Hughes and Laramy win Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series even in Titusville

TITUSVILLE, Fla. – Scott Hughes of Punta Gorda, and Mike Laramy of Tampa, caught a two-day total of four redfish weighing 29 pounds, 4 ounces to win the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series Eastern Division event in Titusville and $50,000 cash.

“This is our first year fishing a professional redfish tournament trail,” Hughes said. “This is also the first time we’ve ever fished here. We basically just picked an area and started poling, and we caught 35 redfish the first day of practice. After that we just studied the area and tried to learn where the redfish went during different tides as we knew the fishing would get tougher during the tournament.”

The team threw Exude Mister Twister hellgrammites, crawfish and slugs on 10-pound braided line with fluorocarbon leaders. They fished in 10 inches of water roughly 25 miles from the takeoff site and caught 12 keeper redfish over the course of the two-day tournament. “I poled most of the time while Hughes did most of the casting,” Laramy said. “I made a few casts to fish from the poling platform.”

Rounding out the top five teams are BFGoodrich Tires pro David Walker of Sevierville, Tenn., and Jeff Simms of Punta Gorda (four redfish, 29 pounds, 1 ounce, $10,600); Tom Fragomeni of Deland, and Raymond Culver of Naples (four redfish, 28 pounds, 1 ounce, $6,850); Joseph Portelli of Oak Hill, and Jeff Stellinga of Windermere (four redfish, 27 pounds, 13 ounces, $5,850); and Troy Mell of Islamorada, and Jason Swensson of Key Largo (four redfish, 26 pounds, 3 ounces, $4,400).

Anglers caught a total of 192 redfish weighing 996 pounds, 14 ounces on Saturday.

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 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.