Watkins-Watkins widen Redfish Series lead

Father-son team doubles weight plus half-pound to lead day two at Rockport; VanDemark-Shaw win Team of the Year

ROCKPORT, Texas – Local anglers Jay Watkins and Jay Watkins Jr. mined their fishing holes for redfish gold Friday, landing an impressive 16-pound, 8-ounce limit that topped their day-one weight by a half-pound. The father-son team will take a 1 1/2-pound lead into the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Western Division finals Saturday.

Watkins and Watkins Jr., both of Rockport, Texas, headed south again today to the northern edges of Port Aransas and Corpus Christi bays, where they added a 16-8, two-fish limit to their 16-pound limit from day one for an amazing two-day total of 32 1/2 pounds. Though they still have targets on their backs, the bull’s-eye has shrunk somewhat as they widened their lead over second place by a pound and some change.

But with better-than-predicted catches coming in at this event, which is taking place two weeks later than originally scheduled due to a hurricane postponement, the pair will likely have to fish just as hard tomorrow before they can rest easy with the winner’s check in hand. In other words, the competition is stiff, and any team in the top five still has a shot.

“I see a gentleman right there who’s weighed in a (17-pound limit) this year, and there are guys who’ve weighed 18s around here, so it could be tough,” Watkins said from the weigh-in stage. “The Culpeppers are still in it, and you know they can win anywhere.”

The team’s patriarch added that he thinks “16 pounds is doable again tomorrow,” which would put Watkins-Watkins right near the top of the heaviest three-day weight in the history of the FLW Redfish Series, now near the end of its third year of operation. The record winning weight of 49 pounds, 9 ounces was established in March 2006 – right here in Rockport – by the team of Todd Adams and Tommy Ramzinsky, also Rockport natives.

“I feel pretty good about today,” Watkins Jr. said. “I feel comfortable about going into tomorrow, but there’s still a lot of good teams in it.”

The pair had their weigh fish by 10 a.m. today, and spent the remainder of competition hours scouting out new holes. They have been fishing familiar bottom pockets at depths of about 3 to 4 feet, casting gold spoons and 4-inch Bass Assassin Texas Shads in Texas Roach color to fish they can’t see but know are there. However, Watkins said others are starting to find their holes as well.

“We got off them a little bit (after boating their limit), and then we tried to cool off a little,” Watkins said. “This is a sport where you have to be smart about things and use your head. You have to know when to cool it … try to keep others from seeing you.”

Despite having a little company today, the team intends to head back to the same spots tomorrow and use some newly scouted locations as a backup plan only if necessary. Since their area has consistently provided the right size of fish, there’s no reason to rock the boat at this point.

“You know, redfishing’s just like school: First-graders don’t hang out with third-graders, and we found some college-age fish,” Watkins explained.

Culpeppers climb to second

The Culpepper brothers, Jonathan and Kris of Houston, took a chance and braved strong winds yesterday to find their fish well south of Rockport in the upper Laguna Madre. With calm conditions reigning today, making the same trip was a no-brainer, and their location provided them with a hefty limit weighing 15 pounds, 13 ounces. Their two-day total now stands at 31 pounds and puts them in second place going into Saturday’s finals.

“Beautiful conditions, beautiful fishing – everything went exactly the way we thought it would,” Jonathan said of their efforts Friday. “We’ll follow the same plan … tomorrow.”

The plan involves plenty of sight-fishing in shallow water with 4-inch pearl-white Berkley Gulp shrimp and 3/8-ounce T.C. Custom jigheads. The Culpeppers have been pinpointing their reds in large schools of drum and were able to fill their limit between 10:30 and 11 a.m., a few hours earlier than yesterday.

“I think the weather today helped,” Kris said. “We kind of laid off them when we got the fish we needed.”

Kris added that he thinks it’s possible to make up the 1 1/2 pounds separating them from the leaders.

“If you get the right bites, you could put together a 17-pound sack,” he said. “Tomorrow will be a good, long day … and we’ll go from there.”

Mock-Curry leap to third

Skipper Mock of South Padre Island, Texas, and Eddie Curry of Port Isabel, Texas, were the heat-seekers of the day, climbing four rungs up the ladder to third on the strength of a 16-1 limit for a two-day total of 30-9. And the trip up the leaderboard wasn’t easy by any means.

“Yesterday we overcame a lot of adversity,” Mock said. “We got about a hundred yards and the motor went out.”

After using their trolling motor to limp back in to the launch site, they gave Redfish Series Tournament Director Ronnie Brinegar a call for help. Brinegar hooked the team up with Yamaha motor technicians who fixed a broken battery cable in short order.

“They took real good care of us, so we only lost about an hour,” Mock said.

Then the pair made a relatively long run south to the Flower Bluff area of Aransas Bay, south of the JFK Bridge. Mock explained that it still took them about an hour and a half to get there as they have “one of the slower boats on the tour.”

Mock said they drifted into a school of reds right off the bat, but Curry caught only a small keeper and Mock caught one over the 28-inch slot limit before entering a dry spell that lasted until almost 1 p.m. On the way back, bad luck struck again when the engine’s oil light lit up, and they lost a few more minutes of fishing time by stopping at a marina to add oil.

