Worman-Beja take Titusville

Local anglers stay close to win Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series event

TITUSVILLE, Fla. – Sometimes redfish might be closer than you think. At least that’s the way Rick Worman and Alon Beja see it.

While most of the redfish teams fishing the Redfish Series Eastern Division event out of Titusville, Fla., ran to the fabled waters of Mosquito Lagoon this week, Worman and Beja stayed within sight of the Highway 406 causeway across the Indian River near the Sand Point Park launch site.

The close-to-home strategy worked perfectly for the Rockledge, Fla., team, netting them a $25,000 victory in the FLW Redfish Series event.

The team sacked about 13 pounds of redfish per day, giving them a three-day total of 39 pounds even.

“There is no way to describe the feeling of this,” Worman said after he and Beja were given Redfish Series winner trophies. “Everything went just as planned this week; I couldn’t have done anything to make it better.”

The team decided to stay in the Indian River for several reasons.

For starters, Worman guides on the Indian River and feels very comfortable on that water.

Second, by his own admission, his boat is not suited to fish the ultrashallow flats in the Lagoon.

“I don’t even have a jack plate,” he said. “I’m not going to go over there and tear up that grass running those flats.”

Also, Worman has found Indian River fish not to be as pressured as Mosquito Lagoon fish.

And finally, he believes Indian River fish outweigh Lagoon fish.

“The Lagoon is a great place to fish, but it really gets hammered all the time by sight-casters,” he explained. “These fish (in the Indian River) are a lot more comfortable – or happy as we like to say. They don’t freak out when you raise a rod to make a cast.”

“And I truly believe that because of the diet of the river fish – mullet and stone crabs – they are simply heavier than Lagoon fish.”

Another element working to their advantage was timing. With such fierce afternoon winds, Worman and Beja were able to fish the calmest part of the morning by staying close.

To catch their fish, the team relied on Berkley Gulp jerkshads in camouflage and sapphire shiner colors. The jerkshads were rigged on 1/16-ounce, 3/0 Mustad Ultra-lock hooks. They simply dragged the rigs along the bottom for their bites.

“We were done every day by 10 o’clock,” he said. “Today, we poled into the trough and kept pinning them up against a shallow bar. At times we had on doubles – it was great fun. Alon has been my best friend for 11 years, and to sit there and catch redfish like that with him in a major tournament is something I’ll remember forever.”

Hughes-Laramy runner-up team

Scott Hughes of Punta Gorda, Fla., and Mike Laramy of Tampa, Fla., are from the west coast of Florida, but they might want to look into moving a little closer to the east coast.

The team won the Titusville, Fla., Redfish Series event in 2005 and just missed their second Titusville title today, finishing second with a three-day total of 37 pounds, 7 ounces.

Indeed, they seem to jive with the waters of Mosquito Lagoon.

“We fished what I consider to be a migration route between two major systems,” Hughes explained. “It wasn’t really a place where fish hole up; it was more of a place where they travel through, and we had to intercept them.”

“We knew going in that we weren’t going to get many bites per day, but in our opinion, these are heavier than average fish,” Laramy said. “We have not really caught many fish all week, and today we had those two key bites right at the end of the day.”

The team relied on Berkley Gulp 3-inch shrimp rigged on jigheads.

“We were pretty much dead-sticking the lure where we thought the fish were moving through,” Laramy added.

The team collected $8,820 for its finish.

Porcelli-Stellinga finish third

Finishing in the third-place position was the team Joseph Porcelli of Edgewater, Fla., and Jeff Stellinga of Windermere, Fla., with a three-day total of 36 pounds, 12 ounces worth $5,518.

Porcelli and Stellinga fished in Mosquito Lagoon all week, working one school of fish.

“Our primary area was a little boomerang-shaped corner along a sand edge,” Porcelli said. “Fish and bait moving along the edge would stop and stack up in there.”

“It was a little tougher in there today,” he said. “The fish were not as happy, and the weekend traffic was starting to get to them. But we managed to stick to our plan and pull a couple of nice ones out.”

The team relied on Gulp 3- and 4-inch shrimp for most of the tournament.

“I did catch one of our better keepers on a spoon today,” Porcelli added.

Vercillo-Peters finish fourth

Tony Vercillo of Ft. Pierce, Fla., and Monty Peters of Vero Beach, Fla., finished fourth with a three-day total of 36 pounds, 3 ounces worth $4,126.

Vercillo and Peters opted to stay in the Indian River, making a 55-mile run to the south.

Both anglers feel more comfortable fishing the Indian River and, like the winners, believe that Indian River redfish receive less pressure and weigh more.

“The redfish seem to school up more in the Lagoon, so everybody fishes over there,” he said. “The fish are pretty easy to find there, but they are harder to get to eat.

“We prefer to blind-cast Gulp shrimp and spoons across flats and potholes, which is exactly what we did this week.”

Chivases finish fifth, now lead Eastern Division AOY

After finishing runner-up at the Eastern Division opener in Clearwater, Fla., brothers Cody and Kyle Chivas of Belleair, Fla., scored another top-five this week in Titusville.

The brothers finished fifth with a three-day total of 35 pounds, 12 ounces and collected $3,734.

What makes the story of these young fishing sensations even more interesting is that they found their fish in one day of practice.

“We had never been here before,” Kyle Chivas said. “So we came over Sunday, went over into the Lagoon and found a flat with about 200 redfish on it. We caught a couple of decent fish and then watched the school to see what they did throughout the day. After what we saw that afternoon, we decided to commit to that flat during the event, and we headed home.”

The brothers fished that same flat all week, catching sight fish with 1/4-ounce gold spoons.

“We poled and sight-casted in the mornings when it was calm and then had to resort to staking down and fan-casting when the wind picked up in the afternoons.”

The young brothers, ages 16 and 18, are now leading the Redfish Series Eastern Division Angler of the Year race after two events with 295 points.