PENSACOLA, Fla. – The back of Bo Johnson and Richard Hudec’s tournament jerseys contain an embroidered motto that reads: “Go hard or go home.”
The high-stakes game of professional redfishing roughly translates to: run harder and farther than everyone else in the tournament field, catch two tournament-winning redfish, or go home.
Today, going hard paid off for the redfish team from Cape Coral, Fla., as they logged about 300 miles running distance, round trip, to catch two redfish weighing 12 pounds, 14 ounces to take the day-one lead of the FLW Redfish Series Championship.
“We couldn’t have done it without our Evinrude 250 E-Tec,” Johnson said. “With a 60-gallon tank, that engine allows us to run those kinds of distances with only one stop for gas instead of two.”
This is not the only time this team has run monster distances, either. Other Gulf voyages for the team in other events have included a run to Cocodrie, La., from Lake Charles, La., and a run to Venice, La., from Mobile, Ala.
“That’s our style,” Johnson said. “We don’t fish for points; we don’t fish for checks; we fish to win.”
“Or we go home,” Hudec remarked.
Although the team won’t reveal exactly where they ran to today, they did report heading east of Pensacola.
“We had about 3 hours of fishing time,” Hudec said. “We are sight-fishing in about 5 feet of water with 4-inch Berkley Gulp! shrimp. We caught six or seven fish total.”
And if you thought 300 miles was a wild ride, consider that Johnson and Hudec are contemplating going even farther tomorrow.
“Another 50 or 60 miles past the spot we fished today, we’ve got a winning school of redfish located,” Johnson said. “There are about 700 to 1,000 redfish in this one hole over there. We found them Wednesday and we caught 12 in a matter of minutes, any two of which would weigh 15 1/2 to 16 pounds. It’s unreal. But if we do it, we figure we’ll only have about an hour to fish.”
Vercillo-Peters second
In second place is the team of Tony Vercillo of Fort Pierce, Fla., and Monty Peters
of Vero Beach Fla., with two redfish for 12 pounds, 6 ounces.
In contrast to Johnson and Hudec’s heroic distances, Vercillo and Peters are staying close – within 20 to 30 miles of Pensacola.
The team is blind-casting to potholes in areas where mullet schools are present. They boated four reds today.
“Remarkably, we found this spot today,” Vercillo said. “Like many teams, we lost a lot of practice time to bad weather. We didn’t really find anything in practice so we took a gamble and went to an area we’ve never been to before and started fishing like we do back home: looking for mullet and casting around them.”
Walter-Winters third
Kris Walter of Hudson, Fla., and Danny Winters of Tampa, Fla., are in third place with two redfish weighing 12 pounds, 5 ounces.
Walter and Winters are also fishing close, declining to comment on which way they are running.
“We’ve got four spots pretty close together,” Winters said. “Some are sight-fishing spots and some are blind-casting spots. Our primary area is a depression holding a nice school of fish. We caught two there and then culled up on one of our other places. We caught about a dozen fish today, but not all from the same spot.”
“Our goal here was to find several different places so that no matter which way the wind blows, we have a place to fish,” Walter said. “The wind is supposed to blow out of the north tomorrow so hopefully our plan will work out.”
Huestons fourth
Fernandina Redfish Series winners, Ron and Chris Hueston of Miami, Fla., started
the Championship in fourth place today with two redfish weighing 11 pounds, 12 ounces.
The Hueston brothers are running 90 miles to the east, in the Panama City region, and fishing docks for their fish.
“We ran over there and had our fish by 9 o’clock this morning and came right back,” Ron Hueston said. “We caught two of the right fish pretty quick and didn’t see any reason to keep pounding and spooking the school. Plus, we didn’t want to take any chances on getting back.”
“We found a few deeper docks that have smalls schools of reds holding in about 15 feet of water,” Chris Hueston. “We’re bouncing 1/2-ounce jigheads with Bass Assassin shad tails off the bottom to get the fish to bite. But we feel these are small, fragile schools and if we sit there and wale on them it could ruin the bite for the next few days.”
Clarkson and Lynch grab fifth
The only top-five team admitting to running to the west today was that of Jeff Clarkson of Austin, Texas, and Fred Lynch of Corpus Christi, Texas, who, ironically, are the only team in the top-10 from the Western Division.
They sit in fifth place with two redfish weighing 11 pounds, 3 ounces.
“We ran about 70 miles and all we are doing is sight-fishing,” Lynch said. “We’re poling around in about 18 inches of water seeing every fish we catch.”
“This one place is holding plenty of fish but the problem is they are all the exact same size: 25 inches,” Clarkson said. “We caught 15 fish trying to get one or two in that 26- to 27-inch range and everyone was right on 25 inches. It was amazing. We spent more time trying to cull than we did fishing because they were all so close in size.”
Day two of the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Championship begins at 7 a.m. Friday at Shoreline Park South in Gulf Breeze, Fla.