El Cheapo 2012.... The saga continues with monster sheepshead!

[Boattronics]

Great read and pics, thanks Tony

Thanks for reading!

Man Tony, with all this knowledge, side bets, postings, etc..... I hope you make it on the leader board my man! lol

Paul good to see you posting again. Maiden voyage on the new flats boat in the AM looking for some sheepies...... I will let you know whe I have it ready!

Knowledge? I did put up the "By no means am I an expert" disclaimer, lol. Sorry I missed your message, I hope you get on em today!

[freshmeat]

alright, we been reading your daily blogs on the forum since it was still flounder season and you were slayin the sheepies. Surely you are gonna let us know how you did... Considering the amount of money you spent on fuel and bait for the past month pre fishing for this tournament, you did place right??? I know you didn't get beat by any weekend warrior who has to work everyday instead of fish... No excuses cuz as much time as you put in, you should of had a failsafe plan A-Z.

[Agent 37]

You see, here's the thing..... Tony is such a good fisherman that with all that pre-fishing that he and Luiz have been doing they straight-up cleaned out the river before the tournament. I believe that between those two and Arun, every fish in the river had already been caught in the last few weeks. The fish that did get caught were just the dumb ones that needed to be culled because they didn't learn from their mistakes.

Furthermore, they did say that they were putting fish back in the water fast. So you guys should be thanking Tony for making sure our local sheepshead population didn't get wiped out by this El Cheapo Reapo the Fishos Tournament. Because of him, there will be more quality fish left to spawn.

Have a nice day and thank you for voting for AGENT 37.

[Boattronics]

LOL!!!
We had a GREAT day. We were on our spot by 4:30 am. At 4:45, other folks started showing up.... we just beat the crowd. We fired up a grill and made scrambled eggs, hog sausage, etc, it was a pretty elaborate breakfast to be cooked on a flats boat, lol! We started chumming early and had bites within minutes of lines in! Unfortunately, we lost a huge fish right off the bat. But we were able to catch about 15 fish, with 8 fish over four pounds, with a few over 5 and two over 7. Nothing huge though, we finished with a 7.3. Ill post some pics and video shortly.

[Boattronics]

Nothing to do in the morning untill 7am but wait..... and cook up a good breakfast. First time I did this on a flats boat, but it actually worked out quite well. Nothing like a hot breakfast to get your day started!
(click to watch)

Luis had the hot hook for the day, and caught our biggest fish. Just call me "net boy".

We did catch a mess of solid fish, just not the one we needed-


I was surprised 10.1 took the tourney, but the fish was caught in the general mayport river area I thought it would be...


Oh well, maybe next time. We did better than all our friends, so I won a couple side bets for a cool hundo in cash. We didnt catch a monster, but the tourney was a blast as always and we will be back next year!

[Captain Brian]

What? You didn't win?

[Slug-O]

Looking good guys!!!

[F1D2]

Nothing to do in the morning untill 7am but wait..... and cook up a good breakfast.

That's the way to start the day off guys and you still had some good fish too.

[Boattronics]

What? You didn't win?

I know right? (lol) We gave it our very best shot.... our plan worked, we caught fish on a tough day, had fun and came back safe. Thats all we can ask for!

Looking good guys!!!

Thanks brotha!

That's the way to start the day off guys and you still had some good fish too.

Thanks, no doubt! I wish every fishing trip started off with a good meal.... I think that grill is gonna make a more regular appearance on the boat from now on!

I gotta say, reading others reports make me smile, mostly about how everyone was so courteous and everyone got along. Its hard to imagine over 400 boats in a confined area, and everyone seems to have gotten along fine. We were lucky to get to our spot in the center of a dock slip first, but had boats completely surrounding us by day break. Everyone was in good spirits, no one was trying to fish on top of each other, etc. Everyone was catching fish, but somehow Luis was able to break ahead of the pack... dude seems to catch more fish than all the folks around him, I gotta give him big "props".
We did see a kid fall overboard first thing in the morning, but with cat like reflexes he was able to grab the rail on his way over, so he only got soaked from the waist down. He was a real trooper though, and was quick to exchange his sweat pants for some long sleeve shirts I think.... his buds were laughing up a storm and he was right there with 'em, and toughed it out all day.
I did see quite a few boats hauling the mail through the channel with no lights on.... everyone seemed to want to be in "stealth mode". I have to admit, once we slipped into our dock spot and were secured in place, we went "black ops" too. That didnt seem to help though, we found out quickly that dock was a very prized spot... and with good reason! Of coarse our grill with flames flickering and the smells of breakfast in the air probably didnt help us conceal our "secret" lol!
I heard some crazy stuff differant folks tried... one friend had 75lbs of shrimp heads to use for chum. I know of several small boats that tried to go offshore just to get the snot beat out of them, but also of a few large boats that were able to brave the large angry sea and somehow did well in the rolling swells. I have no idea how these guys can catch a sheepshead in heavy seas and high winds, but some folks are just that good it seems.
We tried a new to us technique where we took a chum bag, filled it with fresh oysters we crushed on the spot and fished with fiddlers and oysters directly on top of the bag, which seemed to concentrate the fish under our boat better than surrounding vessels. I say that, but we are also aware of some structure on the bottom we were right over top of, so its hard to say how much it really helped. Whatever it was, we were able to catch 8 fish while surrounding boats only managed up to two each. Maybe it was good old lady luck, maybe we were just holding our mouths right, I dont know. Anyway, I sure wish we coulda caught that stud though, but there is always next year!

While sheepsheading was great this season, we are happy to put it behind us now and move on to the next challenge. Its time to focus back on reds untill the IFA tourney, and slip offshore whenever possible to search for the elusive wahoo, to try our luck against the wahoo championship warriors. Soon, (surely earlier than usual this year!) it will be time to go after the fish of which we do not speak about, my personal favorite......... you just gotta love N.Florida and all the great angling oppurtunities she presents!

[freshmeat]

what you didn't place? i must say i'm really dissapointed in "boattronics" the #1 fishermen in n.e. fla. you are a t.v. celeberty and everything... I can't believe you did all that prefishing and all you can say you accomplished in the tournament was cook some eggs??? oh ya you did let us know you guys out fished everyone around you, god forbid you leave that part out, otherwise we might think you are just an average fishermen. i got to hand it to you, you were dead on in your prediction for where the winning fish would be caught. who would have ever guessed that a tournament with 420 boats being held out of mayport would be won by a fish caught close to mayport... shocker!!! only you would have guessed that. must be from all that experience... in your honor the mods are getting together to come up with an icon of a lil yellow guy tooting a horn and you can use it every other day on your fishing reports. keep tooting that horn.. its funny.