Got out of school Friday and got on the road and on our way. After getting lost for a good half hour (map quest gave us directions to take 41 all the way down), we got on I-75S and made good time. On our way we picked up Cameron (Trootin) and the team was ready. It was myself, Cameron (Trootin), Jared (jared_simonetti), and his friend Anthony.

We got to the captains meeting a little late, but got our money in and register as Team Young Guns. None of us had ever fished the area before and we didn't have time to prefish so based on some google earth maps and some reliable tips we formed a fairly decent game plan and went with it.

Saturday morning came around and we were up early for the drive down from Cam's house in Venice back to Matlacha. At 9 a.m. sharp the tournament began with a shot gun start. After a couple minutes of brief caos, more or less a kayak pile up. Cam and myself were making a long paddle north while Jared and Anthony headed south.

With the NE wind blowing a solid 15+ we struggled getting out and hugged the northern shoreline for a while. Cam started off with a 13" trout trolling on the way there, not a monster but a fish on the board for sure. We started out fishing some creek mouths without much luck. Since the tide was high we decided to head to the bushes to look for redfish and snook. I started off with a 20" snook that gave us 2/3 of our slam. We got a call from Jared and they had gotten a 15" trout to give us 45" of two fish total. Not great but it was a start.

After several little snook Cam hooked into a pig off a mangrove island. I paddled over to him and threw my anchor backwards and barely grabbed his foot in time as the snook pulled him into the bushes. After an intense battle, he landed the 31" beauty, awesome!! Now that we had a solid snook we switched our game plan up to start looking for redfish.

It was a bit of a struggle and it wasn't until 2 that Cam finally nailed a 24"er out of some mullet schools. with 70+" we were psyched and paddled in. Upon arriving to the weigh in most of the teams had made it clear they hadn't done very well, and as far as we thought we had the whole thing in the bag, until Team Emotion announced their massive 82" slam! They deserved the win for a slam that big in those conditions!

So in the end we finished 2nd place, when we came into the thing flying blind. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to it next year hope to see more of yall out there!

P.S copied from Spencer (seeinred) 

I know spencer btw

I used to skim with him all the time.

Sounds like quite an adventure... congrats on the 2nd place finish and the great fishing. You guys definitely are The Young Guns, and it's good to see you doing so well in competition!

Just out of curiosity, what did you bring home for the second place finish, and what's next on your tournament schedule.

Way to go, and thanks for the report!