GRAND ISLE, La. – When the redfish team of Clark Jordan of Pearland, Texas, and Chief Tauzin of Kingwood, Texas, weighed two redfish for 15 pounds, 14 ounces today, they had no idea they had just won the second FLW Redfish Series Western event of the season.
An hour later, after the weigh-in ended, they were given the news that they were the champions.
“This is a real shocker,” Tauzin said. “I can’t believe it.”
“I’m stunned,” offered Jordan with a look of disbelief.
The Texas team began the morning in eighth place, nearly 2 pounds off the lead, and ended up on top with 31 pounds even, taking home $25,000 cash, plus a $12,500 bonus from Yamaha for a total of $37,500.
“I just knew our dead fish were going to haunt us,” Tauzin said. “We had some livewell issues; one died on us yesterday and another one today.”
“We won this tournament because of Chief’s efforts in keeping our second fish alive yesterday,” Jordan recounted. “After our first fish died, he quit fishing and spent the next five hours keeping the fish up right in the livewell and breathing while I fished. If he hadn’t sat there in the hot sun personally tending to that fish all day, it would have died and we would have lost the event due to another dead-fish penalty.”
Jordan and Tauzin sight-fished the Venice area with Yum crawfish (gray with orange pinchers) rigged on 1/8-ounce Bass Assassin jigheads.
“We saved out best spot for today,” Tauzin said. “We never went there yesterday. Yesterday, we caught our fish on a big flat and decided to save our primary spot for today.”
“We checked that flat this morning and the wind and tournament pressure was taking its toll on it, so we bailed and headed to our best spot,” Jordan added.
The team’s best spot was an isolated clear-water pond that Jordan found during practice.
“I practiced in Venice for eight days,” Jordan said. “I have a tall tower boat with a tunnel that runs in really shallow water. I never fished; I just rode around from pond to pond looking for fish – the right size fish. Driving from that tower provides a huge advantage when scouting and eliminating areas.”
“Another big part of this win is our communication,” Tauzin added. “I started fishing with Clark this year, and we get along great. We communicate well in the boat. He fishes from up in the tower and I fish from the deck, and we just work well together.”
Louisiana locals finish second 
Todd Dufour of Marrero, La., and Alden Bourgeois of Lafitte, La., finished second with a two-day total of 30 pounds, 11 ounces.
Both anglers guide out of Lafitte, so they went to their home waters to fish instead of running to Venice.
“Venice is usually the place to be, but it’s been a little off lately,” Bourgeois said. “We decided to go to the water we know best up north.”
Like many of the other top teams, Dufour and Bourgeois sight-fished clear-water ponds with thick grassbeds to catch their best fish.
They used gold spoons and Berkley Power Craws (pumpkin/green flake) on a 1/4-ounce jighead.
“Normally, we get in one area and work one pattern all day,” Dufour said. “But today we went running and gunning, checking all the best places we know. If the fish didn’t bite immediately, we moved on to the next spot. And at the end of the day it paid off. We hit one area where the fish were really eating, and that’s where we scored our two best fish. Up until that point, we were hurting.”
Morel and Young take third
Matthew Morel and Peter Young, both of New Orleans, decided to do the “Venice thing,” and it produced a two-day total of 30 pounds, 9 ounces for third place.
The team sight-fished clear, shallow ponds in the Buras area with Flappin’ Shads (plum/white tail and root beer/chartreuse tail) rigged weedless on Flutter hooks.
“The trick is getting your eye trained to 27 inches,” Morel explained. “We don’t want to throw at the big reds because they’re a waste of time. The fish tend to run in packs of five or six – some maybe 30-inchers and others maybe 26- or 27-inchers – you want to throw to the smaller ones and make sure the big ones don’t get it.
“The heartbreakers are the ones that look like the right size, and you fight them all the way in, only to find out they are an 1/8 of an inch too big.”
Against the grain nets Team Robichaux fourth
While many of the teams ran to the east toward Venice, Thad Robichaux of Cut Off, La., and Troy Robichaux of Lockport, La., ran 80 miles the complete opposite way – to the Cocodrie area to the west – to catch 30 pounds, 8 ounces over two days, putting them in fourth place.
“We wanted to get away from the boats, so we went the other way,” Troy Robichaux said. “We guide over there, so it was no big deal for us.”
The team sight-fished eelgrass beds in clear-water ponds to amass their catch.
“We had been catching them good on plastic craws, but they completely got off it today,” he said. “They ignored everything we threw at them until we started throwing spinnerbaits, and then they ate us up. They would come 20 or 30 feet to eat that thing.”
The spinnerbait was a Bayou Bug 3-plus with a No. 4 Colorado blade and a Mister Twister Exude Shrimp trailer.
“We probably saw 200 fish yesterday and 60 today,” Robichaux added. “It was pretty amazing.”
Heartbreaker drops Koliba-Shimek to fifth
Yesterday’s leaders, Kurt Koliba of Port Lavaca, Texas, and Michael Shimek of Bay City, Texas, fell to fifth with two-day total of 30 pounds, 3 ounces.
“We had our chance,” lamented Koliba. “Michael had the winning fish right to the boat, and it just pulled off. It wasn’t anybody’s fault; it just got down in the grass and came off.”
“It happened right at the end of the day when the tension was high,” Koliba continued. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”
“The cameraman got the whole thing on film,” Shimek said. “But that’s something I don’t think I want to see again.”
The next Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Western event of the 2005 season will take place Aug. 5-6 in Galveston, Texas.