I've been spending the last couple of afternoons trying to get ready for the FLW Redfish Championship in Orange Beach, AL. Getting ready to leave for an out of town fishing tournament can be fun and miserable at the same time. I get to shop for new lures, tune up my fishing tackle, and reorganize my tackle bags. That kind of stuff is fun to me. But, I also get to go change the oil in my truck, pack clothes, and get a haircut. Those things rank right next to getting my teeth pulled on my "things that aggravate me to death" list. Oh well, fishing tournaments do motivate me to do things that I normally would keep putting off. So that's good.

 

This particular tournament is really exciting for me. It's the richest redfish tournament in the country and not just anyone can sign up and fish it. I believe there is over $250,000 up for grabs and only teams that finished the regular season in the top 50 spots in their division are invited. My tournament partner, Capt. Frank Jackson, and I qualified for it by finishing the year in 17th place overall in the Eastern division of the FLW Refish Series. Not too shabby, if I must say so myself. There were 175 teams vying for those top 50 spots that would put them in the championship and we finished in the top 10% of the field against teams that included such well known teams as the Watts brothers, C.A. Richardson and Ray Van Horn, Greg and Bill Devault, Rick Murphy and Scott Guthrie, and Mark Sepe and Andrew Bostick. These guys are some of the best redfishermen in the country and we have our work cut out for us.
 

There's been a lot of logistical preparation going on for the last few days and you've already heard me mention some of it. But to be successful (and I hope we will be) we've been doing some research about the area to get prepared for the actually fishing we'll be doing when we get there. Looking at Google maps, reading online fishing reports, and discussing options with other teams that we're working with are all things that we can do to help us form a game plan. That type of stuff has been going on for months. Once we get there for practice, we'll put our preliminary game plan to the test for a couple of days. We'll check the areas that we predetermined to fish based on maps and reports we've read and we'll try baits that we think will work. After those couple of days we'll sit down and re-evaluate. We may find that what we've been doing is working and already have an established pattern. In that case during the rest of practice we will look for other areas that match the profile of the pattern we have. Or if things don't look good the first couple of days we may have to scrap the original approach and rewrite the game plan. It's a process of elimination. It's just as important to us to know what doesn't work as it is to know what does work.
 

Right now I'm going to go to work on a whole separate process of elimination. I am going to try to figure what I need to get done before I leave and what I can put off until I get back. Figuring out what will make my wife the least upset with me will help ensure my fishing success (and marital bliss) in the future.