PENSACOLA, Fla. – “Addictive Fishing” show host Blair Wiggins and redfish team partner Tadd Vandemark get excited about every fish they catch, no matter what it is.
A jack crevalle gets a “Whoo-wee!” A sheepshead gets a “Suh-wheet!” The team can even brighten a lowly flounder’s day with a few enthusiastic remarks.
So one can only imagine how crazy the longtime friends went Saturday when they hooked and landed the two redfish that garnered them the most lucrative tournament accomplishment in professional redfishing – a Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Championship title.
“The footage for this ‘FLW Outdoors’ show (which will air on FSN) is going to be incredible,” Wiggins said. “We basically caught our two winning fish on the first cast and the last cast of the day.
“We were on our way back to weigh-in when we stopped just short of the check-in boat to fish one last dock. And with 17 minutes to go, we hooked up with the tournament-winning fish. This whole day has just been unreal. There is no high in the world that can compare to what I’m feeling right now.”
“We’ve worked so hard for this,” Vandemark said, on the edge of tears. “We’ve tried to win one of these things for so long, and we’ve been so close, and now we’ve won the biggest one of them all.”
Wiggins and Vandemark’s pair of redfish, which were the bookends to their tournament day, weighed 12 pounds, 12 ounces to give them a three-day winning total of 35 pounds, 1 ounce, worth $100,000.
While some teams in the Redfish Series Championship event ran way to the west and others ran way to the east, Wiggins and Vandemark actually ran 20 minutes to the north to the headwaters of one of the bays where fresh water meets the saltwater.
“We’ve basically taken some of the lessons we’ve learned from fishing places like Texas and Louisiana and applied them here,” Wiggins explained. “We came here looking for the same kind of water we fished in Venice, Louisiana, when we finished third in Lafitte. We looked for deeper water, current and, most importantly, the right water color. The place we fished here was very similar in appearance to the place we fished in Venice.”
With the exception of the last-minute tournament-winning dock fish, the Florida team caught most of their fish from 8-foot depths along a shelf that stuck out into 18 feet of water.
“As the bank dropped from zero to 18 feet, there was a shelf, or plateau, in about 8 feet,” Vandemark described. “It was a feeding place in the current that the fish pulled up on. We probably caught a dozen redfish off it today.”
The team’s key bait was a 3/8-ounce D.O.A. CAL jig smothered in Lunker Sauce and tied to 8-pound-test Power Pro.
Walter-Winters runner-up
Kris Walter of Hudson, Fla., and Danny Winters of Tampa, Fla., finished second, collecting $15,000, with a three-day total of 33 pounds, 2 ounces.
The Florida team fished about 20 minutes to the east near the Navarre Bridge.
“We were fishing a set of shorelines that featured some deep cuts in the bank,” Winters said. “The reds were holding in those cuts and pockets formed by the rigid bank contour.”
Their main area was backed up by a few docks in the same area.
“The north wind hurt our best area on Friday, and we had to resort to fishing docks in calmer waters that day,” he added. “We thought about dock-fishing today, but we noticed the docks were getting beat up pretty bad by tournament anglers on Friday, so we went back to our original shoreline today.”
The team’s primary lure was a 3-inch Berkley Gulp shrimp in pearl color with a 1/4-ounce jighead.
Henninger-Eggers third
Day-two leaders, John Henninger and John Eggers of Jacksonville, Fla., ended up third with a three-day total of 32 pounds, 11 ounces worth $16,000.
“We’ve had to hunt, dig, scratch and scrape just to get into the top five, and we ran out of steam today,” Henninger said. “We broke a nice fish off on a dock piling this morning and then had another one pull off on the same dock this afternoon.
“It’s an honor just to get to the championship and an even bigger honor to make the top five at the championship, especially given that we had very little going when the tournament started.”
The team relied on 3-inch Berkley Gulp swimming shads on 1/8-ounce Norton jigheads all week.
Hughey-Tanner fourth
Jason Hughey of Davenport, Fla., and Travis Tanner of Christmas, Fla., finished fourth with a three-day total of 32 pounds, 10 ounces and collected $13,000.
The Florida team fished docks most of the week with 3-inch Berkley Gulp shrimp.
“The best docks were the old, broken-down ghost docks from the hurricanes,” Tanner said. “The newly rebuilt docks were no good. And if the broken docks had a mixed bottom with potholes around it, it was all that much better.”
The team also fished flats in between docks.
“Our best stretches were nice mottled flats, sweetened by a few old docks,” he added.
Tauzin-Jordan fifth
Chief Tauzin and Clark Jordan of Pearland, Texas, finished fifth with a three-day total of 25 pounds, 2 ounces worth $10,000.
The Texas team was fishing 60 miles to the east near Destin, Fla.
“We found a nice 3- to 4-foot flat over there that had a lot of rafted-up mullet,” Jordan said. “The last two days, the mullet have been real active, jumping and flipping around, and the redfish bite was really good. But today the mullet were not as thick nor as active, and the fishing was terrible.”
“We think the dropping water may have hurt them,” Tauzin said. “It has dropped a good foot or two since the tournament started, and that may have pulled those fish out to deeper water.”
