reported catching about 10 fish today.
“We're basically on two wads of fish,” Totten said. “We're staked out between them, and we're letting other tournament anglers in the area kind of push the fish to us. There are a lot of guys in the area, and they're pushing the fish around, so we just decided to sit still and take advantage of the schools being bumped back and forth.”
The father-son team of Shane and Gary Miller guarded a 200-fish school in the Pine Island area most of the day.
“I've been on this school for about a month, just waiting for this tournament to start,” Shane Miller said. “We only caught two out of it today, and then we kind of sat with them to make sure no one else found them. We never really saw anyone else, so we feel pretty good about it.”
Three-way tie for third
Clustered up at the 13-pound, 6-ounce mark are three teams: Jeff Hagaman of Odessa, Fla., and James Goodwin of Palm Harbor, Fla.; Eric Holstman of Gulf Breeze, Fla., and Sonny Granger of Pensacola, Fla.; and Greg Watts of Lithia, Fla., and Bryan Watts of Lady Lake, Fla.
Hagaman and Goodwin made their signature long run today – 62 miles – and caught two fish in a last-minute flurry of action.
“You can never give up in this game,” Goodwin said. “We fished all day with nothing; we pushed it to the very last minute, and right before we left – boom, boom -- we got those two bites, and now we're right back in it.”
Holstman and Granger staked down on one spot most of the day and got three bites.
“All of our eggs are in one basket,” Granger said. “We've got one good spot that we're sitting on. We caught those two this morning, quit fishing and just guarded the spot the rest of the day. Hopefully it will produce again tomorrow.”
The Watts brothers played the stay-and-wait game all day on one 30-foot section of mangroves.
“What always happens here is everyone runs to their best spots, stakes their claim and just waits and prays that the fish will bite, and that's exactly what we did,” Greg Watts said.
The brothers explained that every key spot has a certain tide and time window where the fish feed heavily for about 30 minutes, and then it's over.
“We cast to the same two trees all day,” Bryan Watts added. “We did it for hours without a bite, and just before the tide reached a full high at about noon, they started eating, and it was on. We caught 12 fish in about 30 minutes.
Evinrude becomes Redfish Series sponsor
Included in Evinrude's new sponsorship of FLW Outdoors saltwater events, Redfish Series anglers running an Evinrude E-Tec or Evinrude DI engine purchased 2004 or later are now eligible for a $12,500 contingency bonus should they win the event.
Top-five cut happens tomorrow
The top-five cut will be made after Friday's weigh-in, signaling the top five teams that will advance to Saturday's finals. Many speculate that 25 pounds will be the cut mark.
The day-two take-off will begin at 6:30 a.m. Eastern at Stump Pass Marina.
