GRAND ISLE, La. – Chief Tauzin of Kingwood, Texas and Clark Jordan of Pearland, Texas caught four redfish weighing 31 pounds to win the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Western Division event in Grand Isle. Tauzin and Jordan bested a field of 105 teams, earning $37,500 cash, including a Yamaha bonus, for their win.
“We started out sight fishing yesterday,” Tauzin said. “We were catching them in grass flats. But today, the wind picked up and we had to do more blind casting. We probably caught 20 or 25 redfish on soft-plastic crayfish, but most of them were oversized. We lost one keeper, but it all worked out in the end.”
Tauzin added that he and Jordan were put in a tight situation later in the day, when electrical trouble left them stranded. “We were afraid we weren’t going to make it back to weigh-in on time,” Tauzin said. Luckily, good sportsmanship prevailed when the team of Jeff Larson of Friendswood, Texas and Steven Auld Jr. of Baytown, Texas spotted them and towed them in. “We owe a lot to those guys,” Tauzin said.
Rounding out the top five teams are Todd Dufour of Marrero and Alden Bourgeois of Lafitte (four redfish, 30 pounds, 11 ounces, $9,200); Matthew Morel and Peter Young, both of New Orleans (four redfish, 30 pounds, 9 ounces, $5,324); Troy Robichaux of Lockport and Thad Robichaux of Cut Off (four redfish, 30 pounds, 8 ounces, $4,324); and Kurt Koliba of Port Lavaca, Texas and Michael Shikmek of Bay City, Texas (four redfish, 30 pounds, 3 ounces, $4,050).
FLW Redfish Series qualifying tournaments are two-day events. The entire field competes Friday and Saturday, and the winning team is determined Saturday based on the heaviest two-day accumulated weight.
The next FLW Redfish Series Western Division event will be held Aug. 5-6 in Galveston, Texas.
The FLW Redfish Series consists of two divisions – East and West. Each division is comprised of four events with a $200,000 purse for each event. The top 100 teams – 50 from each division after four qualifying events – will qualify for the three-day, no-entry-fee $300,000 Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Championship to be held in Mobile, Ala., Oct. 27-29. The championship winner will take home as much as $100,000.
Named after the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, Forrest L. Wood, FLW Outdoors administers the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series and seven other national tournament circuits offering a combined $30 million in awards through 214 events in 2005. The 27-year-old organization is the purveyor of America’s largest and most prestigious fishing tournaments, including the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, EverStart Series, Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League, Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League, Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour and Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series.
For more information on FLW Outdoors and its tournament programs, call (270) 252-1000.
Wal-Mart and many of America’s largest and most respected companies support FLW Outdoors and its tournament trails. Wal-Mart signed on as title sponsor of the FLW Tour in 1997 and today is the title sponsor of all FLW Outdoors events. For more information on Wal-Mart, visit Wal-Mart.com.