Surprise addition to the team goes pre-fishing

The weekend after returning home from the IFA at Louisiana was time to pre-fish for the ECRC Panama City. The fishing in PC has been hit or miss with upper slot reds due to time of the year.

August is when the upper slot reds school up and head offshore to spawn. What you find one week will probably be gone the next. You will also find white-colored reds which have just come back from spawning and dark-colored reds that haven't gone yet. When we went out pre-fishing, we were trying to pattern the spawn and the movements so we would know where to look on tournament day.

Getting the boat ready Friday afternoon to head out on Saturday, an unknown SUV pulled into the driveway and the driver just sat there in front of me, staring at me. It looked like my brother from the Marine Corps, Colby, but he was stationed in Korea. The driver's door opened, and Colby stepped out. He was stateside on a training TDY for 45 days and would be training at Ft. Rucker. He will be down every weekend until end of September and will be fishing with us.

My boat was still in the shop from hitting the rock in Louisiana, so we took Jake's boat to pre-fish and look around for patterns. It was a peak high tide at 8 a.m. and a dead low at 6 p.m. We chose to fish North Bay and West Bay since East Bay has been so high-pressured and Shell Island you must deal with the rental jet skis and pontoons.

We started by Goose Bayou. I threw a popping cork, Colby a spoon, and Jake a paddle tail. We were there about 5 minutes, and I hooked up on the popping cork with a 4-pound red with no spots. About 5 minutes later, Jake hooked up and the drag started going. I grabbed the net and Jake caught a good one, 26.75 inches at just under 7 pounds. We considered the baitfish, the tide, the water temp and decided to leave and check another spot; we would come back on a falling/lower tide when it was hotter out to see how they moved.

We went to the shrimp farm since it's not high-pressured in the summer, because everyone swears the water's too hot and they are on the flats. In the shrimp farm, Jake fished the mud flat and Colby and I fished the weed line at the drop-off. We'd been there about 15 minutes when we heard Jake's drag. He landed a 25-inch at 5 pounds. Good fish, and good to know if the first spot failed and if we chose to fish the N/W bay system during the tournament.

I then saw a red floating up to the surface, and it was a good one. Colby was using my paddle tail and Jake told me to grab his other rod with the paddle tail, as I was trying to sight fish and didn’t want to pop a cork on it. I tossed to the shoreline in front of it, jigged it twice and let it fall on the drop-off. I saw it dart to the bait, the bait disappeared, I set hook and the drag pulled for about 2 seconds and the line broke.

That’s the fun part with braid: If it has age, you have to check through it periodically for weak spots. I normally, once a year, pulled off 75 yards and tied on a new run of 75 yards. The backing is still like new, so why string 200 yards and waste money?

We made it through the shrimp farm and headed to a bayou — I don’t know the name — and fished a point at the mouth of a canal with a creek feeding it and a deep hole on the backside. First cast, I landed a small trout. Jake and I caught small trout after small trout. I heard Colby say, "I have something," and he landed a 12-inch flounder. I was hoping for Colby to catch a red, since he never has, but was glad he had caught a fish.

We finished that area and headed back to the first spot at 2 p.m. to see how the heat and tide affected it. We drift-fished since the trolling motor was dead, and passed through the area where Jake and I both hooked up earlier, with nothing. We drifted the whole flat. With about 50 yards left, I saw a roll and felt thump. I set hook and it's another upper slot like Jake caught. I fought it to the side of the boat before the hook pulled— which was OK, since I just wanted to see what was in the area and not sore-lip everything. We saw enough to know there were tournament-winning fish; just wished we had seen or caught more than two.

Anthony Watson shares his fishing adventures with readers each week.