But then their luck changed as they drifted into a second school on the way back to weigh-in, where they were able to fill their limit and cull the smaller fish for a day-one limit of 14 1/2 pounds.

“Today we got on the same fish, and we had an awesome day,” Mock said. “The slick conditions changed everything for us. We’d get on a school and chase them with the trolling motor. It was one of the easiest days I’ve ever had tournament fishing around here.”

The pair caught their 16-1 limit today by sight-fishing in about 2 to 3 feet of water. After casting some spoons, they found their best success with Hogie plastic shad baits colored black with gold bellies.

Provided they don’t encounter more mechanical problems, Mock said they will look for the same schools of reds – which he believes could produce 16- to 17-pound limits – tomorrow in the finals.

Tauzin-Jordan, Reupke-Duxstad tied in fourth

Chief Tauzin of Manvel, Texas, and Clark Jordan of Pearland, Texas, slipped a couple spots to fourth Friday after weighing in a 13-pound, 6-ounce limit, bringing their two-day total to 29 pounds. Like yesterday, they were casting silver spoons and 3-inch Berkley Gulp shrimp baits in 1 1/2 to 2 feet of water to land their catch.

“We had our opportunities … yesterday and today,” Tauzin said. “We just didn’t have the right bite today. We caught a couple of overs (redfish over the 28-inch slot limit).”

Yesterday the team stayed away from its favorite spot – the grass flats of Laguna Madre south of Corpus Christi – due to the wind and opted to fish close. They started today out the same way before shifting gears.

“We had a game plan today … we went to our first spot this morning, but about 9:30 it slicked over, so we made a 30-mile run down south, close to Laguna,” Jordan said.

They caught five fish there, but two were over the 20- to 28-inch slot limit for redfish. Eventually they returned to the Rockport area, where they caught an 8-pounder that helped them make the top-five cut.

“We need wind,” Jordan said about their plans for tomorrow’s finals, which likely will have them staying local.

Tauzin further explained their hope for a strong breeze Saturday: “One of the other top teams (Culpeppers) is down there (at Laguna Madre), and they need calm conditions.”

Up from sixth place on day one and also with a two-day total of 29 pounds is the team of Steve Reupke of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Frank Duxstad of Port Aransas, Texas. They cast an assortment of spoons, Exude Shrimp, Berkley Gulp baits and Baby Minus 1 crankbaits to catch their 14-7 limit today.

“We threw the poo poo platter,” Duxstad said. “They’d quit eating one, and we’d throw something else.”

“My partner found some fish earlier in the week, and I scouted … down south at the JFK causeway,” Reupke said, adding that the pair opted for Duxstad’s location on the edges of Aransas Bay south of Rockport. “We’re on schooling fish. We work the schools with a trolling motor.

“We pretty much wore the fish out today (having caught about 25). It’s a community hole, so tomorrow could be a whole different story with the weekend warriors. But we’ve got some other options if we need them.”

VanDemark-Shaw named Western Division Team of the Year

Without a doubt, the race for Land O’Lakes FLW Redfish Series Western Team of the Year honors was a thrilling one that required a figurative photo finish to determine the winner. But at the end of Friday’s weigh-in, it was finally determined that Tadd VanDemark and Kevin Shaw had broken the tape at the finish line (though results will not be official until the conclusion of the tournament).

The Florida-based team – VanDemark from Key Largo and Shaw from Corpus Christi (not Texas) – needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat to grab the points title after landing in 26th place Thursday, but they persevered by pulling two redfish from the Gulf waters of San Antonio Bay far north of Rockport on Friday, sealing their victory.

The 15-pound, 15-ounce catch on day two of the tournament was hefty enough to catapult them into seventh place – enough of a climb to claim Team of the Year in the Western Division. And still they might have fallen short if not for VanDemark’s request to reweigh their catch a second time on the scale, a move that gained them 3 precious ounces.

“Kevin and I have worked hard all year; we’ve been very consistent,” VanDemark said. “I think we’re a force to be reckoned with.

“We put ourselves in a position yesterday not to loose it … but we needed every ounce today.”

The pair fought heavy boat traffic in their primary area yesterday, so they punted and tried to find a new spot that could leverage a Team of the Year win Friday. VanDemark said they owe much of their success today to a fellow competitor, Trey Ganem, who clued them in to the San Antonio Bay location, which Van-Demark-Shaw had never before fished.

“He said, `We found some fish, but we can’t get them to eat,'” VanDemark said of their gracious guide, who described the location that still proved difficult for them to find.

“I tell you, it was like going through a maze of oyster bars to get there,” VanDemark said.

Though VanDemark-Shaw just missed the top-five cut, they undoubtedly still find the No. 7 spot to be a lucky number. To beat out the Culpeppers for Team of the Year, VanDemark-Shaw had to finish no worse than nine places behind the brothers in this event. The winning team will be awarded a trophy and have their entry fees paid for a single division of the 2008 Redfish Series.

Finals

The top five teams will launch one last time Saturday from Saltwater Pavilion at Rockport Beach Park at 7 a.m. The final weigh-in will be held Saturday at the Wal-Mart store located at 2401 Highway 35 N. in Rockport beginning at 4 p.m., with the winning team taking home a guaranteed $25,000 with the possibility of earning an additional $25,000 if bonus guidelines are met.